Do You Need More Staff or More Event Capacity? 4 Questions to Build the Right Team
The responsibilities of an association’s event team are broad—and increasingly complex. Producing a successful event can involve everything from coordinating hotel and transportation logistics to designing engaging meeting formats and delivering an exceptional experience for attendees, speakers, exhibitors, sponsors, and other stakeholders.
Even under normal circumstances, building an events team with the right mix of strategic expertise, institutional knowledge, and logistical support can be challenging. As budgets tighten, needs fluctuate, and organizations face external pressures, staffing effectively has become even more complex.
Today, many teams are already stretched thin, with seven out of 10 event professionals taking on additional responsibilities. Associations need to think strategically about how they build capacity – ensuring they have the right level of support not only for predictable periods of increased demand, but also for unexpected staffing needs.
4 Questions to Build the Right Event Planning Capacity
A well-organized event is a strategic asset for any association. It brings together members, partners, leaders, and staff in ways that can strengthen the organization, deepen engagement, and advance its mission.
To determine the right level of support for your organization, consider these four questions to help ensure your meetings and events deliver on their promise.
1. Do we need permanent staff—or temporary capacity?
If you’re strategically planning your meetings and events for the year, the first step is to fully understand your needs and anticipate potential gaps—both throughout the year and during peak event seasons.
Looking at your current staffing. How would a temporary vacancy, the loss of a staff member, an organizational transition, or a new event affect your ability to deliver?
The key is to consider the duration, predictability, and consistency of the workload. If you consistently lack capacity and the responsibilities are year-round, a permanent position may make sense. If the need is tied to a defined period or event cycle, temporary or interim support can provide the flexibility you need during those times without permanently increasing headcount.
Additional questions to help define the need:
Is this workload temporary, cyclical, or ongoing?
Is the need likely to exist six months or a year from now?
Is there a gap in our current team’s availability, or is the gap in expertise?
2. What work or expertise do we actually need?
Once you understand your capacity gaps, the next step is identifying the work or expertise that will have the greatest impact.
Event teams manage a wide range of responsibilities, and not every staffing gap requires the same solution. One association may need a generalist who can manage everything from strategy through logistics, while another may need specialized expertise in site selection and contract negotiations, exhibitor and sponsorship management, speaker or abstract management, registration, or onsite execution.
Additional questions to assess where you need support as you look at your upcoming year:
Where are the biggest gaps?
What responsibilities will create bottlenecks?
What work will take time away from the people who should be focused on strategy, relationships, and decision-making?
3. What happens if we don’t add capacity?
Staffing decisions should factor in both the cost of adding support and the cost of maintaining the status quo.
When teams are stretched, the work doesn’t disappear—it gets redistributed. Staff work longer hours, other departments pitch in, and senior team members often take on responsibilities that could be handled by someone else. The less visible costs can include burnout, delayed strategic work, missed opportunities, and highly skilled staff spending valuable time on tasks that don’t require their level of expertise.
And simply getting through an event isn’t the same as doing it well.
Additional questions to understand the risks:
What will get deprioritized when the event workload increases?
Who will absorb the additional workload?
Will we pull people away from work that generates greater organizational value?
What is the potential impact on staff morale and retention?
4. How can we make our event staffing more strategic?
Staffing is most strategic when it isn’t a last-minute response to a crisis. Associations can look ahead at their event calendars and identify where and when capacity is likely to fluctuate.
When staffing conversations become part of event planning—rather than something an overwhelmed team scrambles to address—organizations can build more flexible staffing models. That might include a combination of permanent employees who provide institutional knowledge and strategic leadership, along with temporary or interim professionals who provide additional capacity or specialized expertise when needed.
Additional questions to make staffing more proactive rather than reactive:
Are there consistent patterns in our staffing needs each year?
Where are the predictable pressure points?
Where could uncertainty or unexpected demands create a problem?
What expertise do we need permanently, and what could be brought in as needed?
At Meeting Priorities, our experienced meeting professionals help organizations fill critical capacity and expertise gaps across virtually every aspect of meetings and events—from site selection and contract negotiations to speaker and abstract management, exhibits and sponsorships, and onsite logistics.
When the need is permanent rather than temporary, we also leverage our extensive industry network to help organizations identify highly qualified candidates for full-time meeting, education, exhibit, and sponsorship roles.
Whether you need an experienced professional for a few weeks, several months, or a permanent addition to your team, Meeting Priorities can help you find the right expertise at the right time.
Learn more about how we can help you build the capacity your meetings and events need.
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