[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":192},["ShallowReactive",2],{"marketing-blog-blog\u002Frunning-the-front-door-when-you-are-short-staffed":3,"marketing-blog-related-blog\u002Frunning-the-front-door-when-you-are-short-staffed":172},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"category":150,"date":151,"description":152,"draft":153,"extension":154,"image":155,"imageAlt":156,"imageCredit":157,"imageCreditUrl":158,"meta":159,"navigation":160,"path":161,"readTime":162,"seo":163,"stem":164,"tags":165,"__hash__":171},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Frunning-the-front-door-when-you-are-short-staffed.md","Running the front door when you are short staffed","The CheckInHub team",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":140},"minimark",[10,14,17,20,25,28,31,35,38,57,60,64,67,75,79,82,95,99,102,109,122,126,129,132],[11,12,13],"p",{},"Every front door plan assumes a number of people. Four on the desk, one floating, one on the lanyard table. Then someone calls in sick at seven in the morning, the agency sends three instead of five, and you are standing in the foyer at half past eight doing the arithmetic again with doors in thirty minutes.",[11,15,16],{},"This is not a rare event any more. When ESSA surveyed its member companies in November 2025, 73% said they had experienced recruitment challenges in the previous twelve months, and 32% reported they were not operating at full capacity because they could not find enough staff (ESSA member survey, November 2025). Being short on the door has quietly become a normal operating condition rather than a bad day.",[11,18,19],{},"So the useful question is not how to avoid it. It is what you change when it happens, and what you deliberately leave alone.",[21,22,24],"h2",{"id":23},"decide-what-the-door-is-actually-for","Decide what the door is actually for",[11,26,27],{},"A front desk usually does about six things at once: find the guest, check them in, print or hand over a badge, answer a question about the wifi, point at the toilets, and take a walk-up registration. With a full crew, that blend is fine. Two people down, it is the blend itself that creates the queue, because every guest waits behind whichever job is slowest.",[11,29,30],{},"Pick the one job the desk must do, which is nearly always checking people in and keeping the count right, and move everything else off it. The badge table goes a metre to the side. Questions go to whoever is floating. A sign covers the two things people ask most. The desk does one thing quickly instead of six things at the pace of the worst one.",[21,32,34],{"id":33},"give-the-easy-arrivals-back-to-the-guests","Give the easy arrivals back to the guests",[11,36,37],{},"The fastest way to recover two missing crew is to stop making a person handle the arrivals that never needed one. A guest with a valid pass on their phone does not require a human to look anything up. They need a screen to scan against and someone nearby if it goes wrong.",[11,39,40,41,46,47,51,52,56],{},"A tablet on a stand running self check-in absorbs the straightforward half of the queue and leaves your remaining crew for the half that genuinely needs them: the name that is spelled differently on the list, the plus one who was never registered, the person who booked under their company. We went through the economics of this in ",[42,43,45],"a",{"href":44},"\u002Fblog\u002Freducing-door-staff-with-unattended-check-in","reducing door staff with unattended check-in",", and the practical setup in ",[42,48,50],{"href":49},"\u002Fblog\u002Fa-tablet-on-a-stand-the-simplest-kiosk-that-works","a tablet on a stand: the simplest kiosk that works",". If you are putting a kiosk out for the first time under pressure, keep the flow to as few taps as possible, as in ",[42,53,55],{"href":54},"\u002Fblog\u002Fdesigning-a-kiosk-flow-people-finish","designing a kiosk flow people finish",".",[11,58,59],{},"The point is not that the kiosk replaces a person. It is that it takes the arrivals a person adds nothing to.",[21,61,63],{"id":62},"split-the-queue-before-it-forms-not-after","Split the queue before it forms, not after",[11,65,66],{},"With a short crew there is a temptation to keep one long line, because it looks like the fairest use of the people you have. It is usually the opposite. One line means every difficult arrival stops everybody behind them.",[11,68,69,70,74],{},"Two lanes, one for people who already have a pass and one for everything else, keeps the simple traffic moving at scanning speed while the awkward cases get the time they need. It costs you nothing in staff, only a decision and two signs. ",[42,71,73],{"href":72},"\u002Fblog\u002Fsplitting-the-door-into-lanes-when-the-queue-builds","Splitting the door into lanes when the queue builds"," covers how to word the signs so people sort themselves without being told.",[21,76,78],{"id":77},"put-your-least-experienced-person-where-the-list-is-shortest","Put your least experienced person where the list is shortest",[11,80,81],{},"When crew arrive late or unbriefed, the instinct is to pair them with someone experienced. That doubles the cost of the shortage, because now two people are doing one job.",[11,83,84,85,89,90,94],{},"Better to give the newest person the narrowest possible task on their own. Scanning passes in a pre-registered lane is a five-minute skill. Handling a guest who is not on the list is not. Keep the walk-up desk with whoever knows the event, and let the new person do the repeatable thing