By Vicky Whiteley, Global Business Development Director, Elevate Global
Brands and agencies can spend months planning an event. Every detail is considered, from the creative concept and venue to the logistics and guest experience. Yet staffing is often one of the last things to be confirmed.
It’s something I’ve seen time and again throughout my career, and I think it’s an area that deserves much more attention.
After all, you can have an incredible event planned, but if the people representing your brand aren’t right for the job, it can make a real difference to the experience.
For me, choosing a staffing partner comes down to much more than finding an agency that can supply enough people at the right price. It’s about understanding how they find those people, how they look after them and whether you can trust them when things don’t go to plan.
What goes into finding the right people?
One thing I always come back to is the importance of matching the right person to the right role.
Quality and quantity actually go hand in hand here. Having a large pool of staff gives you more choice, particularly when you’re working with tight deadlines, specialist requirements or locations that are harder to recruit in. But it’s what an agency does with that talent pool that really matters.
Not every Brand Ambassador is suited to every campaign. Someone who’s brilliant at engaging crowds at a sporting event might not be the best fit for a VIP hospitality experience. Different roles call for different personalities, skills and experience.
At Elevate, we invest in mandatory training that all staff complete when they join our agency, before any campaign specific or brand training. This covers areas such as health and safety, customer service, communication, incident reporting and data confidentiality. It’s our way of making sure everyone starts with the same strong foundations, regardless of the brands or events they go on to work with.
I’d also encourage brands to look a little more closely at what happens behind the scenes of event staffing.
Who actually handles recruitment? Does the agency have a dedicated recruitment team? What training do staff receive before they even get to the brand-specific briefing?
These might sound like basic questions, but they’re important ones, especially when you’re asking an agency to find people with niche skills or deliver a campaign at short notice.
At Elevate, our staff complete training covering areas such as health and safety, customer service, communication, incident reporting and data confidentiality. It’s about making sure people have the right foundations before they represent a client’s brand.
And while we’re talking about what happens behind the scenes, I think it’s worth mentioning how agencies treat their staff.
I started my career as a Brand Ambassador, so I’ve experienced that side of the industry myself. Feeling valued, being paid fairly and knowing you’ve got the support of your agency makes a huge difference to how you approach a job.
That’s also why I’d be cautious about a staffing quote that comes in significantly cheaper than everything else. Of course budgets matter, but it’s worth asking how an agency can offer that price. Are the staff being paid fairly? Is enough being invested in recruitment, training and support?
The cheapest quote isn’t necessarily the best value.
What happens when things don’t go to plan?
Another thing I think brands should pay more attention to is what happens when something goes wrong.
We’re dealing with people, and people are complicated! Someone might get sick, have an emergency or simply not turn up. No matter how experienced an agency is, these things can happen.
The difference is how prepared they are and what they do about it.
At Elevate, for example, we have a 10% overbooking policy, where additional staff are trained and paid to be on-site as contingency cover, at no extra cost to the client. It’s an investment we make to reduce the risk of last-minute absences affecting delivery, and it’s contributed to our 99.5% compliance record over the past two years.
That kind of preparation isn’t always visible to clients, but it can make an enormous difference.
Communication is just as important. If something happens that could affect a campaign, I’d expect a good staffing partner to be upfront about it, explain what’s being done to resolve it and keep the client informed. And if something does go wrong, take responsibility and learn from it.
It’s really no different from any other good working relationship.
One size doesn’t fit all
I also think there’s growing value in agencies that can adapt their staffing approach rather than simply working from a fixed brief.
Our ongoing work with Google and FIRST Agency is a good example. They needed a team to support guest services across three London buildings, covering everything from reception and wayfinding to ID verification and event support.
The challenge was that they wanted a dedicated team who knew the environment and could provide consistency, but also the flexibility to increase staffing levels when demand changed.
Those two requirements don’t always sit naturally together.
Our solution was to combine 18 full-time contracted team members with a pool of 20 flexible Brand Ambassadors who could provide additional support when needed.
It gave them the consistency of a dedicated team without losing the flexibility required for a busy, changing events programme.
It’s a good reminder that the right staffing solution isn’t always about supplying more people. Sometimes it’s about approaching the brief differently.
The growing demand for international consistency
We’re also seeing more brands looking for a single staffing partner who can support campaigns across multiple countries.
And I can understand why. Managing several agencies across different markets takes time, and maintaining consistent standards can be challenging.
But international reach is something I’d encourage clients to look beyond the headline claims on. More and more agencies are positioning themselves as global, but there’s a big difference between saying you can deliver internationally and having the experience to back it up.
I’d encourage brands to ask for real examples of work delivered in the countries they’re looking to activate in. Can the agency share relevant case studies, client references or examples of similar campaigns? If you asked them about their experience in a particular market, could they confidently demonstrate what they’ve delivered there? Does an agency have established local relationships? Does it understand local employment requirements? Can it deliver the same quality of service while accounting for the differences between markets? Ultimately, anyone can claim to have global capabilities, but it’s the evidence of successful delivery that should give clients confidence.
There’s also a commercial benefit to getting this right. Through the volume of work we deliver internationally, we’re able to negotiate preferential rates with local partners. In some cases, that means the overall cost to a client, including our management fee, can be comparable to booking directly with a local agency, while having one central partner coordinating everything.
It all comes down to trust
Ultimately, I think the best staffing partnerships come down to trust.
You want to know that the agency understands what you’re trying to achieve, that they’ve chosen the right people for the job and that they’ve thought about the things that might go wrong before they happen.
So my advice to brands and agencies would be to involve your staffing partner earlier, ask more questions about what happens behind the scenes and look beyond the initial quote.
Because when the event starts, your audience doesn’t see the recruitment process, the training or the contingency plans. They see the people representing your brand. And getting those people right makes all the difference.
To learn more about Elevate Global’s event staffing services, visit weareelevate.global.
Sponsored Content
Author: Guest Author
This post is by a guest author for eventindustrynews.com If you would like to feature as a guest author please contact us by emailing features@eventindustrynews.com
