Event management is essentially an art of making things go smoothly despite great obstacles. Planning and organizing events successfully is not an easy task, which is why sometimes even the most seasoned event planners go through intense stress. 

They often find themselves jumping from task to task in an attempt to keep things up and running. This is where productivity can play a significant role in order to accomplish tasks efficiently.

If you are running an event management company, the first thing you have to focus on is productivity. Without being productive, all of your event planning efforts would be reduced to a stressful, hectic, and time-consuming spree. The truth is event planning is all about managing mountain of responsibilities with time and budget.

Here are 5 productivity tips for your event management endeavors:

1. Time Management Is The Key

Time management is one of the most important aspects of event planning as it involves skills such as planning, setting goals and prioritizing for a better performance. As a matter of fact, being an event planner, you are constantly racing against the clock. You can’t simply afford to pile up your tasks as it can hamper your credibility big time. 

Even the smallest inefficiency in terms of timing can put your firm in jeopardy. Your entire team should understand that a slight deviation from the schedule has an effect on the cost and scope of the project at hand. Therefore, you should structure your time so that you get more work done in less time, without causing too much stress to you as well as your staff. 

A good way to ensure time management at your workplace is to incorporate employee time tracking system so that no one misses out on important tasks. 

Everyone should be available on time to perform their defined tasks, which is why you should track time at work, especially in an event management business. Moreover, working within a certain timeframe helps your team avoid procrastination as well.

2. Break Up Your Tasks

One of the effective strategies for increased productivity is to break tasks into smaller steps irrespective of projects you have undertaken. In fact, any project has many moving parts and variables that can be addressed individually with proper expertise at play. 

For instance, in a typical event, there are caterers to hire, venues to choose from, guests to invite, amenities to transport, and event marketing strategies to implement. So to tackle this monumental affair, you have to break it into smaller and simpler modules that can be easily managed one at a time. 

This approach will allow you to figure out all the steps, join the dots and dig into the details. It also helps you gauge how work is connected to make sure everybody is working on the right things at the right time. After breaking them, you should prioritize your tasks based on how soon they can be completed. For example, if they can be done in two minutes, then you should do them immediately.

3. Use Productivity Tools To Your Advantage

On any given day, event planning can get hectic like anything and you may be haunted by your ever-growing to-do list. So if you feel like there’s just not enough time and personnel to do everything that needs to be done, you can leverage productivity tools to your advantage. 

They will help you tackle your to-do things smarter, faster, and more efficient manner. Some events are so huge that they become unmanageable, with many moving parts and multiple teams working on them. In such a scenario, you need everything in order to stay on top of your commitments. There are a number of free and affordable tools that you can use your events’ productivity on a daily basis. 

For example, Trello and Asana are good project management tools; for team communications, you can consider using Slack. If you want to leverage social media for your event, HootSuite can help you immensely. If you are repeatedly doing same things over and over again, consider using IFTTT (If This Then That). Furthermore, Eventbrite allows you to create and host your own events, manage ticket sales, take payments and further promote your event brand.

4. Apply Pomodoro Technique

Pomodoro is a revolutionary technique to achieve productivity that teaches you to work with time, rather than struggling against it. It helps you overcome distractions, makes you stay focused, and get things done in a short span of time, that too after taking frequent breaks in between. Invented by Francesco Cirillo, Pomodoro methodology splits your work into timed intervals (called Pomodoros) that are spaced out by short breaks. 

It trains your brain to focus for short periods and helps you stay on top of deadlines or constantly-refilling inboxes. To be very specific, you can split your workday into 25-minute chunks separated by five-minute breaks. 

The main idea behind the technique is that the timer engenders a sense of urgency, and you feel that you have a limited time to make as much progress as possible. While the forced breaks help cure the burnt-out feeling.

For your convenience, the following steps sum up the whole Pomodoro technique:

• Choose a task to be accomplished.
• Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)
• Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper
• Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
•  Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break

5. Set Strict Deadlines

As we mentioned, event management is composed of multiple modules, so meeting these multiple deadlines is the hallmark of a successful event planning. Establishing firm deadlines essentially means prioritising tasks in the right order. When you have to manage multiple stakeholders, deadlines can get even harder to meet. 

Even making adjustments to adjust changing priorities shouldn’t affect your deadlines. After setting your deadline, you can work backward to figure out how much you can realistically accomplish between today and the day of your deadline. 

For an event management company, the real trouble ensues when it start missing deadlines. Beating your deadlines will impress your clients, increase your credibility, and inspire your productivity.

Final Thoughts

Productivity is probably the most important component of the success of an event management company. It ensures that nothing goes haywire in the 11th hour and also makes sure that all the invitees or guests enjoy the event for the very purpose it was being organized.

To know more about how Hubilo can help simplify your planning process, click here.

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