The Importance of Acknowledging Volunteers

Volunteers are regarded as the backbone of many charity and non-charity events in the UK and Volunteers’ Week is a perfect opportunity to acknowledge and appreciate the hard work carried out by them as well as launch new volunteering campaigns to attract new people to help out.

All of the main volunteering umbrella bodies within the UK – Volunteering England, Volunteering Wales, Volunteer Scotland and Volunteer Now (Northern Ireland) – participate in Volunteers’ Week which takes place from 1^st to 7^th June.

It’s hugely important that volunteers are recognized as they make an invaluable contribution to the third sector. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to consider the best ways of acknowledging volunteers.

Social Events – There’s no better way to show your appreciation than organizing a social event with the whole team and even their family members. It’s a simple yet effective way of encouraging team bonding and also provides you with the opportunity to find out more about the volunteers and their motivations and goals. It’s always important to build strong working relationships with your volunteers, especially if they’re part of a wider team in which some members of the workforce are paid and others unpaid.     

Be Flexible – Listen to the needs of your volunteers and respond positively to them. Each volunteer is different and will be able to offer varying levels of commitment to your project – don’t display any preference to those who can make a greater commitment. If a volunteer’s personal circumstances change, always ensure that you can adapt to that and maintain a strong and open working relationship with them.   

Make Note of Their Contribution – It’s a nice touch to keep track of volunteers’ individual contributions. Consequently, this makes it much easier when it comes to reviewing their progress in staff appraisals. It’s also a good way of keeping track of any long-term goals they may have as a volunteer and seeing whether or not you can work around that to provide them with the tools they need to develop.  

You should always ensure that you’re getting the most out of your volunteer workforce. The most sensible approach is to do so with bespoke software tailored to your needs. Custom-made software can help with both major and minor staffing issues such as employee scheduling and workforce management. Specific bespoke packages such as sports event management software and volunteer management software are designed to have the capability to help you manage volunteering events of various types and scales, resulting in a well co-ordinated and productive volunteer workforce.    

The Cost of a Major Sporting Event

Major sporting events not only provide a great spectacle but also lasting legacies for the nations in which they are held. With so many factors to consider before, during and after an event, how much do you think a major, global sporting event costs?

London 2012 Olympics – Last summer saw one of the greatest sporting events ever held on British shores, the London 2012 Olympics. Held between 17^th July – 12^th August, the Games were a celebration of both British culture and global sporting excellence - but be assured, this came at a hefty price. The total cost for the event came to approximately £11bn. The money came from a range of sources including the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Limited, Olympic Delivery Authority, National Lottery, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Greater London Authority.

2010 FIFA World Cup – The 19^th FIFA World Cup was held in South Africa in June and July 2010. This was a huge occasion for football as it saw the first ever African nation host the finals and it turned out to be a huge financial success. The total cost of the event came to £21.6m, however ticket sales revenue totalled £185m and, additionally, TV rights revenue amounted to a huge £1.5bn.

2011 Rugby World Cup – Autumn 2011 saw the Rugby World Cup return to the Southern Hemisphere. Held in 12 towns and cities throughout New Zealand’s North and South Islands, the tournament truly reflected the New Zealand Rugby Union's desire to make it a nationwide event. With approximately four million global viewers, the total cost of the event came to £19.8m, a small price tag, many New Zealanders would say, for the host nation to capture the William Webb Ellis Cup on home soil.

2012 Superbowl – The Superbowl is a huge event within the sporting calendar, particularly in the United States. The 2012 final between the New York Giants and New England Patriots was viewed by 111 million people. The total cost came to £17.2m, with ticket sales revenue totalling £44.4m; but it may not come as a shock that this event raked in £12.9bn in TV rights revenue, the most of all the sporting events on this list.

There’s no doubt that sports event management is tough when it comes to large-scale, multi-site events. With organizing committees wanting to keep costs to a minimum, it is imperative that factors such as employee scheduling and workforce management are not overseen. It is by cutting down on unwanted administrative costs and figuring out the exact size of the workforce required that money can be saved. By investing in bespoke employee scheduling and volunteer management software, a lot of money could be saved in the long run.

How to Simplify the Workforce Management Process

Businesses are constantly on the lookout for new ways to help their operation run smoother and be more productive and one of the main ways to do this is by investing in effective software. 92% of organizations still claim they use spreadsheets to manage some aspects of their workforce, but 42% of them also admitted that the use of spreadsheets made it more difficult to manage a workforce. However, there is a simple and cost-effective solution – workforce management software.

