- Pre-event staffing requirements
With reference to Wagen (2007, Figure 3.8 p.48 ), managerial team of the book festival should consist of seven main members, who are assigned to plan details for the festival way before and then on the actual date co-ordinate remaining staff members and make sure book festival runs smoothly, with everybody who is involved being satisfied. Those seven main members are: event director, human resource manager, administrator, marketing director, accountant, operations manager, who is in charge of visitor services and another operations manager, who is in charge of support services (Wagen, 2006, Figure 3.8 p.48). This group of staff should be hired and start operational planning at least one or half year before, as there are plenty of tasks that should be done before the actual day of the festival.
All seven main members of managerial staff will be paid and will be required to have particular skills and qualifications, according to their role in the planning process. Experience in the events or at least related field and references are highly expected.
- Staffing requirements on actual day of the book festival
While estimating what number of employees will be needed on an actual day of the festival, formula for effective team building and maintenance was taken into consideration. Nancy Mcduff (1995) as cited by Allen (2005, p.172) claims that effective team building and maintenance consists of 14-element formula and one of the elements says that a team should have between 2 and 25 members, with the majority less than 10 members. This formula was taken into consideration, because the biggest part of personnel on actual day of event are going to be volunteers. Thus, 9 main teams of staff should be formulated for an actual day of the book festival (Wagen, 2007, Figure 3.9 p.49). Each team has a coordinator, who is responsible for smooth and efficient work of his team.
Communication control centre team, which is working as a linkage between all staff members, authors, who are participating in the book festival and visitors of the festival.
Traffic and parking regulation team, which main purpose is to make sure that visitors will find a place to park in the parking slot, also prevent traffic jams.
Security teams’ main purpose is to make sure there is no crowd crushes (crowd management) in the pavilions of the book festival, also to warrant that all the visitors are safe. This team will be hired as a contractor, likewise catering team, therefore will not be discussed in this report further.
Cleaning and waste management team, which is responsible for taking care of cleaning the festival zone during and after the festival.
Information team is responsible to provide information for festival attendees during the festival and be in charge of having lost and found section too.
Merchandise sales team is responsible for library’s sales, which included books, t-shirts, mugs, magnets and tote bags.
Registration team is responsible for registering all participants of the book festival; therefore this team is needful just in the beginning of the festival.
Ticketing team is responsible for ticket sales during all day of the book festival.
Public relations team is responsible for communicating with the press and promoting the festival.
Practically all teams will be working during all day of the festival; just registration team will be required just for the opening of the festival. Also different amount of team members will be required at the certain times of the festival, as for instance – more people from ‘cleaning and waste management team’ will be required after the festival than during it.
Majority of employees, who will be hired just for an actual day of the festival, will be working as volunteers and just small part of them will get paid for their job, for example security team. Each team should consist of approximately 10-15 people, according to the above-mentioned formula, therefore witl all the estimations around 120-130 staff members will be required to be hired for this national book festival.
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Recommendations for a Human resource strategy for the festival
2.1. Recruitment of the festival staff
Since absolute majority of employees for the festival will be hired as volunteers, this paper assesses recruitment process mostly in regard to them. However, even though recruitment, selection and training process of volunteers are much cheaper than paid workers, yet it is extremely difficult, not only to find them, but also to motivate them for volunteering. Lynch and Smith (2010) predicated that just as with paid staff, volunteers can be recruited through several methods as well. One of them, which best suits the case of this national book festival, would be – using existing informal personal contacts or informal grapevine (word of mouth). Library of congress, where this national book festival will take place, could be one of the biggest sources of potential volunteers. Who else, if not library staff, will be more motivated to make this festival as successful as possible? Herewith, this source of recruitment would be recommended as most reliable and relevant one to look for volunteers, as they would be familiar with the festival location and topic, qualified in that area and capable of helping attendees with all the concerns.
Another possible source, with reference to Wagen (2007), for the book festival to look for volunteers would be Universities and colleges, which can provide students who are interested in a particular field, in this case – enthusiasm for reading, knowledge of wide range of authors and books.
Process of application should be made as simple as possible, for instance an opportunity to register online on official website of the library should be given. Representatives of the upcoming festival should participate in volunteer related fairs in universities and colleges and present this offer, as a great opportunity of taking first steps before coming to work into this industry.
