Global event-production giant Encore is launching new payment programs and benefits today as a way to attract and retain talent in an industry marked by seasonal ebbs and flows in demand and work volume.
The company's unique new ventures are noteworthy given its mammoth, dispersed workforce of 12,000 service providers, who provide production and A/V services at 2,200 hotels and conference venues across 20 countries. Improving consistency and reliability for the company's dispersed workforce, reasons CEO Ben Erwin, also will result in a more consistent customer experience for the many event professionals who rely on Encore's services.
The company announced today that it is partnering with payroll technology provider UKG to offer perks, such as its new overtime savings program and seasonal leave of absence, aimed at improving financial wellness and stability for the company's frontline employees, performing roles that typically aren't associated with such stability.
"If I could do one thing, I would love events to be Monday through Friday, nine to five, you know, 50 weeks of the year, so you can get the holidays off," Erwin told me during an interview at IMEX America in early October. "That's not how it happens — it's nights, it's weekends, it's really busy in the spring and in the fall, and it's really slow in the summer. So how we solve for that seasonality so that our workforce doesn't have to go through those stresses has been really important."
Job consistency for event producers
Erwin hopes the overtime savings program is one that catches on in the industry. "We're excited to be the first company in the United States that has put an overtime savings plan in place for our workforce so that when they're working, and it's really busy — 50, 60, 70 hours a week — they can save some of that extra money," he explained. "We'll match $100 for [the first] $500 that they put away, to encourage that behavior so that the financial stress when things are slow isn't as disruptive."
The seasonal leave of absence program is another perk, a way to take time off during slower seasons while retaining full benefits, accruing paid time off and maintaining tenure. "It's all around helping our workforce invest not just in Encore, but in a career in events, a career in hospitality," noted Erwin. "And while I'm excited by what they can do for for us and our workforce, I do think that message also should resonate with anyone in the industry as a way to innovate for our workers, to help them find events and hospitality is a great place to invest their career."
Both programs have now been launched across the United States, with plans to roll out globally. During early launch programs, nearly 30 percent of Encore employees began using the UKG Wallet, to be able to bank earned wages and access them when and where they are needed.
Consistency in the production experience
Based on extensive customer feedback, satisfaction scores have never been higher, according to Erwin — even prepandemic. Still, Erwin acknowledged, event production will never be entirely glitch-free, and when your workforce is stationed at more than a couple thousand properties around the globe, consistency of experience can be a challenge.
"There's still learnings we can have around pre-event preparation, the day of, how we actually execute that event," he noted. "We're using all of that feedback to make sure we understand where those pressure points are along the process. We know we need to find those points and then kind of lean into them. It's never going to be a world where we have no issues across our event spectrum. But what we're trying to do is to certainly minimize them. We're trying to have talent that can react to it in the moment."
Challenge of rising costs
Production and A/V costs are a major concern for planners; while Encore making these investments in talent could improve the overall experience, those investments costs money. Such costs are not going to drop for planners as we move forward.
Encore is addressing these cost challenges in a couple of ways with their customers, Erwin explained, starting with improved consistency.
"First, can we make sure that we're consistent across Encore?" he said. A customer should be able to experience a convention in Las Vegas and then pick up a conversation with an Encore rep about a meeting in Chicago, for example. "We should then have some consistency in that process and how those budget conversations and event-scope conversations go.
"The second is trying to meet our customers at every budget point," Erwin continued. "How can we talk to them about events on different scales? So we've trained our sales teams, not just to use historical customer information so that they can bring that consistency, but also to talk about different flavors of what the same event may look like. Maybe it is something where you want a more basic kind of experience for what you're trying to accomplish. Maybe it is one you really want to invest in, but using kind of option-based guides to present that so that a customer doesn't feel like they showed up and they got kind of a 'best of' version of that event. Rather, they can kind of pick and choose based on what's most important to them, and they can find a great solution at any budget level.
"Because cost of labor is only going up," Erwin agreed. "Technology continues to be more complicated. Events today are 75 percent more technically complicated than they were prepandemic. So you think about all that's been done on the workforce, and with the investment of equipment to deliver those events. But that doesn't mean we can't deliver a great impactful event at any price point."
/3-Days-in-Palm-Springs-Calif..jpg?tr=w-360%2Ch-240%2Cfo-auto "3 Days in Palm Springs, Calif.")
