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Do You Sleep Well at Night? The Hidden Stress of In‑House Event Managers · Event Industry News Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Event Industry News podcast with me, James Dixon,
• 0:15
  wishing you all a very good morning, afternoon or evening, whenever or wherever you tune
• 0:20
  into today's podcast from. And I'm excited to say that for the first time in a long time,
• 0:27
  we've now got a sponsor on board for the podcast, which is fantastic. Great to have some people
• 0:32
  involved in supporting this. Present Communications are our brand new headline podcast sponsor.
• 0:39
  Present provides broadcast quality live, hybrid and virtual event production, trusted by organizations
• 0:44
  where reliability really matters. From corporate town halls and conferences to high profile
• 0:50
  live streams, they design and deliver fully resilient systems that work first time. Big
• 0:55
  thanks to the team over at Present Communications for supporting the podcast. And you'll hear
• 1:01
  sort of plenty from them over forthcoming episodes of the podcast. So on with today's
• 1:07
  talking and chatting and all things events. And we're going to be looking in the world
• 1:13
  into the world of stress within event managers, specifically in-house event managers. And
• 1:20
  the reference point is a report that has been, I guess, commissioned and built and
• 1:26
  put together by the company of which my guest today is the CEO. I'm delighted to say that
• 1:33
  for the first time, we welcome to the event, Industry News podcast, Alex Pern. Alex is
• 1:39
  the CEO of Clink Clink. Alex, a very warm welcome to you.
• 1:42
  James, it's an absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for having us on.
• 1:46
  Not a problem at all. And Alex and I were just talking off air before today's episode
• 1:50
  about the fact that we're both dog owners. So I've got a couple in the house, my dog
• 1:55
  there, Alex has got his dog there. And we're both discussing, you know, what the show stop
• 2:00
  procedure is for delivery drivers knocking at front doors and dogs going absolutely barmy.
• 2:07
  So if there is an edit in today's podcast, you can safely assume podcast followers that
• 2:13
  one or both sets of dogs have gone bananas because somebody's knocked at the door.
• 2:18
  Absolutely. My dog's very cute, but he has no recall, you know, and doesn't like the
• 2:25
  delivery man. So it's like a post-COVID video conference peril all the time.
• 2:33
  Absolutely. It's great. So we've got that out the way straight off the bat. Let's, you know,
• 2:40
  get serious for a moment, Alex. We're going to be talking today about stress amongst event
• 2:44
  managers, a report that Clink Clink have recently published. But before we get into that,
• 2:50
  let's give everybody a little bit of context and frame exactly who you are and what Clink
• 2:54
  Clink is as an organisation. Yeah, thanks, James. I mean, Clink Clink's 20 years old this year,
• 3:01
  which feels like a huge milestone. You know, we've gone through a couple of recessions,
• 3:07
  a financial crash, you know, and a great pandemic, you know, to boot. So, you know,
• 3:13
  we've kind of come out the other side of that, and I think fairly resilient. We've got six of us
• 3:19
  in-house and a fantastic team. Some of those team members have been with us for more than 10 years,
• 3:28
  and we are very much a people-centric business. We tend to work for a lot of in-house teams,
• 3:35
  in-house event managers. We work for, you know, sort of corporates, as well as a lot of membership
• 3:42
  organisations, as well. And, yeah, absolutely love, you know, what we do and the industry we
• 3:48
  work in. So, yeah, that's sort of Clink Clink in a nutshell. Absolutely. 20 years, you know,
• 3:54
  I'm 16 years this year freelance, and I don't know how you feel, but mine's sort of gone past
• 3:59
  in the blink of an eye. I still have to remind myself that, you know, I guess I would say I'm
• 4:04
  relatively experienced now, despite it feeling like yesterday that I went into business for myself.
• 4:10
  Yeah, absolutely. And I started out very much in that freelance sphere, you know, and I think it's
• 4:17
  given me a huge appreciation for, you know, what the freelance community adds. You know,
• 4:22
  this industry would not, you know, work without an incredible talent pool that we have, you know,
• 4:29
  in the freelance and in-house community. But, yeah, big shout out to all the freelancers,
• 4:34
  you know, that's, yeah, absolutely fantastic. I mentioned at the top of today's episode that
• 4:41
  what we were going to dive into is a report that's called Do You Sleep Well at Night?
