Duty schedules

You have seen that supplying the right number of people with the right skills can be a problem. Don’t compound that problem with lax management. To ensure that you have scheduled enough staff to fill required roles for the length of the event, you should also provide a duty schedule – that is, a chart showing who is on duty at what time for which role.

The schedule will be a benefit to you, especially if you have delegated different elements of staffing to deputy managers. You will bring all of the staffing resources together on one schedule. This will allow you to see problems, such as gaps, or where one person is assigned two roles at the same time, and allow you to quickly locate spare staff if somebody reports in sick.

For larger events with a mobile work force, I try to obtain a dry wipe-board to record key staff assignments and radio call signs. If no wipe-board is available I have used a sheet of hardboard painted with white gloss paint. I still maintain the duty schedule, all staff still have to report to the event manager’s office to sign on and off, but the deployment of senior and key staff is also recorded on the ‘at-a-glance’ wipe-board.

If details are written clearly on the wipe-board as illustrated below, the event manager can see at a glance who is currently filling each role and what their name and call sign is. As the members of staff who are on duty change, the details on the board are simply wiped and rewritten to bring them up to date.