- Selection of the festival staff
Considering, that majority staff of this national book festival will be volunteers, selection process directly becomes not as formal as for paid position staff. However, each teams’ coordinators will be paid and therefore requirements for them will be higher. Ability to organize, take responsibility, leadership skills will be required for the candidates for these positions. Also public relations team will need more qualified and experienced candidates. Selection methods should likewise be more detailed and formal, including undertaken interviews and request of references. Volunteers, on the other hand, should be selected in more informal way as suggested before, however accepting everybody who appliqués isn’t the solution, as it will be counter- productive and have negative impact on other staff members (McCurley and Lynch ,1994 cited in Lynch and Smith, 2008, p. 85). Therefore interviews with candidates for volunteering should also be performed, at least for some team members’ positions, like communication control centre team or registration and ticketing team. Besides, according to Lynch and Smith (2008), because of volunteers’ interviews informality, applicants don’t even realize they are being evaluated for the position.
By the way, since one of recommended recruitment sources was library of congress, this simplifies the selection process, as candidates would be somebody from library staff or their recommended people. Therefore this source of applicants is much more reliable than others and doesn’t need a complicated selection process and herewith it simplifies one of the procedures of human resource management.
Talking about requirements for volunteers, the reason that they won’t be paid, does not mean that human resource manager of national book festival won’t be looking for particular skills of applicants. Considering the fact that this book festival is taking place just for one day and volunteers won’t be hired long before the actual day of the festival, therefore there will be not much time to get familiarized with the festival settings and participants. Seeing that as a challenge, candidates should be required to be flexible, be capable of handling uncertainty and have good communication skills.
- Training of the festival staff
All book festival employees should receive a welcome letter from managers of the festival, with a short introduction to the festival, with its main purpose and main facts to form a concept about overcoming event. All essential information regarding the volunteer work should be covered, as for instance – work timetable, break time and length and etc.
In order to save some time and money, just team coordinators should be trained one day before the book festival at the actual location of the event. Each team supervisor should be introduced to main goals and objectives of his team and best ways of achieving it quick and efficiently. For example waste management team should be aware of all the directions regarding the placement of containers for waste whereas information team have to be trained to be able to give all the required information for visitors or festival participants (authors) regarding the festival and all related questions.
Once team coordinators will be trained, their task will be to manage their team work during the actual day of the book festival.
CONCLUSIONS
- Managerial staff of national book festival should consist of 7 members and be qualified and experienced in order to plan the festival and then manage festival teams while festival is running.
- The biggest part workforce on the actual day of the festival should be hired as volunteers by reducing the costs that way and gathering people who are truly devoted to the work they are doing
- Slightly different requirements will be demanded for paid and volunteered staff, as well as recruitment and selection processes will differ. However training process will be similar to both sides of personnel.
REFERENCES
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Allen, J., O’Toole, W., Harris, R., McDonnell, I., (2005) Festival and Special Event Management 3rd edition. John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd
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Bowdin, G., Allen, J., O’Toole, W., Harris, R., McDonnell, I., (2011) Events management 3rd edition. Elsevier Ltd
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Hanlon, C., Stewart, B., (2006) Managing personnel in major sport event organizations: what strategies are required? Event management. [Online]. 10 (1), pp. 77-88. Available from: [Accessed 30th October 2010]
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Lynch, S., Smith, K., (2010) The dilemma of judging unpaid workers Personnel Review. [Online]. 39 (1), pp. 80-95. Available from: [Accessed 28th October, 2010]
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McCurley, S. and Lynch, R. (1994) Essential Volunteer Management Directory of Social Change In Lynch, S., Smith, K., (2010) The dilemma of judging unpaid workers Personnel Review. [Online]. 39 (1), pp. 80-95. Available from: [Accessed 28th October, 2010]
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Mcduff, N., (1995) The volunteer management handbook John Wileys & Sons In Allen, J., O’Toole, W., Harris, R., McDonnell, I., (2005) Festival and Special Event Management 3rd edition. John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd
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Wagen Van der, L., (2007) Human resource management for events: managing the event workforce Oxford: Butterworth – Heinemann
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Yeoman, I., Robertson, M., Ali-Knight, J., Drummond, S., McMahon-Beattie, U., (2004) Festival and Events Management: An International Arts and Culture Perspective. [Online]. Elsevier Science & Technology. Available from: [accessed 3rd November 2010]