• 4:46
  Sleep, Stress and Wellbeing in UK Event Management. This is a report that Clink Clink have done on the
• 4:53
  wellbeing of in-house event managers specifically during 2025 and what can be improved upon,
• 4:59
  or using the report as a means to look at what can be improved upon this year and, I guess,
• 5:04
  subsequent to this year as well, you know, going forward into the future. What was the thinking
• 5:08
  behind the report? What made you and drove you to commission it? It's been, this report's been,
• 5:14
  sort of, 10 or 15 years in the making and that sounds quite lofty, but I'll give that some
• 5:18
  context. So, about 15 years ago, there was a report done in, and I think it was, you know,
• 5:25
  one of the papers that said, what are the most stressful jobs? And number three in that list,
• 5:33
  for some reason, was event management. And the top two were brain surgery, the theatre of war,
• 5:42
  then came events, then it was firefighting, you know, being, you know, a firefighter,
• 5:48
  and, you know, and then, you know, add lots of stressful industries. And I think it struck a
• 5:54
  chord because I think we all, as we read it, you know, and sort of batted around in the industry
• 5:59
  for a while, we couldn't quite work out why we were number three, you know, and it felt like a
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  slightly odd report. I think there was a lot of, you know, sort of click bait with it. But other
• 6:13
  reports have come out since, you know, and they've all put event management, you know, up there,
• 6:18
  you know, in that top 10. And I think what we wanted to do was try and understand
• 6:24
  why that was, and, you know, try and understand the differences between when people talk about
• 6:32
  stress, you know, there's good and bad stress, and to try and start to, you know, use a slightly
• 6:39
  different language around it, maybe and start to be less generalised, you know, about that language,
• 6:44
  as we sort of started to look at it. And it's interesting that you said good and bad stress
• 6:50
  there, because as people who work in events will know that there are times everyone has felt stress
• 6:56
  inevitably, but the pressure and the feeling that goes with working in this industry, and when you
• 7:01
  get close to events, particularly, good stress, I suppose, are we defining it as that feeling of
• 7:10
  anticipation, because I get it still, you know, 16 years in, and you're constantly cross
• 7:15
  referencing things. But to me, that's always felt like you're bothered. If you're feeling that little
• 7:20
  bit of pressure, and that little bit of anticipation, and almost like, you know, slight stage
• 7:25
  fright, I suppose, for the performers amongst our followers. To me, that's always been a good thing,
• 7:30
  because it shows that you're switched on, that you're alert to things and what's going on. So
• 7:34
  there is good stress, and there is bad stress, isn't there? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that
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  is so important to understand, you know, we're not experts in this by any stretch. But I think
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  what the report, what we tried to do with the report was actually come out with some qualitative
• 7:52
  information, you know, and we asked 150 event managers, and you know, those titles, event
• 7:59
  manager and above, you know, what they most liked about working in events. And lots of people,
• 8:07
  you know, came back with the fact that they love the fact that it is fast paced, it's adrenaline,
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  you know, all of those things, and you've sort of hit on our head, people really enjoy, you know,
• 8:18
  that element of stress that drives, you know, some real brilliance in the industry. And, you know,
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  I think everybody, you know, watching this podcast, will agree that this industry, you know, can
• 8:32
  produce some pretty incredible things, you know, against the odds, you know, the fact that there is
• 8:38
  a deadline, you know, you can't stop the audience coming, you know, the curtain's going to go up,
• 8:45
  you know, the audience are going to walk in, and that's the deadline. And the industry is quite
• 8:50
  unique for that. If you build a house, and there's a delay, or, you know, you just have to shift it
• 8:55
  slightly down the road and either catch up the time or not. But the events industry is very
• 8:58
  unique in that. And that does drive some incredible, you know, you know, involvement
• 9:05
  from people and, you know, some incredible skills to bear. And I think one sort of key thing that
• 9:12
  we found in the report was that people really enjoy working in the industry because of some
• 9:18
  of that stress. You know, but 86% of event managers said that they've experienced physical
• 9:28
  symptoms of stress. So, you know, headaches, insomnia, and in some extreme cases, burnout.
