Improving staff productivity whilst saving time & money

“Sidekicker staff are better than any workforce we’ve ever used before – either through an agency or recruited ourselves. Their digital solution is nothing short of miraculous!”

Michael Swan, Catering & Hospitality Manager, Spark Arena

Spark Arena is a 12,000 capacity multipurpose arena in Auckland, New Zealand, attracting the biggest names in the world of sports & entertainment since 2007.

Business challenges

As an events-based and seasonal business, Spark Arena was experiencing several issues as a result of their staffing:

High churn: Due to inconsistent work, casual employees were churning quickly seeking more regular hours.
Time and cost of recruitment: Due to this high staff churn, Spark were constantly recruiting which was expensive and time consuming. The return on this was insufficient given the short tenure of casuals.
Loss of productivity: It takes an average of 3 months for employees to reach full productivity, thus Spark’s workforce was functioning almost constantly under-capacity. Every shift, 30-40% of staff working had never worked at the arena before, having a highly negative impact on the customer experience.

Sidekicker’s solution

Phase 1: Temporary Staffing

Attracted to the ease-of-use and transparency of Sidekicker, as well as their rigorous interviewing and screening processes, Spark Arena started using Sidekicker to top up numbers of hospitality workers for large events.

“Sidekicker makes hiring temps easier and faster than anything we’ve ever used before. I can post a request for staff–whether I need 5 or 200–at the click of a button, and select my Sidekicks based on experience and ratings, or if they’ve worked with us in the past, making hiring the right people simple,”

Michael Swan, Catering & Hospitality Manager at Spark Arena.

Using private Talent Pools, they were able to easily allocate shifts and re-hire the same staff repeatedly, which was improving staff repetition.

Phase 2: Workforce as a Service

Due to the superior staff quality, ease of use, speed to fill shifts, and ability to re-hire the same staff, Spark Arena’s workforce was increasingly made up of Sidekicker staff.

Seeing an opportunity to eliminate the admin burden of constant casual recruitment, and consolidate the management of their workforce onto a single platform, Spark Arena invited their internal casuals to join Sidekicker.

Sidekicker became the employer of record for Spark’s casual workforce and took on the recruitment responsibility.

Spark now uses Sidekicker to:

Hire staff and allocate shifts–assigning shifts first to Talent Pools, and seamlessly hiring new staff using detailed staff profiles when required
Schedule their workforce
Manage timesheets and payment easily online
Give their casual staff access to a fast and easy way to accept work, submit timesheets, and manage their schedule via the Sidekicker employee app
Promote and up-skill Sidekicks into supervisory and management positions
Leverage Sidekicker’s transparent platform with 2-way ratings and reviews to motivate staff and drive high performance and reliability

The results

Increased repeat staff per shift (i.e. people who had worked at Spark Arena before) from 60% to 95%
Save over $20k annually, previously spent on casual recruitment and temp agencies
Significantly improved quality and efficacy of staff, which resulted in queue reductions from 10+ metres to 1
Used cost savings to build an innovative onboarding and training platform, used by all external hourly workers and internal permanent staff alike.

“Sidekicker is by far the simplest, fastest and most cost-effective way to source, hire and manage temps and casual.
Their innovative digital solution eliminates almost all of the paperwork and streamlines everything into one easy to use platform.
The staff on Sidekicker are also nothing short of miraculous, and better than any workforce we’ve ever used before.”

Michael Swan, Catering & Hospitality Manager, Spark Arena