SAACI NEWS

Planning in Covid-19 – what we need to consider.

By Glenton de Kock, chief executive officer of SAACI.

Many in the business events industry will know how to plan for any scenario. It is what we do. However, Covid-19 has changed one important element – we are no longer just planning internally, we are needing to communicate externally.

This is part of how we do business now. Pre-Covid-19, the scenarios, the tabletop planning exercises, the ‘what ifs’, were all managed behind closed doors. If the key operational stakeholders and decision makers were involved, we were fine. This pandemic has, however, put our audiences, guests, and delegates at the forefront – and we owe it to them to share our scenario planning.

Our recently held regional Annual General Meetings were a testament to this. The SAACI branch committees knew that our planning not only needed to assure our members, guests, and venues that we would be running the event in a safe manner, but that we were also prepared for any eventuality.

We needed – and wanted – to build confidence. We knew that there could be a hesitancy in running in-person because “what if it gets cancelled?”

Operationally, we knew that we needed to plan two versions of the event − a) if it ran live and in-person and b) if we faced short term restrictions due the rise in the infection rate.

After all, we were in a third wave of infections and understood that this was a very real likelihood. We asked ourselves, “if we suddenly moved to an alert level that prohibits in-person meetings, how will we re-imagine the event?” Naturally, we would go online. However, we needed to consider the online experience as well. Importantly, we needed to ensure that we did return to the venue which we had allowed to honour our commitment. We intended to do so and continued to show confidence in in-person business meetings. When planning, consider who needs to know what the progress is and where the planning currently stands along with what the potential scenarios are. Consider the power of communication in strengthening your engagement with your audience as they continue to face uncertainty. Building confidence and providing certainty could be the difference between them attending inperson, booking a ticket, or passing it up.