Facilities & Event Management

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  • 1.  Retaining and Incentivizing Student Employees

    Posted 07-19-2022 02:52:00 PM
    Hello Everyone!

    I wanted to post on here and get some feedback on what some of you do to retain/incentivize your student employees. What have you done that has worked really well for you? What have you done that you thought was going to excite your students but maybe missed the mark? As we all know, it's hard to find the extra help for events right now so trying to think ahead to keep our students motivated to sign up for shifts and stay on board. 

    Thank you!

    Hayley Harnden
    Events Manager/Facilities
    University of Northern Iowa

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    Hayley Harnden
    Event Manager/Facilities
    University Of Northern Iowa
    Cedar Falls IA
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  • 2.  RE: Retaining and Incentivizing Student Employees

    Posted 10-19-2022 10:31:00 AM
    Hi Hayley! 

    Annabelle here with Populous. When I worked at the University of Minnesota, I would try to do things like pizza Friday and would bring in pizza for all employees that worked Friday. This was typically our hardest day to have part-time help, so was a small encouragement. We also had a mini fridge and a snack bar and I would fill it with mini sodas, granola bars, bags of chips, etc. Eventually, the students would also bring in some of their favorite snacks to share with the other student employees and it became a fun way to guess who brought what. I noticed some shifts, students would go straight to the snack basket to see what was new and had comfortability that if they ever got hungry at work, there was always a snack option there. 

    With my staff now, although they are full-time employees, I still find it tricky to keep them engaged and have them feel included. I created this form and had all our staff fill out. The form results are something I use as a manager to do little things for the staff that show I care. Their favorite salty snack if they went above and beyond, a coffee if they are having a hard day, etc. But they were all tasked to be creative and put some of their "All About Me" answers on a piece of construction paper in whatever way they saw fit. Got a mix of hand drawn pictures, bullet point notes and even magazine cutouts of fun words or pictures. We then hung these all up in the office and it has been really cool to see how people have connected organically by just realizing some of their commonalities and shared interests. Just an idea to create more of a community within the part-time staff and have them engage with their fellow peers.

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    Annabelle Juin
    Event Manager
    Populous
    Denver CO
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    Original Message


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