Dealing with anxious clients, handling last-minute technical issues, defusing conflicts before they escalate—there’s no question that event management is a demanding job. But could it be one of the most stressful jobs in the world?
Many people think so. Some sources even list it as one of the top 10 most stressful jobs in the world.
However, you can adopt strategies to make your job more manageable. First, let’s examine the key stressors event managers face. Then, we'll go over some mitigation strategies to keep stress under control.
Top Event Management Stressors
Taking a step back to identify the leading causes of stress and burnout helps prevent overwhelm during event planning and execution. Some of the biggest stressors include:
• Time constraints: Meeting deadlines is tough, especially with multiple professional and personal demands on your time.
• Lack of organisation: Not knowing which staff members are responsible for which tasks can break down communication. This compounds stress levels.
• Meeting client expectations: Clients often have diverse expectations. Worrying about not meeting them increases stress and lowers effectiveness.
• Unpredictable schedules: Long work hours are a reality in event management. But also dealing with work issues on weekends and holidays leads to burnout and work-life imbalance.
Stress Mitigation Strategies for Event Managers
Stress is unavoidable in event management. But it shouldn't keep you from running successful events and maintaining a positive work environment.
To keep stress under control, adopt stress mitigation strategies into your team routines, including:
• Effective planning and organisation. Make plans. Generate to-do lists. Create schedules, track costs, and establish deadlines. Share all this with your team to keep everyone informed.
• Delegating tasks: Determine which people are best suited for certain tasks. Hand over responsibilities to capable team members to lessen pressure.
• Engaging in open and transparent communication: Communicate team responsibilities. Actively listen to client concerns. Over-communicate rather than under-communicate.
• Managing client expectations: Keeping customers happy is the ultimate goal, but you also need to know when to put your foot down. Right at the get-go, communicate what can and cannot be achieved. Under-promise and over-deliver.
• Practicing self-care: Require everyone to get adequate sleep, adopt healthy eating habits, and regularly exercise. This keeps the mind and body focused and ready for work.
• Time management and prioritisation: Create a detailed event timeline to understand which tasks to prioritise. This helps with effective resource allocation, keeping your staff well-supported and on task.
• Adapting a flexible mindset: Unforeseen problems will inevitably arise. Construct contingency plans to address last-minute issues.
• Assessing performance: Review data analytics and feedback from clients, staff, and event attendees. This can reveal your team's strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to improve client services and reduce stress for staff.
• Building a support network: Invest in support to keep you efficient and reduce stress for everyone. Your staff and the right event management software can simplify the event management process by keeping everyone organised and automating key tasks.
Making Event Management Less Stressful
Event management may be a stressful job, but there are tools and strategies you can implement to stay in control. While event managers need a high degree of emotional resilience to handle the stressors that come with the job, even high-stress situations can be managed with planning and organisation.
The idloom management software is a registration platform that helps you run more successful events. Event management companies have used our platform to assist with everything from registration management to session booking, from check-ins to payments management. These capabilities provide event managers with the support they need to keep everyone calm and confident while managing events. Contact us to learn more.