When AV labor is involved, hiring an AV company to work at your event can be a bit of a hassle. When you’re looking for an AV firm, the idea of labor doesn’t immediately come to mind. At least not right away. You know that you will need screens, speakers and all the other equipment. Have you thought about the fact that these items will need to be operated?
It’s a fact that AV workers are hard to find. You’re hiring not only equipment but also talent when you lease. If you don’t plan your event carefully, the cost of labor can quickly become a large expense. White Wednesday today will discuss how a long workday can lead to a large bill. Will Curran will walk you through his best tips for scheduling your event to ensure that you don’t end up paying more than you agreed to.
Video Transcription: How a Long Day Can Turn into an Expensive Bill
What’s up, Endless Fans? Will Curran from Endless Events is back for another Whiteboard Tuesday. Today, we are talking about the cost of a long workday, particularly AV labor. We wanted to discuss this because we received a lot of questions and clarifications on a few rules. We thought it would be good to have its video.
All about AV labor & scheduling
When it comes to work, everything revolves around one day. One day is roughly 10 hours of labor. Half a day is five hours. This depends on the company. You’ll sometimes hear that a day is eight hours long, and other times it’s four. Endless is the company that has these rules set up. Each company will have a different way of charging and following these rules. We’ve seen that the majority of companies around the world follow these rules fairly straightforwardly. And when it comes to it, most have the same laws because they all want to protect their workers in the same manner.
As you read through, keep in mind that these are only a few rules to follow when planning your event or your schedule. When you plan out your schedule, keep in mind where you place breaks and other things. This can have a major impact on the entire AV company.
The beginning – Keep it simple.
As you plan, let’s say that this day will start at around eight or seven in the morning. We’ll start it around seven in the morning instead of eight. This is to keep things simple. When you add up the time, it takes about five hours to get to noon.
Break Talk
It is because, after five hours, most AV workers and technicians will need a rest. Sometimes, there are 15-minute breaks for the workers to grab their coffee. But, usually, after five hours of work, they need a break.
What if this is in the middle of my event?
You should plan your day to best suit this. After five hours, you will need a rest. You can take a break in two different ways. The first is called a “walk away” break or, as we will say, a one-hour walk away lunch. For a solid one hour, the employee needs to be able to leave, grab lunch, relax, or do anything else they wish to do. You cannot tell them where to go. You can’t make them work to a schedule. They must be able to get an hour-long break.
I would recommend scheduling an hour-long break for them in the middle to get some food or take a rest.
Many companies also provide a 30-minute lunch break. This means that the employees get 30 minutes of recess. But they must be fed. You’re basically saving 30 minutes. It’s 30 minutes instead of them having to go to find food, get lunch, or set up whatever, and it’s not even a lot.
In this case, it will be an hour’s break. It gives you the option to continue working a bit later in your day. We’ll discuss this in a bit.
There are two options for these breaks. You can either walk an hour away or have lunch provided. Anyone with me? After five hours of work, they deserve a break.
Here’s More Break Talk (& food!)
Let’s imagine they return and are ready to work again. You can work for another five hours before you need to take another break. After every five hours, you should feed them. It’s pretty simple. We want to provide the people. Everyone has to eat.
Boom! After five hours. You will want to take another break. To illustrate this, I will show you something that happens quite often. Let’s assume the general session begins at eight in the morning, but that seven a.m. will be a rehearsal. Then, you’ll have a full-day general session, and let’s give them a break for lunch because they won’t be doing anything during this time. We then return to available sessions. It’s a long, busy day. We have many meetings. We will then have a gala dinner at night. Whatever the event, there’s going to be a party. We’re going to need them to stay beyond six p.m., which is again five hours after now.
OT, OT…
Then, you’ll need to take another break and, in most cases, work overtime. We’ll tell you how to avoid it. In our company, after 10 hours, we call anything between 10 and 12 hours in the next section over time. Overtime is equal to one-half the rate. Say this person is paid $50 per hour. At this point, they are getting paid $75 per hour for working these two hours between six p.m. and eight p.m. This can quickly get very expensive.
How Endless is AV labor
In our company, it is done after 12 straight hours of work. If you work for 12 hours consecutive, or 13 hours, or 14 hours…God help us if it continues any longer…you’ll be working double time. This is the progression. People like to ask, “Why would people not want this?” Most engineers do not want double time or overtime because it means a long day at work. It’s a sign that they are… working late into the night. It’s not a good idea to have people working until nine or ten at night after being here since 7 am.
You’ll be able to tell.
You’re starting with happy work, and then you start getting into overtime. The warning signs should blink. If you haven’t scheduled this, and it’s starting to happen at this point, hopefully, your AV company is going to warn you. They’ll say, “Hey, just to let you know, we are about to enter overtime.” Double time is something we don’t want. They will hopefully alert you. Double time is the worst and can be very dangerous, as you will end up paying twice the rate. You have gone from $50 per hour to $100 per hour. You can imagine how your bills will start to rise.