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Unit 9: Staffing

Self Assessment Notes

State whether the following statements are true or false:
11. There are several companies offering promotional staff for a wide range of events.

12. There is not much distinction between an agency and an independent contractor where
compliance is concerned.
13. An agency provides better defense against liability for the employer.

14. When you hire stagehands or technicians through an agency or broker, they are theoretically
employees of that agency.
15. Technically, you could still be sued if the injured worker’s agency is uninsured or if your
direction somehow contributed to the injury.

Case Study Staff Scheduling Software

Centerplate: DC Convention Center
Centerplate provides all food and beverage products, staffing, and services for the
Washington DC Convention Center. Operating at a high tempo, the DC Convention
Center hosts large business and political conferences, many with international attendees.
Centerplate/NBSE, the DC Convention Center unit (CP-DC), staffs these events with a
union labor force of 400 servers, bartenders, cooks, and retail employees.

The Challenge
Like many entertainment venues, sports facilities, and convention centers, things change
quickly at the DC Convention Center. As events are added, removed, or start times change,
CP-DC must respond quickly.
Curtis McDonald, CP-DC’s CFO, manages the administrative team that coordinates all
staffing and financial planning. For every event, McDonald’s team has a broad workforce
management charter that includes integrating staffing requests from ten line managers
across multiple departments while complying with union seniority rules and managing
overall variable labor costs to meet financial metrics.
Shiftboard was rolled out within weeks at CP-DC. An immediate benefit for the scheduling
team was the time saved with Shiftboard’s auto-schedule functions. A scheduler could load an
entire department’s shifts for the week or month and invoke the auto-scheduler to fill them.
All shifts were assigned based on seniority without double-booking an employee or
scheduling anyone into an overtime scenario. “Keeping in mind all the seniority
requirements in our previous spreadsheet paradigm were very time consuming to put it
mildly,” said McDonald.
Having a system also standardized the communication process between the schedulers
and line managers. “We used to receive staffing requests via email, or spreadsheet, or
handwritten on a napkin for that matter. We trained all the line managers to use Shiftboard’s
excel template for loading shifts, and then the schedulers could just check the template. It
made everyone happier.”
Contd....

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