5 HCM pain points for the Events & Stadiums industry and tech solutions to remedy them

Introduction to the Events & Stadiums industry 

As a spectator, it’s simple: show up, enjoy the show, and head back home. 

But for the people behind-the-scenes, things are a little more complex. The planning and organisation of live events begins months in advance — and for things to go as smoothly as possible, all parts need to be well-oiled and moving in tandem. 

Two of the biggest components to consider are HR operations and workforce logistics. For any one of these events, there could be hundreds — or even thousands — of employees to manage, across different locations, departments and even organisations. Just consider the security, medical personnel, food & beverage, cleaning & maintenance, and retail workers that are required for a single sporting match or music event. 

With 12 million ticketed live (contemporary) music attendances in 2023 and 8.8 million spectators projected to attend live sporting events in Australia throughout 2025, it’s crucial that employers in the Events & Stadiums industry optimise their human capital management (HCM) processes to deliver the most exceptional employee experience (EX) and fan or customer experience (CX) possible.

HCM issues faced by Events & Stadiums organisations  

Events & Stadiums face similar challenges to organisations in other frontline (‘deskless’) industries, but especially those seen by the Hospitality sector. That is, labour shortages, staffing challenges, and economic fluctuations, to name a few.  

Staffing is a major concern for these organisations. The ability to deliver exceptional service requires well allocated, skillfully scheduled and appropriately trained staff; for any given event, hundreds of employees, across a variety of departments, need to be managed and coordinated. If any zone or department is short-staffed, poorly allocated or inadequately trained, the venue risks inconveniencing fans with long queues, poor service and security risks.  

Throw in economic pressures, and employers in the Events & Stadiums industry have it tough. Revenue fluctuates through the peaks and troughs of the events season, depending on who’s playing or performing; there’s also competing venues to worry about, as well as the need for constant renovations and set installations. And to address the elephant in the room: inflation and cost of living. It’s made the average household’s disposable budget rickety, and the decision to head to a Saturday night game isn’t as easy as it once was.  

Of course, these pressures combine to create different HCM pain points for these organisations — and the best ways to remedy them lie in a reliable tech solution.

Pain Point #1: Complex multi-role / multi-department rostering 

The service output for any event — whether it be sports, music and entertainment, or business entertainment — is the product of several different departments and organisations working together as a single unit. The challenge in this case is rostering and scheduling across multiple departments. A failure to coordinate the schedules, shifts, and numbers across separate teams can lead to chaos on event day. 

Trying to piece schedules together through patchy communications — such as last-minute phone calls and WhatsApp messages — often leads to no-shows, unclaimed shifts, and inaccurate timesheets.  

How Humanforce helps with complex rostering 

Rostering & Scheduling 

Humanforce’s Rostering & Scheduling solution is non-negotiable for events & stadiums employers — it allows operations or guest experience managers to auto-generate optimised, award-compliant rosters with just a few clicks. Under this solution sits Event Rostering, a tool designed specifically for event managers to create complex, event-specific schedules spanning several days, locations, roles and areas.  

With this tool, employees can be split across multiple roles and locations over different days. A key benefit is Humanforce’s automated award/employment agreement interpretation and payroll integration capabilities (see pain point #2 below).  

Matching talent supply to demand is critical. Using sophisticated AI, rosters can be auto-populated with suitably qualified and available talent who have specified their work preferences. AI can even help forecast how many workers will be required based on historical data – for example, event attendance data for similar events or times of year.  

Managers can also switch to multi-view rostering for a more detailed view of employee schedules and labour costs. Finally, managers can enjoy these functionalities with intuitive click-and-drag controls and automated alerts for rostering conflicts. 

Humanforce Mobile App  

In larger venues such as stadiums, employees are often required to work across numerous physical locations. The Humanforce Mobile App enables geo-fenced clocking, synchronised to certain events and departments, so employees can clock on and off from different zones. Humanforce also offers clocking solutions to suit the diverse operational and security needs of different venues, including finger vein scanning, facial recognition, or QR code features – available via the Humanforce Work App or via on-site kiosks. 

