Managing Music Festival Volunteers with Dynamic Shifts and Work Assignments.

Volunteers make up the backbone of most music festival workers, giving up their free time in exchange for access to the event. The recruitment, training, and management of these volunteers is a critical operational challenge for many organisers. Can volunteers be managed in a more dynamic way to make the process easier and simpler for all concerned.

Traditionally volunteers received rudimentary training and were allocated fixed shifts during the festival's planning phase. This inevitably can lead to issues due to absence through sickness, fatigue, or no shows and can be compounded when skills and experience are not suitably matched to operational needs. Music festival environments are dynamic by their nature and require constant changes to keep everything operating as intended. The move to dynamic volunteer shifts and resource management is fast becoming the preferred solution for festival organisers.

Volunteer Recruitment and Skills Identification.
The recruitment process for music festivals starts well in advance of the live event dates where organisers identify the required number of volunteers and typically add 10% to account for drop offs. During the application process prospective volunteers will be asked a series of questions which help to identify previous festival experience and any relevant skills, like first aid, for example. In addition, the application process helps identify availability, physical fitness, preferred roles, language skills, and any relevant technical qualifications, for example. This assists organisers in determining the number of volunteers available for specific duties and shifts highlighting any potential shortalls. Some individuals may only be able to perform specific roles whilst others will be available for a variety of roles and can be switched to alternative shifts as required.

Skills Cross-Training.
Volunteers accepted through the application process will be obliged to attend training sessions prior to the live event dates. Although face-to-face sessions and workshops are preferred as it helps build teamwork, some organisers are increasingly using remote e-learning platforms too. Rather than allocating specific training to selected groups of volunteers, it is more pragmatic to ensure that all volunteers get trained in multiple aspects of the festival to cover all available duties that could be performed. This cross-training approach ensures that flexibility has been built into the training, allowing organisers to dynamically move volunteers from one shift to an alternative one.

Provisional Shift Allocation.
During the planning process, organisers will have identified the duties and shifts required to maintain operations, which includes the number of volunteers required for each one. The rotation of volunteers to different shifts helps to add variety to their work and increases experience for specific duties like ticket scanning, for example. The shift allocation can get complex as organisers need to build in sufficient time for volunteers to take breaks and have rest periods as well as allowing for potential absences. In addition, organisers should consider creating a group of floating volunteers who can quickly be deployed to a shift where there is a shortfall. Issuing a provisional shift allocation in advance of the event gives individuals an opportunity to request alternatives, providing everyone with shift stability whilst retaining flexibility.

Planning Flexibility.
Creating a floating pool of volunteers from the outset helps to build flexibility into volunteer shift management. This enables volunteer managers to quickly assign additional volunteers to developing situations like crowd management challenges or gate entrances where queues start building up. Quick identification of any absences allows the gap to be filled by someone on standby and ensures ongoing operational integrity. Other situations like late running performances or adverse weather can also impact volunteer requirements, and organisers need the ability to add volunteers to allow for additional workloads, for example.

Dynamic Deployment.
Most large-scale music festivals now use sophisticated event volunteer management software to manage duties and shifts. These solutions allow organisers to allocate volunteers to shifts in advance but often have a built-in easy to use drag and drop ability to move volunteers from one shift to another. When combined with automated alerts, this ensures that everyone knows where they should be at what time plus the duty details and who they will report to, for example. It can be useful for organisers to always have a manual backup solution available too should there be connectivity issues, for example. Volunteers can be issued with a physical printed schedule that includes key contact telephone numbers and instructions on accessing alerts and software for dynamic updates. Festival organisers rely on their teams of volunteer managers and supervisors to deploy volunteers as required according to ever changing operational demands, and they play a key part in implementing dynamic volunteer shift management.

For festival organisers planning their next event using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics, including a dedicated volunteer management module. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, site planning, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Image by Ivan S via Pexels

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