Introduction: Definition of Human Resource in the Context of Events Management
Human Resource (HR) is termed as the organisational function that is concerned with recruiting, managing, developing and motivating people. In a large part, this includes giving functional and specialised support and systems for employee commitment and managing systems to promote regulatory acquiescence with employment and human rights standards.
With the nature of doing businesses having considerably changed in the recent past, organisations are increasingly required to take account of the impact of their activities on society. Unlike in the past, the credibility of events in an organisation is largely dependent on delivery, not rhetoric. Human resource is accountable for majority of the key systems and processes (i.e. recruitment, training, and communications) on which effective delivery in an event depends.
On top of this, the human resource department has significant knowledge and skills in relation to organisational learning and cultural change, which is largely the main factor in any event. These reasons form the main agenda why HR people take events planning seriously. This paper critically examines the connection between human resource and events management (Allen, 2010).
Identification of key issues for HR within events
Human resource managers are well placed to play an instrumental role in aiding their organisations achieve its objectives of becoming a socially and environmentally responsible firm, which are the main motivators for most of the events put up by organisations. Additionally, human resource (HR) professionals in organisations that understand successful events management as a key driver of their economic presentation can be instrumental in attaining that objective.
While there is significant guidance to firms who desire to be the best place to work and for organisations who seek to manage their employee relationships in a socially responsible way, there is a scarcity of information for the HR manager who sees the importance of entrenching their organisation’s social values throughout the organisation (Wagen, 2007).
The reason for this is because any event organised outside the organisation presents an opportunity for the organisation to display its image to the outside world and as most HR professionals agree, image is everything in an organisation. Just as high profile corporate malfunctions such as Enron (Andersson and Wesslau, 2000) make all too clear, organisations that does not give events management the seriousness it deserves run the risk of destroying their corporate reputation if not commissioning their death.
Indeed, the human resource mandate to commune and employ thoughts, strategies, and cultural and behavioural change in organisations makes it fundamental to attaining an organisations objective to incorporate the society in all that it does. Having said that, it is important to note that employee engagement is not simply the reserve of human resource. Indeed, people leadership is the responsibility of all departmental managers.
As Wagen (2005) notes, while HR is supposed to facilitate the advance of processes and systems, the issue of employee engagement is ultimately a shared duty. The more the HR professional can understand their advantage with respect to events, the greater their ability to inculcate these insights along to their business partners towards the organisation’s objectives in assimilating the society into their operations and business model.
In his book titled Events Design and Experience, Berridge (2007) claims that because human resources manipulates many of the central systems and business processes supporting efficient delivery, it is well placed to promote an events ethic and achieve a high performance events management culture.
Human resource management can play a crucial role so that any event organized by the company can mirror the image of the company. This means that human resource can be the key organisational partner to make sure that what the organisation is saying publicly is in tune with how people are cared for within the organisation.
Again, what this means is that HR is in the fortunate position of being able to give the tools and agenda for the administrative team and CEO to entrench events ethic into the brand and the planned framework of the organisation (Anderson, 2004).
Indeed, it is a widely accepted fact that human resource is the only function that manipulates the entire enterprise for the whole ‘lifecycle’ of the employees who work there and therefore it has significant influence if handled in the right manner. Human resource is well placed for this pilot role, as it is proficient at working straight and perpendicularly across and within the organisation and this becomes crucial for successful events planning (Berridge, 2007).
Discussion of the HR planning process for events
In order to better understand why it is important for human resource to be fully involved in events management, it would only be fair to look at the changing nature of business in the recent past. Since due to rising commercial message confusion and products homogeneity it is becoming harder to communicate characteristic product features to customers, emotions play a significant role in customers purchase decisions.
It has been noticed in the past that the probability for emotionalizing prospects or customers is much higher in events than in any other form of marketing communication function. Unlike other channels of marketing, the marketing event concentrates the target audience to commune brand messages, making use of the target group’s selective attention. Marketing events have demonstrated to be progressively more popular among participants, mainly for two reasons.
The first thing why this is so is because the current society is perceived to be self-indulgent and has more leisure time than ever. Secondly, the desire for direct communication and for substantial and direct experiences has been gradually on the rise in a society where technology is steadily replacing social contact (Getz, 2007).
The Marketing Event
A marketing event is a planned and exceptional occasion, which is organised in order to attain a previously defined marketing goal. Therefore, the achievement of a certain purpose is a crucial characteristic of every marketing event.
When companies systematically plan, organize, execute and appraise events with a specific goal, taking into account marketing principles and the company’s strategic marketing perception, this is denominated event marketing.
Indeed, event marketing is an instrument of communication aimed at creating situations or promotional happenings that have a fundamental focus and therefore allow organisations to capture the attention of the intended audience. The purpose is to form a distinctive experience that involves participants and deals with various or all of their senses (Tassiopoulos, 2005).
