How Events & Stadiums teams can stay covered when staff are on leave

Concerts, conferences, festivals, game days and corporate functions all move at different rhythms — and staff availability is one of the biggest variables to manage. When team members go on leave, especially during peak event periods, even the most prepared Event Managers can find themselves scrambling to fill gaps, protect service quality and preserve compliance.

But leave doesn’t need to derail operational plans. With the right approach and tools, Events organisations can maintain workforce coverage, avoid last-minute disruptions and keep both staff and guests happy.

Why leave impacts Events teams more than most

Events rarely run on regular schedules. Seasonal peaks, back-to-back events, multi-day builds, pack-downs and fluctuating staffing levels mean that even one unexpected absence can create a chain reaction. Roles such as security, ushers, F&B staff, technicians, medics, baristas and cleaners must all be in the right place at the right time, and many of these roles have strict ratio or compliance requirements.

In large venues, roles also span multiple zones, requiring coordinators to manage dozens (or hundreds) of moving parts at once. When leave requests are scattered across emails, messages and spreadsheets, it becomes almost impossible to maintain real-time visibility of who is available when it matters most.

The result? A high-pressure rush to fill shifts, often with limited information, leading to increased costs, operational risk and unnecessary stress for managers.

Visibility is the first step to control

Events teams stay covered when they can clearly see upcoming leave, understand who is unavailable and plan workforce allocations before gaps become problems.

Humanforce’s Leave Management solution brings all leave activity into one place, giving teams a live view of balances, requests and future periods of low availability. Instead of discovering absences when building rosters, Event Managers know what’s coming weeks — or months — in advance.

Employees also benefit from transparent and predictable processes. Through the Humanforce Work App, they can review their leave balance, request leave, check approvals and understand how planned absences align with event calendars. This reduces the last-minute changes that often cause coverage issues.

Connect leave to Event Rostering to keep operations moving

The Events industry relies heavily on complex, multi-day, multi-location rosters. When someone takes leave, the impact is not limited to a single shift — it can affect bump-in days, rehearsals, opening hours and back-to-back function schedules.

Humanforce solves this challenge by integrating leave directly into Rostering & Scheduling and the specialised Event Rostering capability within Roster Manager. As leave is approved, affected shifts automatically update to show gaps in coverage. Managers can then assess workload requirements, check qualification or licence needs, and assign the most suitable replacement in minutes.

For high-volume environments, this real-time connection between leave and rostering is essential. It removes the frantic “who is free?” guesswork and gives Event Managers a calm, structured way to fill roles across multiple days, zones, roles and venues.

Staying compliant, even when shifting staff around

Events run inside tight legal and award frameworks, and many shift assignments hinge on correct entitlements and accurate pay. When managers need to fill roster gaps quickly to cover for those on leave, applying the right leave entitlements and pay rules becomes especially important.

Humanforce’s Awards & Compliance engine automates entitlement and payroll decisions. It ensures replacement workers receive their correct leave entitlements and automatically applies pay rules — for example, public holiday treatments, split-shift handling and penalty-rate calculations — so rosters stay legally defensible even when changed at short notice.

By removing manual entitlement and pay checks, the system reduces costly payroll mistakes and helps protect the organisation’s reputation, while also easing the compliance burden on Events teams during high-pressure periods.

Predicting leave patterns makes planning easier

Events teams often rely on casual or seasonal staff, many of whom work on-demand. Leave trends in these environments can be unpredictable, but patterns do exist — especially around major holidays, student exam periods, local sporting seasons and large annual events.

Humanforce’s Workforce Analytics helps uncover these patterns by presenting real-time, event-specific insights. Teams can analyse historic leave behaviour, identify periods of elevated absence risk and plan staffing levels accordingly. This gives Event Managers a predictive advantage, allowing them to scale recruitment, adjust rostering strategies or limit leave during critical event blocks well before challenges arise.

Empower staff while protecting operational needs

Events run more smoothly when staff feel respected and informed. A clear, consistent leave process helps achieve this, reducing frustration and creating a stronger team culture. When staff understand blackout dates, know how to request time off and receive timely communication about leave decisions, they are far less likely to call out at the last minute.

The Humanforce Work App supports this by making communication easy and centralised. Managers can share updates, confirm shift changes and notify teams of peak periods in real time — without relying on group chats or ad-hoc texting. Staff stay connected, managers stay informed and the organisation maintains control over workforce availability.

Staying covered doesn’t have to be a scramble

Events will always be high-energy and fast-moving, but leave management doesn’t need to add to the chaos. With stronger visibility, integrated rostering, automated compliance and predictive analytics, Events teams can maintain full coverage without burning out managers or staff.

Humanforce brings all of these capabilities into one unified Workforce Management platform — ensuring that even during the busiest sports season, the show goes on without disruption.

About Humanforce

Humanforce is the all-in-one platform for frontline and flexible workforces, offering a truly employee centred, intelligent and compliant human capital management (HCM) suite – without compromise. Founded in 2002, Humanforce has a 2300+ customer base and over half a million users worldwide. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK.

Our vision is to make work easier and life better by focusing on the needs and fulfilment of frontline workers, and the efficiency and optimisation of businesses.

To learn more about how Humanforce’s solution can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.