• 9:32
  And I think that's what we wanted to start to try and pick apart slightly is, you know,
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  just using the generalised language, it's very stressful, it's not very helpful. So it's kind
• 9:41
  of starting to address, you know, how people, you know, deal with that or need to deal with that,
• 9:47
  you know, post event. And it's interesting that the, you know, the do sleep well at night,
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  sleep, stress and well being in UK event management to repeat the sort of the title
• 9:57
  and the sub, the strapline to the report. But a lot of the ref, well, there are obviously
• 10:05
  references to pre event, and how well people are sleeping pre event. And what I'm conscious not to
• 10:11
  do today, Alex is to go into too much detail, because what we'd love people to do who are
• 10:15
  listening to today's podcast is really go and get this report and look at all the stats and absorb
• 10:20
  it yourself. And it would be foolish for us to just go through the report in fine detail today,
• 10:24
  and give everything that's in there, because it's really important that people actually read this
• 10:28
  and see how it kind of resonates, you know, with their own with their own role. But one thing I
• 10:36
  noticed is it's talking about sleep before an event. But that crash that people get after an
• 10:42
  event can also affect them really, you know, seriously as well. If things have gone brilliantly,
• 10:48
  fabulous, you'll have that adrenaline rush, and you probably won't sleep anyway, the night after
• 10:53
  the event, or possibly two or three nights. If things haven't gone entirely to plan,
• 10:57
  you'll be repeating things over and over and over in your head, what could you have done better?
• 11:00
  And that's also a cause of bad sleep post event and issues post event, isn't it?
• 11:06
  Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's, that's really important to recognise. And, you know, again, I think
• 11:13
  it some of that comes down to just your own, you know, thinking back to my sort of freelance days,
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  I wasn't so so, you know, ingrained in a team of people, and sort of post event, it's having some
• 11:26
  way of just, you know, downloading that afterwards, and, you know, kind of expressing that, you know,
• 11:32
  the industry is, as we've sort of talked about before, it has its stresses, you know, going
• 11:38
  through, you know, if there's been a missed cue, or something's gone wrong on site, you know,
• 11:43
  you do play that back over and over again. And I think there are different ways of dealing with
• 11:49
  that post event. And, you know, I think it's important to sort of recognise, you know, it's
• 11:54
  not just all on site, there is that bit afterwards, I think, just, I do, I mean, I remember a great,
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  you know, sort of event lead once describing, you know, stress post event, and they almost
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  described it like, sort of PTSD, or they described it, you know, and they used language at the time,
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  and I think there was a slight, not naivety to it, but I'm not sure that it was that helpful.
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  You know, if people, again, use that language, on event sites, or pre event, you know, about stress,
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  and about it being almost this sort of hugely terrible thing, then I think it does make it
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  harder for people to sort of, you know, decompress after an event. And, you know, if you just see it
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  all as, you know, super, super stressful, you know, I think it's really important just sort of
• 12:49
  to qualify that, you know, but also, like you said, just have some way of, you know, decompressing
• 12:55
  after event and recognising you're going to need a bit of time to do that's really important.
