Honest talk on inclusivity and wellbeing, on both sides of the lanyard – A new column by Chantal Mendes, Head of Event Strategy, HeadBox
I’m sure many will relate to being deep into a run of back-to-back events, catching yourself doing the maths on how little sleep you can function on and still show up switched-on for a 6am start call. Three hours. Maybe four, if I’m lucky.
Particularly if I’m feeling overstimulated by the day just gone and already overthinking what’s to come. It feels less like a busy period and more like a treadmill I can’t step off, one event ending just in time for the next one to start, with no real gap to catch my breath in between.
And the strange part is, I thrive in these moments! The buzz of live delivery. I just get on with it, because that’s what we all do.
Autumn is the peak season for our industry.
Conferences, exhibitions, awards dinners, roadshows, the calendar stacks up fast, and by the time delegates walk through the doors, everything looks seamless. That’s the job. Whatever’s happened behind the scenes, the room has to feel effortless. But “effortless” for the person in the room is very rarely effortless for the person who built it.
We talk a lot, rightly, about designing better experiences for attendees: accessible layouts, genuine choice, spaces that consider different needs rather than assuming one. It’s work I care about deeply and will keep coming back to in this column. But there’s a version of that same care that we owe each other, and it’s one we’re much worse at extending: to the event planners, the AV and production crews, the freelancers, the venue staff, the PAs holding three timelines in their head at once. The people for whom “the event must go on” isn’t a nice phrase, it’s a job description.
With UK National Inclusion Week coming up this month, and most of the conversation around it will rightly focus on who gets a genuine seat at the table, in hiring, in leadership, in the rooms where decisions get made. I’d like to push that conversation somewhere our industry doesn’t take it often enough: inclusion doesn’t stop at who’s invited. It has to extend to whether the people already in the room, quietly holding the whole thing together, feel able to say “I’m struggling” without it reading as a failure to cope.
Because right now, mostly, they don’t. The events industry attracts people who are wired to solve problems on the fly and keep smiling while they do it. It’s genuinely one of the best things about this industry. But that same instinct becomes a mask. Admitting you’re exhausted mid-event can feel like admitting you’re not cut out for the job, in an industry where being “cut out for it” is worn as a badge of honour.
So what does actually doing something about this look like? A few things I think genuinely move the needle:
1. Build recovery into the schedule, not just the after-party. We plan meticulously for delegate energy – break timings, catering, pacing – and almost never for our own delivery team’s. A protected ten minutes between sessions where a floor manager isn’t reachable isn’t indulgent, it’s basic maintenance.
2. Normalise saying the quiet part out loud. The most useful thing a senior person on site can do during a heavy week is admit, in front of the team, that they’re exhausted too. It gives everyone else permission to be human rather than performing invincibility.
3. Check in with freelancers too. Freelance crew are often the least likely to raise a hand, because their next booking can depend on being seen as easy, flexible, and endlessly available. If your wellbeing conversations only reach permanent staff, they’re not reaching the people most exposed.
4. Debrief the people, not just the event. We’re excellent at post-event reviews of what worked operationally. We’re far less consistent about checking in on how the team actually is once the adrenaline drops – which, incidentally, is often when it hits hardest. If a single live event project burns out your top players every year, is it really worth the business or do you need to re-look at the guardrails in place for effective collaboration and delivery for that client.
None of this requires a bigger budget. It requires deciding that the wellbeing of the people delivering the room is as much a measure of a successful event as anything on the delegate feedback form.
As for me, I got through that run, the events landed, and by all outward measures it was a good few weeks. It always is. That’s rather the problem. Everything going on beautifully tells you nothing about what it cost the people who made sure it did.
This column is going to spend the next few months looking at inclusivity and wellbeing from both sides of the lanyard – for the people who attend our events, and the people who deliver them. If event season has taught you something about what gets masked behind the scenes, I’d genuinely like to hear it.
Maybe the first step is simply this: the next time someone on your team says they’re fine, ask twice.