When reflecting on why the Compex staff celebrate Women’s Day, it’s clear that developing and enabling an environment that recognises female talent and nurtures their potential and skills is essential not only in the industry but in the workplace in general.
In many instances female Compex colleagues bring a unique perspective to the solutions they deliver to their clients. For many years the supplier sector within the exhibition and events environment was primarily male dominated; the last two decades, however, has increasingly seen women play a greater and more influential role in the outcome of many a successful event.
By their very nature, men tend to be more involved in the physical side of supply, whereas a women’s natural ability for fluent project management, creativity and organisation has led to an evolving situation where more and more events are being managed by a combination of both female and male skillsets.
This dual-gender collaboration has proved to be advantageous, introducing a diverse range of skills and knowledge into the industry and helping ensure it’s’ continued growth.
“At Compex 37% of our staff members are females, spanning the disciplines of sales, project management; factory management; health and safety management, finance, HR, marketing and design. Many of our female colleagues are the first point of contact for many of our exhibitors, their ability to efficiently handle multiple requirements at the same time for various exhibitors is an asset that we value and cannot do without,” says Dean Gunningham, operations director of Compex.
“These ladies take the lead on a build-up and manage the entire process from start to finish, coordinating numerous supplier requests and on-site changes, often within exceedingly tight deadlines, whilst ensuring that all requests come together to create the desired outcome for the exhibition or event.”
Female colleagues have an intuitive understanding of exactly what the client desires and needs, this has proved over and over again to be a core strength when selling and designing custom stands and pavilions. Women have the ability to visualise and create exciting spaces, and brainstorm ideas that often lead to the development of workable solutions, this combination of skills lends itself seamlessly to providing great stand designs and producing extraordinary events.
“Our art department at Compex is primarily supported by females and they have designed incredible stands which have exceeded not only our clients’ expectations but also that of the operations team who then need to build the stands,” adds Dean.
As we celebrate Women’s Day on 9 August, it is important to reflect on the fact that women have and will continue to firmly establish themselves as an influencing force throughout the business world. In our industry where women play such an integral role, it is essential that we continue to create an inclusive environment that recognises female talent, empowers them to achieve excellence and focuses on their career development as leaders within the events and exhibition sector.
