Despite the enormous impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on the venue management industry, the market grew by 4% by the start of 2022. This is promising for venue managers as the venue industry opens back up step by step.
However, working in venue management is not all glitz and glamour! It takes a person with specific skills to excel within the industry. In this blog post, we are going to discuss the essential skills required. Read on to find out more!
What is venue management?
Venue management includes activities or duties related to the operations of buildings. These can be theatres, concert halls, hotels, conference centers, and sports arenas. Often time a venue manager may be responsible for handling multiple locations across different geographical locations.
You may also be responsible for:
- Venue bookings
- Choosing suppliers
- Project management
- Employee scheduling
- Property maintenance
- Supervision of employees
- Event planning
- And many more!
Essential skills needed for venue management
Interpersonal Skills
This is probably one of the most important skills required by venue managers. Interpersonal skills are the skills that people use to interact with others effectively. It means that a person can work well with others and build good working relationships. Working in venue management means interacting with many different people in different functions. You will need to be able to adapt your behavior depending on who you are working with. You will also need the ability to work with others to problem solve, negotiate and make deals.
The people who you work with make a workplace so being able to create and nurture strong working relationships in business will not only make work fun but also makes your job easier!
Flexibility
Working in venue management means you must be able to adapt to different situations and be flexible. You never know what is coming around the corner and your job may require you to do many different things. One minute you are presenting to a room full of people, the next you are serving people their dinner. The job requires you to wear many different hats and so you shouldn’t have a problem with doing so.
This also means allowing your employees to be flexible too. Working in the venue industry, you can be working at any time of the day so it’s important that employees have control over their schedule. Flexible scheduling is extremely beneficial to employers such as avoiding burnout in the workplace which increases overall productivity.
Communication
Similar to interpersonal skills, how you communicate is a huge part of venue management. You need to manage your in-house teams as well as keep clients in the loop in order to run successful events at your facilities. Workforce management software is invaluable in building communication between supervisors/managers and employees. With workforce management software, such as Celayix, you can communicate instantly with teams about shift changes. You can set employees certain shift tasks that they have to sign off on by the end of their shift which keeps everyone aligned on the job at hand. It makes managing teams across multiple locations easy!
Organization
Venue management is the equivalent of juggling 100 things at one time. Being organized and having the ability to multi-task is a quintessential part of the job. Using a documented process and plan keeps you and your team informed and in the know. It also means everyone is aligned on timelines, budgets, and meetings. A well-organized event doesn’t just happen by accident as we know. It requires serious organizational skills from the outset.
Problem-solving
Unfortunately, unexpected problems are a common occurrence in venue management. Your vendor has supply issues last minute, your caterer is late or your audio equipment stops working. The list is endless. A key part of venue management is being able to quickly adapt to a situation and keeping your cool while doing so. The client should never know there is something going wrong! Your problem-solving skills improve over time and with the more events you plan. A great way to avoid unexpected problems popping up is to continue to make backup plans in case things go wrong!
Leadership
Being a team player is a crucial aspect of venue management. As we mentioned, a venue manager may be expected to do a lot of tasks that are outside their remit for the sake of the event. However, being able to assume a leadership position and delegate tasks to others is a key part of the role. A good venue manager can communicate a common goal as an inspiring vision and use it to motivate their team.
“To inspire a team, you have to make sure that everyone believes in the overall mission and vision for the company and the event. Teams have to understand how they play an integral part in making the event successful. Never underestimate the importance of telling your teams how much you appreciate them and the work they do. If leaders have an open-door policy where employees feel safe coming to them to share their ideas and concerns, then trust is built.”
Lori Pugh Marcum – Head of Meetings Innovation at MPI, Instructor of Women in Leadership: Executive Skills Certificate. (inevent.com)
With the above skills in your back pocket, there is no doubt you will flourish in venue management. Developing your skills takes time and experience so have patience! There are lots of tools available to make your work in venue management a bit easier. Take, for example, workforce management software as mentioned above. If you would like to learn more about how workforce management software plays a role in your venue management, get in touch with us here.
