Those of us working within the sporting and events industries right now are trying to navigate extraordinary and uncertain times. With venues closed and fixtures and events cancelled or postponed, you might be sat working from home wondering what it is you should be doing.

But we know this period of lockdown and uncertainty will pass, so now is the perfect time for you to get your head down and review the effectiveness of your procedures and plans.

8 things to review for a more efficient and robust accreditation procedure: 

1 Look at the big picture 

What would you like your accreditation procedure to do more effectively? Do you need to collect and manage data more efficiently? Make the movement of staff more secure with access controls? Reduce threat levels by doing background checks? Be able to print badges faster? Decide on your priorities and discuss them with your team and accreditation service provider. If you want to shake things up, this is a good time to do it.

2 Check for expiring documents

If you have already approved a number of accreditations for an event that has now been postponed, double check if any documents are due to expire before the event is staged. Passports, visa documents and security licenses might expire during this period, so make sure you collect fresh copies before producing any badges.

3 Get on top of your legal requirements

Use the accreditation process to collect ID, visa documentation and licenses to ensure all workers are legally allowed to work and avoid fine of £20,000 per person. And keep on the right side of GDPR laws by collecting and storing personal data on a secure system that can encrypt sensitive information and protect software from unauthorised access. Read more about keeping on the right side of the law

4 Review badge designs 

A correctly designed badge that contains anti-counterfeit measures and the right information will give your contractors, staff and media efficient access to your event and help keep illegal workers, ticket fraudsters and potential criminals out. Here are 7 things to include in your badge design.

5 Audit your data

Something you usually probably don’t have time for, but it will really help improve the way you work and keep you one step ahead of data protection legislation. If you don’t have everything in a central, secure database system, then now is the time to collate it and interrogate it. Is there data missing? Are all of your photos good enough quality? Are all of your files labelled correctly? How old is each record, and do you still need all of the information?

6 Check your access zones

Want to improve security? Then get a floorplan of your venue and map out who needs access. Where do they need to enter? Where do they need go? Where should they not be allowed?  Consider everyone that isn’t a ticket holder and use this information to map out your access zones and areas that need controlled entry. If you need to make changes to your access permissions, then do it.

7 Check your staff screening procedure

We know contractors present particular challenges. The timescales for employing them are often relatively short, and there is potential for security arrangements to overlooked due to sub-contracting. But on event day you need to know who everyone in your workforce is, that they are legally allowed to work, and aren’t suspected criminals. So review your staff screening procedure, make sure it is incorporated into your contracts and that your contractors are on-board with any changes.

8 Consider integrations to streamline operations

Your accreditation software should be able to integrate with third party software and hardware to streamline your operations – access control systems, security checks, workforce rostering, volunteer management, facial recognition technology, police systems – these kinds of integrations will stop the manual intervention needed to get data out of one system and into another. Your contractors might now have the time to implement any products development to set these integrations up.