Time & Attendance  

On the same note, employees working in larger venues with multiple entry points may need to walk some distance before reaching their designated zone. If they clock on before reaching that zone, employers may be hit with extra, unwanted labour costs. Employers who are conscious of this may still want to confirm their employee is at the venue, but ensure they clock on only at their designated area. 

Alongside the features mentioned above, Humanforce’s Time & Attendance  solution offers additional dedicated features for stadium workers such as wristbands that can be printed at check-in, and used for more accurate clocking.

Pain point #2: Complex award profiles  

Organisations need to consider the diversity of award profiles, enterprise agreements and compliance requirements when hiring staff across multiple industries. This is especially important when considering payroll, where staff need to be paid in adherence with the remuneration, leave, notice and redundancy conditions they are entitled to. 

For example, an events company in Australia running a live music show would need to refer to the Live Performance Award [MA000081] to cover most of its employees. However, security staff would fall under the Security Services Industry Award [MA000016], and a different set of entitlements would need to be calculated. In cases like this, managers would then need to approve multiple timesheets, calculate different payroll amounts, and consider diverse compliance requirements. Without a centralised tool, this critical process can be both risky and time-consuming. 

How Humanforce helps with complex awards profiles 

Awards & Compliance 

Considering the diversity of employee roles within Events & Stadiums workplaces, organisations can’t afford to take risks with blanket payroll, leave entitlements and work entitlements. Each employee has a unique set of requirements that needs to be accounted for and accurately calculated to keep employers compliant and ensure workers are paid correctly.  

Humanforce’s Awards & Compliance solution allows HR and event/operations managers to accurately interpret complex awards and enterprise agreements, track changes as they happen, and apply them with ease.  

The sophisticated award interpretation engine (sometimes referred to as a pay conditions engine) ensures that all modern awards and employment agreement pay obligations and entitlements are met, providing instant calculations to indicate exactly how much employees should be paid. The pay conditions engine quickly and accurately calculates wages, penalties, overtime and allowances in accordance with the relevant industrial instrument(s).  

Even better, this can link seamlessly to the Humanforce Payroll solution, or API integrations can link it to countless payroll software platforms. From clocking in and out, to timesheet approvals, through to award interpretation and payroll, the end-to-end workforce management process can be automated.

Pain point #3: Transient staff (high proportion of casuals) 

Work in the Events & Stadiums industry is highly seasonal, and employment patterns are often correlated to the amount, size, and importance of scheduled events. As a result, many workers are hired on an ‘as needed’ casual basis. The use of third-party labour hire agencies is commonplace as often large volumes of new hires are required. Generally, the types of staff hired through third-party labour agencies include: 

• Food and beverage: chefs, food service, bar staff, and waitstaff 

• Customer service: ushers, stewards, car park attendants, logistical staff 

• Presentation: cleaners, maintenance, and janitorial staff 

• Security: guards, crowd control 

• Retail: sales assistants 

While advantageous for younger adults, foreign workers, or those looking for a second income, it can become stressful for Events & Stadiums operations managers to retain consistent, reliable workers. Long, undesirable work hours and high stress environments continue to force these workers out, resulting in a transient workforce with high turnover. 

This considered, Events & Stadiums employers need to offer extra benefits to keep the employee experience as positive as possible for casual workers. 

How Humanforce helps you manage transient staff 

Onboarding & Offboarding 

With casual employees constantly coming and going, it’s essential to simplify their arrival and departure.  

The Humanforce Onboarding & Offboarding solution encourages this seamless transition. It’s designed to enhance compliance and cost efficiency, eliminating time and resource intensive tasks such as information gathering, policy signoffs, and qualification updates.  