• 12:59
  Sure. I've mentioned briefly that the report focuses on in-house event managers, and the report
• 13:05
  itself defines that as the people inside organisations who plan and deliver events as a
• 13:10
  core part of their job. Now, you're an organisation that will then be brought in, you know, as an
• 13:18
  external agency, effectively, to support these in-house event managers. So, in your experience
• 13:23
  of working with them, is there a question and a valid question around you helping to manage their
• 13:31
  own expectations in order to manage their stress levels and manage their stress related to the
• 13:37
  event? And by that, I mean, there are a lot of things that as organisers don't go perfectly
• 13:43
  behind the scenes, I'm not going to say go wrong, but you talk about missed cues, or people forgetting
• 13:47
  to mention something on a particular slide during their keynote presentation, and maybe that
• 13:52
  causes a glitch in the control booth, because you've got to skip on a couple. If the audience
• 13:58
  doesn't know about it, they're not aware that there's been an issue, and sometimes I feel like
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  as third parties coming in to support in-house event organisers, it's important to manage their
• 14:10
  expectations and make sure that if stuff does go wrong, it's okay. It's okay if that does happen,
• 14:16
  you know, if things have gone smoothly, then, and the attendees are none the wiser, then that is
• 14:21
  absolutely okay. Yeah, absolutely. I think you're right, there is a difference between,
• 14:29
  you know, the sort of in-house team and the freelance teams coming in. Although everybody
• 14:34
  works as, you know, sort of one big team to an end goal, you know, I think that that sort of
• 14:40
  difference is important to recognise. I think with our support of in-house teams,
• 14:49
  to your point around, you know, how we sort of manage expectations, I think we're quite
• 14:57
  lucky that we've worked with some of our clients for, you know, over 10 years, and some clients
• 15:04
  are quite new, as in, you know, we've only been working with them, you know, for a year. However,
• 15:13
  it, one thing that we found is that when we come in, the initial meeting that we have
• 15:21
  is very much about, okay, what's happened before? And what are the things that have kept you awake
• 15:28
  at night? And that is, you know, again, I never sort of stopped referencing the title of the
• 15:33
  report, but that is part and parcel of why it's called that we have something called what, you
• 15:39
  know, the why aren't you sleeping well at night test? And that's not just before an event, it's
• 15:44
  the things day to day that in-house teams find stressful, and they find, you know, it just makes
• 15:53
  the team, you know, lose their sense of calm. And quite often, it's about information flow,
• 16:02
  it's about stakeholder engagement, it's about giving in-house teams and in-house event managers
• 16:09
  the right information that they can feed up the chain to their stakeholders, so that the
• 16:15
  stakeholders understand exactly the types of things that you've talked about. There might be a
• 16:20
  microphone that goes down, but there will be another one in the wings. That's quite normal
• 16:26
  that someone will bring that on. Don't sweat that, the audience don't mind, you know, we've all been
• 16:31
  there, there's that moment of like, is the person holding the microphone ready? You know, and there's
• 16:35
  all of that planning that goes into that moment of backup. But it's also spending enough time
• 16:42
  before the event, you know, planning, talking it through, you know, really working through,
• 16:47
  and, you know, all of the things that you absolutely have to get right. And that's kind of
• 16:54
  the joy of events, you know, that is that there is a lot of jeopardy, because it's live, and you're
• 16:59
  not quite sure what's going to happen. But you do work to, you know, make it as smooth as backed up
• 17:05
  as possible. One statistic that did jump out of me from the report was the question,
• 17:13
  what keeps event managers awake? And you asked them for their top three factors. And of those,
• 17:19
  81% said last minute changes, which is really curious when we're talking about, particularly
• 17:27
  about in-house event managers working, perhaps in big organizations where it might be, you know,
• 17:33
  an in-house, you know, an internal conference with senior management and people like that. And
• 17:39
  again, from experience, a lot of senior managers in big organizations
• 17:45
  have got so many other plates that they're spinning to do with their role as a senior manager
• 17:50
  or director within an organization that the event that they've been asked to come and deliver us,
• 17:55
  you know, 30 minutes at the in-house company event, actually, down their priority list is
• 18:00
  very low. And it's that weird side, kind of like, I don't know if you call it dichotomy,
• 18:05
  but the event, the in-house event team, it's their absolute priority. But for a lot of the time,
• 18:11
  the people who deliver the content at these in-house events, it's much further down their
• 18:14
  list. And so you've got this weird sort of push and pull. Yeah. And there's a couple of things
• 18:20
  here. Part of that is education. So it's making sure that the, you know, the senior stakeholders
• 18:26
  understand if they make last minute changes, you know, the jeopardy that that can then involve.
• 18:33
  But it's also as event professionals, having a robust, you know, onsite management, you know,
• 18:40
  sort of protocol for that. And as we all know, changing slides on the fly, probably, you know,
• 18:47
  it really does. It puts everyone at edge, because no one's quite sure what's going to happen. But
• 18:55
  I think, you know, it's just making sure that you've got a good speaker preview area,
• 18:59
  that people can sort of work through things with enough time. And often, it is just time.
