Case studies:
Spark Arena
The client
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. They continuously hire casual event labour such as Event Assistants, Wait Staff and Bar Staff.
The challenges
As an events-based and seasonal business, Spark Arena was experiencing several issues as a result of their events staffing. Michael Swan, Catering & Hospitality Manager at Spark Arena helped Sidekicker understand the main challenges they've faced with temporary staffing.
High churn
Due to inconsistent work, casual staff 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 casual staff.
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.
The 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 casual hospitality staff 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,”.
Using private Talent Pools, they were able to easily allocate shifts and re-hire the same casual 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 casual 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.
