04/11/2025

How to Close Workforce Gaps

After COVID, one association had to address industry staff shortages

Every association was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but for the Experiential Designers & Producers Association, it was what Michael McMahon calls a "near-extinction event."

EDPA members work on the design of face-to-face events like tradeshows and conferences, so the global shutdown hit its members especially hard. And it has a wide range of members, said McMahon, who chairs EDPA's future workforce committee. "The members of EDPA are designers and producers, but there are also labor companies and other really specific providers, and it can all get very complex," he said.

And the field’s workforce was drained from the experience, says EDPA Executive Director Dasher Lowe. “During the pandemic, we were the first industry affected and the last to recover, and we lost a lot of our workforce from that,” he says. “We realized coming out of it that we need more designers. We need skilled labor, we need project managers, salespeople. There were a lot of different roles to fill."

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.