• 19:05
  We did put a ban on one company just turning up with, you know, memory sticks on the fly and
• 19:11
  plugging them in at their own lectern, because things started to go wrong. You know, and people
• 19:16
  wanted to know why. And that was quite a good meeting after the event in a wash up to say,
• 19:21
  hey, you know, this is why it's happening. And it's probably not what you want to hear. But you
• 19:26
  know, it is down to your senior team turning up, you know, with changes. So actually, that was
• 19:32
  really easy to fix. It's just, you know, some more time was, you know, embedded, you know,
• 19:36
  and it's, it's just a quick change. But it works really well. And, you know, I think everyone
• 19:41
  would agree that, yeah, that feels like a good fix. But yeah. Yeah, I love because, you know,
• 19:47
  the last minute slide changes, oh, I put the wrong statistic in on slide four, and you're
• 19:53
  two minutes out from, you know, lights, you know, lights up, or house lights down. And yeah. And
• 20:01
  it's like, right, okay, we've got it on three different devices, you know, main redundant,
• 20:05
  redundant to, you know, are those devices now still online so that you can change it on one,
• 20:11
  and they'll all sync, you know, it's all those. And this comes back to kind of what I was saying,
• 20:17
  in terms of managing expectations, if somebody does do that to you, and drops it on you,
• 20:21
  and insists on that change happening, and something goes wrong during their session,
• 20:25
  there's very little that as an event manager, you can do about it, particularly in house,
• 20:30
  if it's somebody who is effectively senior to you in the organization,
• 20:34
  insisting that you make those changes. And, you know, don't take that to heart.
• 20:39
  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's again, it's the conversations need to happen. And I think
• 20:44
  it's about effective, you know, kind of whether you call it a wash up, or wrap up, you know,
• 20:51
  post event to identify, you know, why things are going well, or why things aren't going well. And
• 20:56
  I think all of those questions are important to ask. You know, and I think it's just, again,
• 21:01
  it's that education piece. But you're absolutely right. It's some, you don't want to say no.
• 21:07
  But it's it's having the support often of the in house team, you know, those in house event
• 21:12
  managers when they need to say, you know, no to the senior stakeholders, which again,
• 21:18
  it's not easy, but yeah, sometimes needs to happen.
• 21:22
  Under resourcing is another thing that kind of jumps out. And that, I guess, can mean a number
• 21:27
  of things. What when you when you talk about under resourcing, you know, in this report,
• 21:33
  and in a wider context, what how would you sort of define that?
• 21:36
  So yeah, I think there's a it's a really good question. And I think the
• 21:43
  a good example would be we started to work with a business probably seven years ago,
• 21:50
  and they're a membership organization. When we joined, they were having really, really difficult
• 21:56
  times, you know, with with supply chain, and also in house. Part of that was, I think that they,
• 22:06
  they were, they bought, they'd onboarded some, some businesses that just weren't supporting
• 22:10
  them effectively. And, you know, weren't providing the right information and resource and, you know,
• 22:16
  and having that sort of almost briefing period to dig into that was really important. But they also
• 22:23
  had issues in house, because they just, they didn't have enough people to deliver events.
• 22:27
  And actually, part of the work that we did with them was was to point that out and say, actually,
• 22:33
  you're going to need more people here, or we're going to need to bring people in, you know,
• 22:37
  as a freelance resource to support that. And that'll deal with, you know, a lot of the issues
• 22:44
  that they're having. It was probably, you know, it has been a, you know, sort of seven year process
• 22:49
  to fix, you know, most of that. It's absolutely smooth. Now, you know, everybody, everybody
• 22:57
  couldn't be happier on both sides of the fence, but that stuff doesn't often happen. You know,
• 23:02
  instantly, it's a very different kettle of fish, if you're only working for a business,
• 23:08
  once, you know, if they just bring you in to do a specific event, but it's just being eyes wide
• 23:14
  open, you know, and really pointing out, I think when I first started in the industry,
• 23:19
  you know, it's like, in my 20s, and say no, felt like the worst thing in the world, you know,
• 23:25
  you didn't do it, you often just muddled through, you know, and the stress and the, you know, that
• 23:32
  ability. And I think actually thinking back to that is, it's really important to give people
• 23:37
  that voice doesn't matter where they are, you know, within the crew. And, you know,
• 23:42
  it's the combined effort of everybody on site. So you need to give everybody a voice to say,
• 23:48
  I don't think this is going to work, or there's a problem here. And if you don't do that,
• 23:53
  and then often, you know, you could find that, you know, that, that, you know, the technician
• 23:58
  in the background, who could have pointed out something that was going to go wrong,
• 24:01
  you know, just didn't have an opportunity to sit. So it did go wrong. And I think, you know,
• 24:05
  I'm thinking back to some of the jobs that I used to do, you know, on sort of Park Lane in
• 24:09
  London in some of those hotels, you know, where you're sort of working 24 hour days, and, you
• 24:14
  know, inevitably, you know, slightly more privacy than it is now. But it's, yeah, it's, yeah, it
• 24:21
  does, it does. Yeah, it does give us some good learning and some good ability to pass that on,
• 24:25
  I think. Yeah, it, you mentioned, you know, the word no there. And it's a very, very powerful
• 24:32
  word that a lot of people are, as you quite rightly say, so sometimes scared to actually
• 24:38
  utter to people and but but you know, it can be the most useful word in the event organisers
• 24:45
  arsenal, can't it sometimes, provided it's delivered in the right way. And your experience,
• 24:50
  and you've got that experience once you once you realise how powerful it is, say somebody,
• 24:54
  no, but this is why I'm saying no. Once you can back that up and reason as to why this is not a
• 25:00
  good idea to do this at this stage of the event. It's a it's a good tool to have in your arsenal.