Even better, the onboarding workflows can be customised for each new hire’s specific role, team, and location. For events & stadiums employers, this can be shortened to ensure that only the most essential documentation (tax, super, bank, and personal details) is digitally collected during pre-boarding from new hires or contractors for the swiftest possible start. At the end of tenure, offboarding workflows can also be customised to the needs of each role, the tenure of each employee, or their employment type (full-time, casual, contractor). 

Employee Engagement  

Despite the industry being accustomed to shorter average tenure and casual workers, it’s still important that employers in the Events & Stadiums sector prioritise the EX. Listening to the voice of workers is crucial. 

The Humanforce Employee Engagement solution keeps managers and employees connected as the go-to function for surveys, feedback and reviews. Host 1:1 check-ins, track happiness and wellbeing over the entire employee lifecycle, and align wider teams around goals for better collaboration.

Pain point #4: Labour shortages 

Events & stadiums employers experience labour shortages, much the same as any other frontline industry — but with extra complexity. The events industry is no stranger to poor employee retention, generally caused by burnout, poor workplace culture, and low pay.  

However, the labour shortages of the broader Hospitality industry have also become the plight of events & stadiums organisations. This comes down to a heavy reliance on hospitality workers. Australia is currently facing a hospitality skills shortage — and there are predictions that the nation needs an extra 21,400 hospitality staff between 2023 to 2028 to fill these shortages. This inevitably permeates events & stadiums organisations, who offer a fraction of the stability that a restaurant, bar, or club can provide.  

 As Events & Stadiums venues sail the peaks and troughs of events season, labour forecasting and effective rostering become essential practices to ensure enough staff are available at any given time. 

How Humanforce helps with labour shortages 

Humanforce’s Talent Suite 

The Talent Suite provides organisations with a candidate-centric, holistic approach to workforce planning by pooling pre-qualified candidates, contractors, internal staff and alumni into a single talent community. This has the potential to reduce reliance on third-party labour hire companies, and thus reduce labour costs.  

With this community of workers at hand, HR and hiring managers can nurture and strengthen the employer brand, mass contact candidates to fill urgent gaps,   leverage AI for more effective matching of candidate skills to jobs available and reduce time to hire for both contingent and permanent staff. 

Thrive Wellbeing 

Becoming a talent magnet is all about offering an enticing EX. The health and wellbeing of workers is a key component of the EX. For events & stadium staff earning lower pay, the Humanforce Thrive app is a great way to alleviate financial stress by providing financial education, tools to budget and save money, cashback rewards for everyday purchases, and early access to pay.

*Thrive Wellbeing is currently only available to Humanforce customers based in Australia.

Pain point #5: Communication 

When dispersed across large venues and multiple different departments, communication between employees and managers can become muddled or disjointed without a unified communication platform. 

Using basic methods of communication like calls and text messages to coordinate shift swaps seems simple — but ultimately, creates more work for all parties. Managers are left needing to piece together the puzzle, while employees risk confusing their shift times.  

This emphasises the need for a unified, dedicated communication platform that can be accessed by all parties, regardless of their location or department.  

How Humanforce helps you improve communication 

Humanforce Work App 

For events & stadiums employers, the Humanforce Work App is the glue that turns traditional, ragtag messaging into a unified and organised communication hub. 

It’s a tool built to foster open communication and promote greater worker connection to their organisation, their manager, and their colleagues. It’s a hub for managers and employees to access important information and the tools they need to do their jobs on the fly, saving time and granting flexibility. 

Managers can access schedules and organise future shifts, manage leave requests, complete timesheets and make shift offers in an instant — anytime, anywhere. Employees benefit from being kept in the loop with instant communication between managers and peers, and can bid on available shifts, check their roster, clock in and out, and make leave requests on-the-go.  

Conclusion 

Events & stadiums employees face several daunting HCM challenges — from fluctuating revenue to high employee turnover and scheduling complications. Luckily, there are plenty of tech tools to help organisations confront and mitigate the negative effects of these pain points. Get in touch below to find out how Humanforce can help! 

About Humanforce 

Humanforce is the best-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, 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.