Firefighters, EMTs, pilots and event planners — what do they all have in common?
They have some of the most stressful jobs in the world. Fluctuating budgets and demanding stakeholders mean meeting planners are constantly juggling moving parts. This is a recipe for poor work-life balance, high stress and frequent burnout, if they’re not careful. So how can leaders in the event planning industry look out for their teams to help them beat the stress and stick to healthy habits? How can they encourage work-life balance while ensuring their clients are happy and deadlines are met?
Whether they’re the head of a large planning agency or managing a small team, here is how three experts encouraged leaders to promote employee wellbeing among their planning teams.
Model Wellbeing in Leadership
Leadership sets the standard for all their employees. That’s why it’s important for leaders not only to encourage wellness among their employees, but also to model it themselves.
“As leaders, we need to set the tone to make it clear that rest is not a reward for finishing up everything; it’s a requirement for doing good work,” said Valérie Bihet, owner of VIBE Agency. “That means that you have to model it.”
If a team lead is telling their employees not to worry about communicating after working hours while sending work emails at 2 a.m., this can send mixed signals about after-hours communication. However, if a team lead is taking vacation time after successfully pulling off a huge event, that’s setting a positive example for employees.
This can be a challenging ask for leaders and business owners. Kristine Iverson of Crow Practice, a consulting firm for bringing wellness into corporate events and conventions, recommends leaders evaluate their own self-care practices for areas to improve.
“I think, first and foremost, we have to take care of ourselves because when the leader doesn’t, we can’t take care of our teams, we can’t take care of our clients, and we can’t take care of programs,” she said. “I feel like for any leader having that established foundation — having self-care practices and wellbeing practices — is the first step.”
That can mean addressing one’s own physical and mental wellbeing, establishing good boundaries to balance work and life, and taking rest days to regain capacity following intensive periods of work. It also means taking the time to pursue personal passions and meet goals outside of work.
“For the leaders ourselves, as well as our teammates in the events industry, our sense of work-life balance is always going to be a little bit unique,” said Alex Martin, owner of Synchronicity Events. “You’re not going to be perfectly balanced in every moment. But over the course of the season, you have to find the joy with your family and friends, in your professional life, in nature and travel. You’re going to have to find a way to map all that joy if you work in the events industry.”
Culture, Not Just Policy
While it’s important to create official structures within a company that support employee wellbeing, policy isn’t everything. If the employee handbook says one thing about encouraging rest, but leadership and other team members don’t model that, employees aren’t likely to either. That’s why it’s important to incorporate wellbeing into the culture of the workplace while having strong policy to fall back on.
Employers can offer benefits that encourage wellness and work-life balance, including ample PTO and flexible scheduling. Other benefits that go above and beyond to encourage employees to tend to their physical and mental health may include gym memberships, memberships to healthy meal kit services or even vouchers for therapy sessions.
“I believe investing in what actually moves the needle: flexible scheduling, time off, professional development, so people will feel they are growing rather than they are grinding,” Bihet said. “All that is important. And mental health support should be accessible and normalized.”
Another policy that can be formally or informally enforced is one that encourages periods of rest after completion of projects. That might look like taking PTO after an event or scheduling alternating “bye weeks” to focus on lower stakes or less time-sensitive projects following a busy season. It can also look like not overbooking the company schedule with back-to-back events.
“Having buffer time pre- or post-event is so important, but does the employee know or feel that they can take time off?” Iverson said. “There are instances where companies will allow employees to take time, but they don’t. So having a company culture to encourage that will trump any sort of strategy.”
Outside of formal policy, strong communication will create a workplace culture that engenders a sense of community and collaboration. That could look like weekly team check-ins to gauge and adjust workloads, co-working time to encourage connection among mostly remote teams, and frequent team-building days where the team can relax and connect with one another in person.
“Every week, there’s going to be something I share with the team so we can all learn from it or just to vent a little,” Martin said. “Because we are in this high-pressure work, having your team as a space where you can vent a little, share a little frustration, irritation is good. So, I feel like we’re building it in as a practice.”
Frequent team check-ins and honest dialogue ensure that leadership can reallocate responsibilities if any employee’s bandwidth is feeling stretched.
Watch Out for Burnout
Event planners tend to be high performers who are adept at handling large workloads and managing crises; as a result, they may have trouble setting firm boundaries or asking for help when they need it. That’s why it’s important for team leaders to monitor their employees for signs of burnout or stress.
“Once you’re the leader of a team, protecting your team from burnout is almost the first task,” Martin said. “You go to the calendar, you put in all the events you know you’re going to do and schedule your rest, too. The biggest thing I’ve learned over the years is just to take it really seriously because we will burn out.”
This monitoring doesn’t have to be done in a way that mimics micromanaging. Some planning teams use project management or workload monitoring software to gauge how full everyone’s plate is and spot uneven workloads before they cause problems. But sometimes unusual behavior, missed deadlines or changes in personality can give leaders a lot of insight into their employees’ wellbeing.
“It’s very often the highest performer because the work is getting done, so the problem is invisible — until it isn’t,” Bihet said. “Basically, you need to pay attention to their behavior. Watch for someone who stops contributing to meetings, someone who stops talking or who starts to look very tired.”
Once leaders have identified concerning signs among any of their employees, they can gently check in with a one-on-one meeting. Sometimes it’s just indicative of too much work and not enough rest. Other times, it’s the result of personal issues or mental health struggles affecting their work, which is common in demanding, high-stress fields.
“It’s so important to normalize mental health conversations and destigmatize mental health,” Iverson said. “Leaders need to talk openly about boundaries, about burnout and stress. The event industry has an incredibly high rate of burnout.”
It’s also imperative for leaders to create an environment where team members feel comfortable speaking up when they’re feeling overloaded. That way, burnout can be addressed before it starts to take a major toll on projects and planners.