• 25:06
  Yeah, absolutely. I think it's about delivering news in the right way. I think if you just say
• 25:09
  no and walk away, it never goes down very well. But I think if you, you know, if you can, if you
• 25:16
  can talk it through, you know, in a rational way with lots of information, you know, and the backup
• 25:22
  of, you know, your in house teams, and, you know, and your crew, you know, I think it very rarely
• 25:29
  is a problem. You know, people are really, really happy to take, you know, advice and,
• 25:35
  you know, and take things when when, you know, because it's live. And, you know, there's a lot
• 25:41
  of there's a lot of things on the line often, if you're delivering information to stakeholders or
• 25:47
  customers, or, you know, whatever that is, or internal audiences, you know, I think it's fine.
• 25:52
  It's Yeah, it's just about having having the right information at the right time. But yeah,
• 25:56
  it's important to be able to say no, for sure.
• 26:00
  The experience thing was something else that jumped out at me from from the report reading it
• 26:04
  prior to today's podcast. And in terms of experience, you asked the respondents, the 150
• 26:10
  respondents to you get the three, you know, cat or brackets, one to three years experience, four
• 26:16
  to seven years experience or eight plus years experience. At the four to seven years one
• 26:24
  jumped out me, I'm not going to give away what the what the actual statistic was,
• 26:27
  how many people in there, but the first thing that came into my head was a year is a long time
• 26:32
  in the events industry. The experience that somebody can develop in one year is vast. And
• 26:39
  and that four to seven year sort of section, somebody who's got four years experience,
• 26:46
  I would argue is significantly less experience than somebody who's got seven years because that
• 26:50
  that extra three years will count for so much in the industry. And that's a really interesting
• 26:55
  bracket there. I wonder what, when people read this, what they're going to sort of maybe pull
• 26:58
  apart or, or again, resonate with them if they fit into that category. Yeah, for sure. I think,
• 27:05
  you know, we tend to work with people across the board. You know, and I think it's sometimes,
• 27:13
  again, the experiences that you that you sort of bring on through those early years,
• 27:18
  and then into that sort of midterm of experience, I think it's, it's interesting that sometimes
• 27:27
  until you get put into a situation where you have to download that information to someone,
• 27:33
  you don't realize how experienced you are. And I think there's a really nice and I had it in the
• 27:38
  industry, you know, after a number of years where someone asked me a question, and I gave an answer.