well. ",[42,86,88],{"href":87},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-door-brief-that-takes-five-minutes","The door brief that takes five minutes"," is written for exactly this morning, and if there is any time at all, ",[42,91,93],{"href":92},"\u002Fblog\u002Fbriefing-your-door-crew-before-doors-open","briefing your door crew before doors open"," is the fuller version.",[21,96,98],{"id":97},"do-not-lose-the-count-to-save-five-minutes","Do not lose the count to save five minutes",[11,100,101],{},"There is one shortcut worth naming, because it is the one people reach for when they are under-staffed and it costs more than it saves: dropping back to a printed list and a pen, or letting everyone work under a single shared login.",[11,103,104,105,56],{},"Both feel faster at half past eight. Both mean that by eleven you cannot say how many people are in the building, who let them in, or whether that name was ticked twice. If the fire alarm goes at midday, the printed list is the thing you will wish you had not chosen. Under Martyn's Law the expectation to know who is in your building is now explicit, which we wrote about in ",[42,106,108],{"href":107},"\u002Fblog\u002Fmartyns-law-and-the-front-door","Martyn's Law and the front door",[11,110,111,112,116,117,121],{},"Giving each person on the door their own login costs about a minute each and keeps the audit trail readable afterwards, as in ",[42,113,115],{"href":114},"\u002Fblog\u002Fgiving-crew-their-own-lanes-and-logins","giving crew their own lanes and logins"," and ",[42,118,120],{"href":119},"\u002Fblog\u002Fan-audit-trail-you-can-actually-read","an audit trail you can actually read",". Keep the count honest and a short-staffed door is merely slower. Lose it and the day gets genuinely difficult.",[21,123,125],{"id":124},"what-a-thin-door-looks-like-when-it-works","What a thin door looks like when it works",[11,127,128],{},"Three people instead of five, one tablet checking guests in on its own, two lanes with two signs, badges a metre to the side, and everyone signed in as themselves. The average check-in still takes about eight seconds, because that part was never the bottleneck. The queue is a little longer at the peak and gone by twenty past.",[11,130,131],{},"Nobody in the room knows you were two down. That is the whole objective. A front door under pressure is not about heroics from the people who did turn up, it is about removing the work they should never have been doing, and protecting the one number that has to be right at the end of the day.",[11,133,134,135,139],{},"If you are still planning rather than firefighting, ",[42,136,138],{"href":137},"\u002Fblog\u002Fhow-many-people-you-need-on-the-front-door","how many people you need on the front door"," sets out the arithmetic, and it is worth building your plan so that losing one person is inconvenient rather than structural.",{"title":141,"searchDepth":142,"depth":142,"links":143},"",2,[144,145,146,147,148,149],{"id":23,"depth":142,"text":24},{"id":33,"depth":142,"text":34},{"id":62,"depth":142,"text":63},{"id":77,"depth":142,"text":78},{"id":97,"depth":142,"text":98},{"id":124,"depth":142,"text":125},"Managing crew","2026-07-25","The crew you planned for is not always the crew you get. What to change at the door when you are two people down, what to hand to the guests, and the one number you must not lose.",false,"md","https:\u002F\u002Fimages.unsplash.com\u002Fphoto-1784631912338-b422ad8c88db?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop","A crew member photographed from behind in an event team t-shirt","Andrii Solok","https:\u002F\u002Funsplash.com\u002F@getslower?utm_source=checkinhub&utm_medium=referral",{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002Frunning-the-front-door-when-you-are-short-staffed",6,{"title":5,"description":152},"blog\u002Frunning-the-front-door-when-you-are-short-staffed",[166,167,168,169,170],"crew","front of house","check-in","kiosks","planning","VWV3Sc4ontXv7tgAFdUjyuj0rFjqmC1Gn4SrYtxFTqM",[173,179,186],{"to":174,"title":175,"description":176,"date":177,"category":150,"image":178,"readTime":162},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-shift-handover-at-the-front-door","The shift handover at the front door","Door crew work in three and four hour blocks, so a two-day event changes hands six times or more. Here is how to hand over the door without losing the count, the exceptions or the kit.","2026-08-14","https:\u002F\u002Fimages.unsplash.com\u002Fphoto-1713977331840-dce2771f738c?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop",{"to":180,"title":181,"description":182,"date":183,"category":150,"image":184,"readTime":185},"\u002Fblog\u002Froles-not-chaos-structuring-event-crew","Roles, not chaos: structuring event crew","A crew without defined roles is a crowd of willing people waiting to be told what to do. Structure turns goodwill into a functioning team.","2026-03-13","https:\u002F\u002Fimages.unsplash.com\u002Fphoto-1758691737492-48e8fdd336f7?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop",5,{"to":187,"title":188,"description":189,"date":190,"category":150,"image":191,"readTime":162},"\u002Fblog\u002Fcrew-shift-handovers-that-lose-nobody","Crew shift handovers that lose nobody","Handovers are where multi-day events quietly go wrong. A short, structured changeover keeps the door running when fresh crew take over.","2026-02-27","https:\u002F\u002Fimages.unsplash.com\u002Fphoto-1773883925979-73e8eb2f36ac?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop",1787334026263]