The client

The Royal Melbourne Show, organised by The Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria (RASV), is an iconic event held at Melbourne Showgrounds for 11 days every September, attracting crowds of up to half a million people. 

Their goals

With hundreds of casual staff working in various roles, across multiple outlets, with countless start and end times, RASV sought a new staffing partner that could:

• • Create efficiencies in the allocation of staff
  • Have less staff working more shifts
  • Improve on-site staff management and operations
  • Eliminate paper timesheets
  • Improve reporting processes–with manual reporting, RASV had no visibility into costs versus budgets until weeks after the event

Sidekicker’s solution

Sidekicker is the sole staffing provider for RASV, providing 300+ staff per day for the 11 day of the Show across Setup & Packdown, Ticketing, Customer Service, Event Assistants, Showbag Sellers, Supervisors and Attendants.

Allocating the right staff for the right roles

Existing and newly recruited staff were organised into private Talent Pools based on skill, level, and outlet. When scheduling their workforce, RASV are able to easily allocate shifts by directly and instantly notifying Talent Pool staff. Staff can then confirm via Sidekicker’s worker app and are assigned to the shift.

This meant the same staff were able to be easily re-hired for multiple shifts, and the highest performers directly allocated shifts.  

Geo-location for staff check-ins

RASV gained full visibility and confidence over where staff were during every day of The Show. Sidekicker’s ‘Daily Staff List’ showed the location of staff when on or near site, all in real-time. This enabled Sidekicker’s on-site team to ensure staff had arrived on time, as well as reorganise shifts if staff were running late.

This feature also enabled staff to check in  when they’d arrived for a shift via the Sidekicker worker app, and go directly to their assigned outlet, dramatically improving efficiencies and smooth operations during The Show.

Live reporting to measure cost & performance in real-time

Sidekicker gave RASV unparalleled visibility into the performance and cost of their workforce with customisable and easy to use dashboards. 

With online timesheets, staff submit their hours via the worker app. RASV are able to then approve hours immediately, which instantly generates an invoice. All of this information is available in real-time on RASV’s live dashboard, which allows them to reconcile cost vs budget at the end of every day (versus weeks after the event).

With Sidekicker’s 2-way rating & review system, staff and supervisors are reviewed after each shift, giving RASV immediate insights into performance and quality.

RASV are able to drill into all data by outlet, department or supervisor, identifying any cost-centres, performance, or management issues.

The results

• • 2,646 shifts, with 290 Sidekicks who worked 15,000 hours
  • 100% compliance (Working With Children Checks) through our platform’s inbuilt Certificates Engine
  • 100% fill rate
  • Our technology enabled us to maximise staff frequency–the average shifts per Sidekick was 7–whilst also driving cost efficiencies by clearly identifying when overtime and penalty rates could be avoided