Ventana Research published a report at the end of 2012 detailing the findings of their research into what businesses wanted from a workforce management software package. The majority of participating organizations in their study were time-clock-based organizations that used software packages to manage their workforce. Below are some of their key findings:

Of all the participants in their study, Ventana Research discovered that only 10% of those organizations were using workforce management software to its full potential. This meant that a huge 90% of participating organizations either didn’t have workforce management software or didn’t fully understand how to use it and its many features. This simply proves that a bespoke software package tailored to your organization’s specific needs, along with full support from the software providers is exactly what organizations require when they invest in these software packages; especially as nearly three quarters of the participating organizations stated that improving the productivity of their workforce was a critical matter for them.

Two thirds of those that have a dedicated workforce management software system stated that they were satisfied or very satisfied with it. The value of these custom-made software packages is easy to see. They can help you resolve various workforce issues such as higher productivity, centralizing all your vital information and improving inconsistent execution.

Given the results of the study, it will not surprise you to learn that more than half of the organizations that participated in this research are now planning to adopt labour and workforce analytics tools in the next year, joining the 30% that already have them. Every organization’s ambition should be to streamline its employee scheduling and empower employees to take responsibility for their job and this is exactly what a strong workforce management software package can provide. These ambitions don’t only apply to workforce management processes within the industrial and business sectors, but may also be applied to sports event management.

The Advantages of Digital Screen Advertising

Advertising has advanced a great deal since the 19^th Century when Thomas J. Barratt came up with the now infamous campaign for Pears Soap. The basic principle of advertising, however, remains the same but the way companies go about it has evolved a great deal.

Various advertising tools have been used throughout the decades, including posters, billboards, television and radio. However, we are now at a stage where more advanced techniques such as digital screens are the preferred methods of advertising, especially within our bustling towns and cities. Using a combination of factors, including moving images, sound (including music and the spoken word), along with the more traditional written word on the screen itself, helps to create a more attractive advertising campaign that’s far more likely to grab consumers’ attention. For example, companies are now able to advertise as they would on your TVs at home but through large digital screens within urban hot spots, meaning thousands of people will be exposed to a particular campaign. Recent research shows that digital advertising gets ten times the amount of eye contact from passers by compared to traditional static signage, therefore companies would be foolish not to recognize the potential results from this advertising method.

From automotive advertising to fashion advertising, anything and everything can be shown on these huge digital screens. A big advantage of digital screen advertising is that the advertisement can be updated in live time, which makes this method far more appealing for companies that may want to use it for on-going campaigns or charity campaigns with a view to keeping the public up-to-date on their progress. Another advantage associated with this type of advertising is that it’s environmentally friendly – such a cost-effective and greener advertising method could appeal to companies with certain environmental aims and strategies.

Having run digital screen campaigns for huge companies such as Citroen and Gillette, blowUP media are specialists in big advertising campaigns. Using the most recent technology, their campaigns are always full of impact and authority.  Having developed a state-of-the-art digital programme, the innovative and contemporary campaigns are placed right in the city centre, delivering on quality and innovation. Digital screen advertising is fast becoming the most popular forms of marketing with companies looking for vibrant, state-of-the-art campaigns that entice consumers to their product or service.  

The Benefits of Bespoke Workforce Management Software

A project or event, regardless of its scale, could easily encounter a certain problem or stumbling block that could jeopardize that project. Traditionally in the run-up to an event, the organizer(s) will have endless lists and resources in various forms and all stored in different places. The events industry has always been competitive and with people constantly striving for improvement, many are now turning to event scheduling software.    

With so many factors to take into consideration, workforce management can be a real headache for an event organizer, but it needn’t be. Specifically-tailored software can be created for an event which helps event organizers with the major challenges they face. Software packages can help you manage an event more efficiently when it comes to key factors such as intelligent employee scheduling and clear communication with your workforce.

With everything stored in one, central cloud-based system, a bespoke software package enables an event management team to store everything they need to run an event in one place. It also enables the workforce to access this information at the press of a button through gadgets such as smartphones and tablets. Along with these features, this software also benefits from many additional features, including mass notifications for emergencies, leave management and the ability to produce and distribute reports at the end of any project.

In comparison to off-the-shelf software packages, bespoke packages also work better in unforeseen circumstances. This sort of software package is adaptable and can ease an event organizer’s workload if anything happens unexpectedly. With its adaptability and multifunctional use, a bespoke package can inform a whole workforce of any changes to shift times or locations through its central cloud-based system. The fact that everyone can access this information eases the workload of an event organizer as he or she will not have to communicate with each member of the workforce individually. A great example of this would be a large-scale sporting event in which a bespoke sports event management software package could help resolve any logistical issues that may arise, as often has done in the past.

With projects and events becoming increasingly more competitive, organizers require software packages that are adaptable and tailored to their specific needs. A bespoke package can contribute to creating a unique and seamless project, and hopefully, a stress-free management team and workforce.