Staff briefing: what is it and what should be included?

An informed event team offers the very best kind of insurance that your event will run smoothly and delight attendees.

This is where your event staff briefing comes into play.

What are the benefits of a team briefing?

If you have never planned an event before, you might not think of everything that you need to communicate to your team in advance. Very often, events rely upon casual staff and even volunteers, so they cannot be expected to know everything they might need to know without being told.

This is why you should always take the time to develop an effective pre-event staff briefing. To help you compose your own event brief, consider this general list of things that your staff will need to know.

What is the purpose of a staff briefing?

The main goal is to inform your event staff. Communicate exactly when and where the staff needs to meet - Some venues have dozens of different entrances, so it is not enough to just tell staff to meet at the gate or the door. In some cases, it might also help to offer parking locations or suggestions about mass transit that employees can use to arrive at the event on time. It is probably a good idea to ask the staff to arrive from 15 minutes to half an hour early, just to make sure they assemble on time.

Stress that it is important to arrive on time and that traffic could be heavy because of the event. You might also use this section of the brief to include an event schedule for the entire day. While you do not want to encourage anybody to arrive late, you might include an emergency contact number in case they get held up for some unexpected reason.

Provide an on-site contact

On-site event managers might not always be the same people who initially recruited staff. It is important to provide the on-site contact's name and phone number. It is also a good idea to collect each staff member's cell phone number in advance. In large venues and crowded events, it can be tough to find people in the crowd.

Brief staff about the event and their particular responsibility

Of course, having information about the goals and general theme of the event will help increase morale and ensure that the staff fulfils their mission. This part of the staff briefing may touch on the big picture and then explain each individual's responsibility.

Event check-in

Now that we are in the digital age, checking the guests into the event will be much quicker and more efficient by using an event check-in app like zkipster. If things get bottle-necked here, it can throw your entire event off. Be sure that your staff understands how to use the tablet and the app and have extra staff assigned to help with directing traffic and addressing any kind of problems.

How do you write a staff briefing so that your team knows what to expect?

For example, you might expect your staff to show up in a particular uniform or have a charged cell phone with them at all times. This is also a good place to include rules about breaks, where to eat lunch, and what to do in case of an emergency. You cannot have expectations for your staff that you do not clearly communicate to them.

Of course, you want to keep your staff briefing as concise as possible, so you don't overwhelm workers. On the other hand, you also need to include as many details as you can to avoid confusion. In the end, your goal is to get your event started off on the right foot.