It’s encouraging to see more and more of our members and industry colleagues getting back to work and to hear reports of the number of successful in-person business events being held, each-one demonstrating first-hand the power and importance of face-to-face meetings and the recovery of our industry.
However, as our economy and our industry are swiftly recovering, we’ve gone from more than a year of acute unemployment to an environment in which many organizations are suffering from severe labor shortages, leading to difficult staffing and service challenges. While there are numerous factors contributing to the labor shortage, and no easy solutions, the situation does present our industry and our association with significant opportunities.
As organizations struggle to find talent, they will also need to re-evaluate the skillsets necessary in their workforce, leading to a need to focus on upskilling and reskilling the talent that they bring on board. Such professional education is the role of a good association, and that’s where MPI will increasingly stand out and support you and your organization.
We all have a responsibility to ensure a future-ready, inclusive and more diverse industry and workforce.
The MPI Academy has been leading the market in industry education in an especially vibrant way during the pandemic—from unlocking all of its on-demand content, early on in the pandemic when it was needed most, to dramatically increasing its digital offerings and career support resources. Across every facet of MPI, we’ll continue to focus on your professional development and the development of your workforce to ensure that as the recovery progresses, we’ll all be in the best position possible to execute better, more strategic meetings and events than ever before. MPI and the MPI Academy are dedicated to your success.
The labor shortage also presents an opportunity to rethink and reshape our labor pool. Across our industry and the MPI community, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebuild our association’s volunteer leadership, the industry workforce and the meeting and event industry as a whole by recruiting and attracting new talent to our industry. We all have a responsibility to ensure a future-ready, inclusive and more diverse industry and workforce, and to promote the career and personal growth opportunities available in this industry to new constituent groups. The bottom line is that to close our labor gap, the pre-pandemic status quo just won’t cut it.
Join me as we all work to not only rebuild and evolve our beloved industry, but also rebuild and evolve the people that make it so incredible—the people who understand through and through that when we meet, we change the world.
Paul Van Deventer
MPI President and CEO
pvandeventer@mpi.org
Follow me on Twitter @MPICEOPaul