Indeed, there has been a lot of literature that define events marketing and the place of human resource professionals in it. Getz (2007) considers the event to be part of the support media used to strengthen or expand a message being conveyed through some other media vehicle while Tassiopoulos (2005) insists that events need to be treated as communication channels of equivalent value as the conventional above-the-line media.
Despite the variation in these observations, one sure thing is that events marketing need to be in line with the marketing communication policy of the organisation. This means that the human resource professional is involved in event marketing as he is involved with the traditional mode of marketing.
One reason why human resource practitioners should be more concerned with events marketing is due to the changing nature of doing business. In contrast to conventional communication where the focus is on media appearance, event marketing focuses on selling live product experiences.
It has been proved that people often remember little or none of what they hear, only somewhat more of what they see, but nearly all of an experience of which they are involved. One of the fundamental features of an event is that it actually involves the target audience, therefore moving from passive behavior to real interaction and from a casual advertising or advertising monologue to a dialogue between target spectators and organisation.
Unlike the anonymous media, events permit an individualized approach toward the intended audience. With all these attributes associated with event marketing, the human resource cannot afford to remain passive since this is more like taking the operations of an organisation from the office confines to the people (Tassiopoulos, 2005).
The Nature of Event Marketing
The reason why human resource practitioners are caught in the middle of event planning is due to the nature of event marketing. Just like an ordinary functional organization, the major functions of an event are to inform about innovations and changes (dissemination of information), to make the target group sensitive for a certain situation (emotion), to motivate for new tasks and challenges and duties (motivation), and to rouse an action (activation), which are all core functions of the human resource department in an organisation.
There is generally an agreement among marketers that the most common objectives pursued by organizations carrying out events are adding brand awareness, building or humanizing the brand image, reaching particular and hard-to-reach audiences, presenting innovations or alterations regarding the organisation, providing a stage for brand publicity, and swaying purchase decision through the creation of individual interactions.
These are without doubt key functions of the HR department and it follows then that trying to organize an event without involving them would be creating a recipe for the failure of the event or indeed the entire organisation (Wagen, 2007).
In his book titled Human Resource Management for Events; Managing the Event Workforce, Wagen (2007) claims that events can be grouped in several ways: according to their magnitude and degree, according to their intention, or according to the particular sector to which they belong, e.g. public, festivals, tourism and trade/corporate events. Indeed, Wagen (2007) distinguishes between events created by the company, thus brand created, and participating events.
When companies create events by themselves, they bear all the responsibility for the organization of the event and its logistics, for the staffing, and for the marketing to participants, sponsors and attendees. In most cases, the organisation works in close collaboration with event planning and advertising agencies. On the other hand, participating events can be grouped into trade shows, exhibitions, fairs and sponsorships.
In their book titled The Event Sponsorship, Butterworth and Rukavina (2002) define sponsorship as a focused cooperation between sponsor and sponsored organisation, person, or activity. In most cases, the sponsor provides not only financial assistance but also tangible support in terms of services or expertise, while the sponsored organisation provides a service delivered in return. An example of this is where the marketer gets the rights to display a brand name, logo, or advertising on-site at the occasion.
When companies get involved in the sponsorship of an event, they do this in order to attain certain marketing or corporate communication goals. This is obviously the difference to traditional patronage where the support of the sponsor is usually selfless.
With this kind of objective in mind (i.e. reaching certain marketing or corporate communication goals), the human resource department cannot afford to take a back seat and delegate the role of organizing the event since a slight failure in the planning process would impact negatively on the image of the organisation (Butterworth and Rukavina, 2002).
Although there are some variations among different authors regarding important details of event planning and organisation, nearly all of them agree that event marketing essentially includes four important steps namely, analysis and preparation, organization, implementation and evaluation.
Table 1: Steps in event Organization Source: Butterworth and Rukavina, 2002
Critical factors and challenges in events management
Like any other function of an organisation, errors and mistakes in any of the four critical steps of event management might have serious ramifications for the involved organisation. Although physical risks such as overspending the budget, personal accidents, damaged material, or loss of equipment can bring some trouble, indefinable risks are considered even higher.
If not clearly handled, intangible consequences can irreparably damage the company’s image or worse lead to the de-motivation of employees something that might hurt the company in the long-term (Tassiopoulos, 2005).For this reason, the human resource should be actively involved in the planning process of any event since most of the planning processes highlighted in Table 1 directly fall in their domain.
In order to avoid unprofessional appearance during the event, a company needs to depend on a sound marketing concept, and this can only be attained through cooperation between the human resource department and the event-marketing agency. The human resource department should also determine clear objectives and follow them during the entire event organisation.