• 27:44
  And I sounded like I knew what I was talking about. And they listened, and they said, Okay,
• 27:49
  that sounds really good. And I was like, Okay, that's I'm starting to sort of get my, you know,
• 27:53
  start to understand the industry a bit. And, you know, what I should be doing. And it's a really
• 27:59
  nice moment. So yeah, you know, I do. I think that you're right. Absolutely. There's a there's a real,
• 28:04
  you know, every year, you can do, you might do, you know, 10 shows or 50 shows in a year. And
• 28:10
  those experiences are, you know, they all they do make you, you know, the event professional that
• 28:15
  you are. And yeah, it's fantastic. The, the sort of the final elements of the report, when people
• 28:23
  read it for themselves, you'll notice, you know, I wouldn't say conclude, conclusion would be the
• 28:30
  wrong word here. But it that there are definitely sort of guidance, tips, some pointers in the right
• 28:36
  direction, some analysis of the statistics and how and what that could maybe point to. And it
• 28:42
  breaks it down into sort of really useful categories right at the end, you know, if you're an event
• 28:46
  manager, if you manage event managers, and if you're an external partner, so there are three
• 28:51
  really nice sort of clear categories that people can look at, because ultimately, whether or not
• 28:56
  you only sit in one of those, the other two are always going to be relevant to you. And it's
• 29:01
  important that people have that understanding of other roles as well, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:06
  I think you, you know, we'd encourage everyone to, you know, download the report and have a look,
• 29:11
  and you can you can grab that from our website that's on the front page. And, you know, I think
• 29:17
  read it and just see what what resonates for you. Yeah, no, I think everyone needs to just yeah,
• 29:23
  sort of take it as yeah, in the way that they, they feel resonates with them for sure. Yeah.
• 29:30
  Yeah. And it's, I mean, you mentioned there, let's use this opportunity to sort of throw
• 29:35
  the website out there. clinkclink.co.uk is the, is the website to go to. We'll pop that on the
• 29:42
  screen as well. And there'll be a link in the, in the description below the video of this on
• 29:48
  the Event Engineer's website. But it's really, really easy to find, as Alex says, just go to
• 29:53
  the clinkclink.co.uk website. I found it under there, our thoughts section, which is like your
• 30:00
  blog. But, you know, I think that there's a link on the homepage as well. So it's really,
• 30:04
  really easy to find. And if you just sort of search, if you wanted to clink clink, you know,
• 30:09
  sleep report, you will find it really, really easily. Just we're on the subject sort of giving
• 30:14
  out, you know, contact information, things like that, Alex. Presumably you guys are on the social
• 30:19
  platforms, LinkedIn, things like that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you can find me and all the
• 30:24
  team and the business on, on LinkedIn for sure. And yeah, there's, yeah, if, if you want to get
• 30:31
  in touch with us directly, hit the website and, or you can go to Let's Talk at clinkclink.co.uk.
• 30:39
  Fabulous. Before we wrap up, Alex, is there, having done this and gone through the process
• 30:44
  of producing this report, is there an intention to look at this again in five years time, for
• 30:50
  example, and see how things have changed? Is it intended as a one-off? Where do you stand on it?
• 30:55
  I think, to be honest, we're not sure. It's what we're finding that it's generating a huge amount
• 31:02
  of conversations, you know, with, with some new, new people that, you know, coming in as well.
• 31:09
  But also with our clients, you know, and those client teams, I think we will do it again.
• 31:15
  And I think we might look at, you know, how we expand it to more people. You know, we only
• 31:22
  picked 150 this time. But, you know, it'd be great to get more people doing it. And also,
• 31:29
  but I think one of, one of the biggest things for us is actually we're getting our, you know,
• 31:33
  clients talking about this, you know, with their internal teams, and it's generating some really
• 31:39
  positive, you know, results for them. Yes, it's fabulous. And we've not used the word
• 31:45
  well-being at the moment, but there is an element of the report that talks about well-being
• 31:50
  initiatives, leadership, the support that's available for teams. And that's part of a,
• 31:55
  you know, wider ongoing conversation in the events industry, isn't it?
• 31:59
  Yeah, and I'd encourage anyone, you know, that takes this sort of company leadership
• 32:03
  role, you know, give your teams plenty of time for that, you know, be flexible. You know, we,
• 32:09
  we have a hugely flexible working week. We know that everybody has to be on site for things. But,
• 32:17
  you know, we have flexible working practices, we're in the office, and we work from home.
• 32:21
  You know, if someone needs to go to a sports day for their children, go and do that. You know,
• 32:26
  that's great. And we also give everyone an hour off every week for something called Witness
• 32:30
  to Fitness, that everyone could just go to the gym or go for a walk, or, you know, whatever that
• 32:35
  is, no questions asked. So I think it's really important to, to just recognise that, you know,
• 32:40
  your work life's not normal life, you know, you have something outside of that, just go and enjoy
• 32:45
  it. And yeah, just, yeah, be as flexible as you possibly can, for sure.
