Engage part-time staff to make your venue the safest possible. By Mike Santa, CVP YOUNG PROFESSIONALS:
remember feeling an overwhelming sorrow for those people trapped inside. I was in shock and disbelief, not realizing that something like This past spring, David Conn wrote a detailed description in The
Guardian about the Hillsborough soccer disaster of 1989, a disaster that caused the deaths of 96 fans. The descriptions and images of the tragedy, one that could have been prevented, made me sick to my stomach. I still occasionally get nightmares about the crowd manage- nights I lie awake and examine my own events and the crowd safety procedures we have put into place. Some are tragic in nature, such as the Orlando nightclub shooting, the or the Indiana State Fair stage collapse from a few years ago. Others are more procedural, like a bomb threat at a lo- cal school or watching a sporting event that had to be evacuated due to weather. As venue managers, most of us search for these types of incidents in the news. We want to learn from them, compare them to similar experiences that we’ve had in the past, and attempt to improve our own venue preparedness. For better or worse, and I would like to say better for the most part, venue managers see and immediately scan them for emergen- cy exits. We position ourselves at restau- rants with our backs against the walls, giving ourselves the best option to see the entire room. When we go to venues or airports, we examine the ade- have been instilled into our brains, and our venues and patrons are safer because of them. Our compulsion to re-examine our plans and learn from our own and others’ mistakes make our venues better. There are venues all - view. It is great to have people like this working in our venues, but I would argue that our responsibility as venue managers goes one step further. The next level for venues is to instill the same passion and drive to
CREATING A TEAM OF VENUE MANAGERS
improve all aspects of our facilities, plans, and culture in our part-time that care about the safety of our building and touring act productions. It is great if our directors of security and guest services understand the elements of crowd movement and energy. However, what about the “front lines,” directly dealing with thousands of patrons that enter our buildings. How do we engage these groups to truly care about the jobs
“I was in shock and disbelief, not realizing that something like that could happen so quickly. And images of crowded bars and nightclubs from my own personal experiences came the places I visited in my past have enough emergency exits? Did they
Was I really safe?”
The Challenges of a Part-Time Workforce Most of us in the venue industry encounter the challenges of dealing with a part-time work force. If you’re like me and work at a university or in a college town, you face another set of trials when much of your of them) and have a passion for work- ing with students, but even I will admit time. Sending out schedule reminders, adhere to dress code policies, reminding goes on and on. Many times it seems like I’m more of a parent than an employ- er. The other challenge that we all deal with is the high rate of turnover that can occur with part-time positions, especial- ly if you happen to work in a universi- ty setting. It can be easy to spend all of our time and energy on the basics as we train, teach, and discipline our part-time - ments, but we owe it to ourselves and our
motivate them to care more about the safety and experience of the
Inspiring our Team—Practical Solutions In recent years, our team has begun to search for methods to engage - er what has been reinforced in our training philosophy, is that our part- year. This is obviously nothing groundbreaking, but we realized that our management team has the tendency and desire to keep training consistent. It is much easier for us to look at last year’s training, tweak
52 Facility Manager Magazine
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
