Member Article

The importance of the 'smise’ as the events and promotion industry makes it comeback

‘And always remember to Smise!’ Sarah Elston, founder of Slink Staffing, tells her promo staff as they prepare for their first post-lockdown job. When looking approachable and always sporting a smile is the golden rule of promo work, wearing face masks has somewhat changed the approach for Slinks’ staff.

Sarah said, “the addition of masks has meant that we’ve had to brief teams to be much more animated in their approach to the public, they have to speak louder and clearer and ‘smise’ (smile with their eyes)! We have to work together to keep everyone safe and help to ensure that the gradual return of events continues.”

Last year when Covid took over and the UK gradually came to a standstill, everyone was hit hard, in particular the events industry. Slink, who at the time were primarily an events staffing agency, saw almost their entire calendar of work wiped out for the year, just like that.

Sarah said, “The first lockdown was spent issuing thousands of pounds worth of refunds for dance events that we had successfully booked and sold out at the end of 2019, and so to have those events ripped away was devastating for our company.”

Not one to admit defeat, the team at Slink knew that to survive the times ahead they would have to adapt, and that they did.

Slink quickly realised that with over a decade of experience and a wealth of transferable skills, the dedicated team could transfer their knowledge to sectors they previously had never considered. With this in mind they took a step away from the professional sporting, coaching, arts and entertainment sector that they had always been involved in, and now offer staffing solutions to a whole host of other sectors.

Most recently Slink secured partnerships with Yorkshire heating suppliers, Boiler Central and A&B Groundworks LTD.

Though these partnerships couldn’t be further removed from the work that Slink had previously provided, their huge growth has not seen them lose touch with the events industry and with the reopening of the industry looming, they are now more keen than ever to get back to this work.

Sarah said, “Naturally we hope that over the next 12 months our core volume of events will return and we will be able to re-connect at large with our events staff. Equal to this vision we want to continue to develop new contacts for recruitment and supply of personnel to other sectors.”

“Thinking positively, we hope to be providing promotions staff to some clients over the course of the Summer holidays. Inevitably these events will be different post-covid, but live events need to come back and we are ready for whenever this happens!”

With restrictions set to be lifted further next month, though the face masks might be here to stay, the events industry are adapting. That being said, you can rest assured that you will still see plenty of Slinks’ staff ‘smizing’ this summer as they work hard to enable the safe and seamless reopening of the events industry.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Holly Harper .