Considering the Events Industry is the UK’s 16th largest sector, employing over half a million people working directly, it’s funny how many directors and managers outside of this field view the life of an Event Organiser as one of never ending parties and social engagements! From their viewpoint, all they see is the Event Organiser being the delightful host, talking to attendees, smiling, walking around….
What they don’t see is the hard prep work before it; the late nights and early mornings, the jammed printers, arguing with tech to get the emails out, the venue reporting that the AV has broken or rooms need refurbishing so need to change location, changing all the arrangements because key management can no longer attend the date, another department holding them up because they won’t supply the information they need…..
Then on the day, you’ll see them walking around engaging, smiling, talking to the attendees, getting coffee’s, maybe even enjoying it, but, they are actually still very hard at work.
What you can’t see is them trying to; second guess the needs of the person they are talking to as well as the other attendees around the room, while keeping an eye on the time to make sure everyone is in the right place at the right time and having another eye constantly darting between the AV team and the catering team to make sure they are on schedule, all done simultaneously between signalling to their team and monitoring radio chat, is not a skill everyone can do. And the better they are at doing all this while maintaining a pleasant conversation and holding a smile, the more they are berated for ‘not doing anything’!
It’s no wonder there is a high turnover within this sector and to make it worse, they are then hit with ever increasing demand to prove the ROI for the event budget.
The Event Organiser has done their job, they made sure the day ran without a hitch. Isn’t it the job of the other departments to ensure the ROI is realised? I’ve been to too many events where companies have failed the event organiser: it’s not the Event Organisers fault if the Sales team hang about in the corner of the room preferring to talking to each other and not engage. It’s not the Event Organisers fault that the Marketing Team are busy hiding in the office upstairs instead of using this as an opportune moment to interact with their target market and find out what bits of their campaigns worked or haven’t. It’s not the Event Organisers fault when the Customer Relations team prefer to stay at the end of the phone or the Training sections of HR doesn’t have a way of working out if the day has been effective post event other than reading a ‘feedback’ sheet of the attendee.
ROI of an event is everyone’s business when it comes to business. Are you really sure your other departments are actually doing their part to help increase the ROI of an event or are they dumping their part of their job onto the shoulders of the Event Organiser?