• 32:49
  That's great. That's great to hear. Because, you know, one thing that I do think sometimes,
• 32:53
  particularly going back to the whole, you know, the subject of today, in effect,
• 32:57
  in-house event managers is that they often work for organisations who are constrained in maybe
• 33:03
  the traditional working practices in terms of Monday to Friday, nine to five. And, you know,
• 33:10
  as people will testify, who work in events, you will do two or three weeks work within one week
• 33:16
  when it's the live week, you know, you will cram so much work into such a short period of time,
• 33:22
  that a lot of the time, I think that there is not an understanding of people who don't work
• 33:26
  in events, just how much you do in a short period. And that it's so important to have that
• 33:30
  flexibility. You know, it's so important to have those other periods where you're not in event mode,
• 33:36
  full event mode, where you can have that flexibility with the understanding that when
• 33:40
  it comes to those particular weeks and moments during the year, you'll be working two or three
• 33:44
  times more. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm pleased to say that the majority of organisations,
• 33:50
  if not all the organisations we work with have a very flexible approach, because they know how
• 33:55
  people in events work. So it just, you know, there needs to be a recognition for that it's not nine
• 33:58
  to five. You know, it's often unsociable hours. But the flip side of that is, you know, have some
• 34:04
  flexibility at work and, you know, enjoy life when you can. Absolutely. My guest today on the podcast
• 34:10
  is Alex Perne. Alex is the CEO of Clink Clink. We're talking today about the Do You Sleep Well
• 34:16
  at Night report that Clink Clink have produced, sleep stress and well being in UK event management.
• 34:22
  I would encourage anybody who follows this podcast to go and download it from the
• 34:27
  clinkclink.co.uk website. It's been really well put together. It's so easy to read. It's only,
• 34:33
  you know, we're not talking a vast, huge document here. We're talking, I think it's, you know, 13,
• 34:38
  14 pages, really nice PDF format, very, very well formatted, all the sort of the stuff that,
• 34:44
  you know, you would hope goes into something like this that makes it easy for people to read.
• 34:48
  You know, even in snippets, you don't have to read the whole thing all the way through in one go,
• 34:52
  you can sort of pull out a page at a time, maybe digest the information that's in there. But
• 34:56
  yeah, congratulations, Alex. It's a really good report. And it's something that I hope that,
• 35:00
  you know, anybody listens to this podcast goes and has a listen to and download. So
• 35:04
  thanks for joining us today. Thanks for the opportunity, James, really appreciate it.
• 35:08
  Not a not a problem at all. And just before we wrap up today's episode, as usual,
• 35:13
  a few reminders for our own bits and pieces. If you are watching today's episode of the podcast
• 35:19
  on eventindustrynews.com, thank you very much for tuning in and doing so. Please do whilst you're
• 35:24
  on the website, have a little look around at some of the other sections on there, the A to Z
• 35:28
  supplier directory, of course, if you work in the industry, and you're looking for a product service
• 35:32
  or a supplier, the chances are you will find it on the A to Z supplier directory, as well as all of
• 35:37
  the special features and supplements that are available on event industry news looking at
• 35:40
  particular niche elements. Don't forget as well the brand new wedding section that was launched
• 35:45
  at the start of this year. So if you're a venue, and you deal with, you know, events and weddings
• 35:51
  are part of those, we now have a dedicated section on the event industry news website
• 35:56
  that ties the wedding industry into the wider events industry. So if that's applicable to you,
• 36:02
  please do go and check it out. Of course, you may have started your journey today listening
• 36:07
  to this podcast, wherever you get your podcasts from. If you've done that, fantastic, thanks very
• 36:11
  much for tuning in. But please do head over to the eventindustrynews.com website and check out
• 36:16
  the video versions, as well as all those other bits and pieces that I've just mentioned that
• 36:20
  are available on the website. Which brings us to the end of today's episode. And before we wrap up,
• 36:25
  I mentioned at the very beginning, we're now in the great position to have a headline podcast
• 36:29
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• 36:35
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• 36:46
  systems that work first time. Check out Present Communications for more information. And that
• 36:52
  brings us to the end of today's podcast. Thanks very much again to my guest Alex Pern from
• 36:56
  Clink Clink, and we'll see you on the next edition. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Goodbye.