This according to theorists calls for the HR department to match the event to brand personality. Not forgetting the objectives of the event ensures that the brand is getting exposure to the right target audience and everyone agrees that this is one of the key functions of the human resource department (Tassiopoulos, 2005).
Managing Volunteers
When it comes to the organisation of any major event, the participation and involvement of volunteers cannot be ruled out. Indeed, the use of volunteers during events planning is considered economically beneficial for the event organizers. The main reason for this is that unlike other participants in the planning process of any major event, volunteers do so without any expectation of monetary reward. The issue of free will is considered an important element when it comes to volunteering.
Indeed, Wagen (2005) notes that the willingness of people to devote their time to an event without being forced and in consideration of the minimal rewards available is a principal research question emanating from the study of volunteering. There has been sufficient research showing that motivation is important in ensuring that volunteers remain committed.
This means that human resource practitioners have the role of motivating volunteers just like in a normal work setting. This ensures that the organisation reaps full benefits from the volunteer participation in organizing the event.
There is no doubt that human resource management takes more than just hiring and selection of staff and volunteers. It is indeed a far-reaching activity, involving the lasting strategic development of the event organization. The projected outcome for this is a positive culture of dedication and cooperation fostered in the process of managing the work force (Wagen, 2007). Apart from the regular staff, there are the volunteers to think of in the organization of any event.
Volunteers are viewed as representatives of the community who without any pay choose to devote their time and expertise to support organisation activities for no wages other than the reimbursement of their own expenses. Volunteers are drawn from every age group, educational settings and genders. In most cases, people volunteer to enjoy themselves, socialize, learn new skills, assist others, foster new friendships, and explore new career opportunities among other reasons.
Working with volunteers demands kindness, flexibility and enthusiasm because volunteers in most cases work ‘for the fun of it’ or for charitable purposes. While this is usually the case, what an organisation should never forget is that at the end of the event what will be at stake is the image of the company and not the overall output of the volunteers. This calls for human resource practitioners to manage and coordinate the volunteers, as they would do to their own members of staff (Tassiopoulos, 2005).
Risk management
Like in any other area, risk management in events includes protecting assets, minimising legal and financial liabilities, controlling potential loss, properly managing development, and operating responsibility. In his book titled Risk Management for Meetings and Events renowned author Silvers (2008) observes that risk management is recognized in differing degrees as a key component of the tasks associated with the organisation and production of events.
Risk management is often perceived as a function that is carried out once an event has been envisioned, deliberated, and organized. For this simple reason, resource managers should be thoroughly involved in the event drawing and throughout its planning and production process to ensure that the risks linked with the event are managed effectively and in a cost efficient manner (Silvers, 2008).
Conclusion
Organizations are increasingly beginning to realize the accrued benefits of integrating sustainability in to their function. It is beneficial for magnetizing and maintenance and it is the right thing to do. Human resource is a fundamental organizational leader and can take the leading role or join with other executives to labor cross functionally to incorporate events objectives into how business is conducted.
With event marketing becoming a more accepted trend in the current society, HR practitioners cannot afford to take a back seat in the planning of these events. The organisation of the future is projected to have undergone significant revolution such that event planning no longer becomes managed as a separate entity, but becomes part of the experience of being an employee in an organization that lives up to its ideals.
Considering that any event organized is an opportunity for the organisation to conduct business outside the office, human resource practitioners cannot afford to sit on the sidelines and leave the planning process to event organizers. Instead, HR professionals should come in and ensure that the brand image of the company is displayed during the event since this can affect the business in either a positive or a negative way.
References
Allen, J. (2010) Event Planning Ethics and Etiquette: A Principled Approach to the Business of Special Event Management. New York, Wiley.
Anderson, J. (2004) Teamwork: Interactive Tasks to Get Students Talking. New York, Delta.
Andersson, M. and Wesslau, A. (2000). Organizing for Event Marketing in Order to Change Brand Image and Increase Sales. International Management Master Thesis, 16(2), 19-20.
Berridge, G. (2007). Events Design and Experience, Events Management Series. Elsevier.
Butterworth, S. and Rukavina, V. (2002). The Event Sponsorship. New York, Wiley.
Getz, D. (2007) Event Studies: Theory, Research and Policy for Planned Events. London, Oxford.
Silvers, J. (2008). Risk Management for Meetings and Events. Burlington, Butterworth-Heinemann.
Tassiopoulos, D. (2005). Event Management: A Professional and Developmental Approach. Lansdowne, Juta Academic.
Wagen, L. (2005). Event Management: For Tourism, Cultural, Business and Sporting Events. Perth, Pearson Education.
Wagen, L. (2007). Human Resource Management for Events; Managing the Event Workforce. Burlington, Butterworth-Heinemann.