Planning Freshers’ Week? How to Get Temporary Staffing Right

Freshers’ Week is one of the busiest periods in the university calendar. Thousands of new students may be arriving in an unfamiliar town or city, learning their way around campus, attending Freshers’ Fairs, joining societies and taking part in evening events within the space of a few days.

For universities, Students’ Unions, event organisers and brands, temporary staff can help keep that activity organised and welcoming. The challenge is not simply deciding how many extra people are needed, but understanding where they will be most useful and what each role needs to achieve.

Freshers’ Week Staffing Starts With the Student Journey

It is tempting to begin with numbers. How many temporary staff do we need? How many entrances are there? How many people are expected?

Those questions matter, but a better starting point is to think about the event from the student’s point of view. Where will they arrive, where are they most likely to get lost, and where could queues develop? Who will answer general questions, and what happens if an entrance suddenly becomes crowded?

Once you work through the event in that way, the staffing requirements become much clearer. Someone arriving at university for the first time may not know where the Students’ Union is, which building hosts registration or where a Freshers’ Fair is being held. Temporary staff therefore need to be placed where they solve an actual problem rather than simply where it is convenient to position them.

Campus Guides and Welcome Staff

Campus guides and welcome staff are often among the first people students encounter, meaning they can have a surprisingly strong influence on the atmosphere of the day.

Good welcome staff should be approachable, observant and confident enough to offer help before somebody has to ask. They may direct students towards registration, accommodation, Freshers’ Fair venues, transport points or welfare services.

Location matters as much as personality. If students are repeatedly getting confused at a particular junction, that is where support is needed. Well-positioned staff can also reduce congestion by keeping people moving rather than allowing groups to gather around entrances or information points.

Event Staff and Team Leaders

Freshers’ Week often includes several activities running at the same time, particularly on larger campuses. Temporary event staff may help with registration, wristbands, information desks, venue entrances, exhibitor support or general visitor assistance.

Where several temporary staff are being used, an experienced team leader can make the operation easier to manage by acting as the link between the temporary workforce and the permanent event team.

Events rarely run exactly as planned. One entrance might be quiet while another becomes unexpectedly busy, so having someone who can reposition the team during the day provides useful flexibility and reduces pressure on the core organisers.

Marshals, Stewards and Security Staff

Freshers’ events can involve a great deal of movement through relatively small areas, so marshals and stewards are particularly useful where queues, entrances and pedestrian routes need managing.

They may direct people, support queue movement, monitor certain areas and help keep access routes clear. However, their responsibilities should always be clearly defined. A marshal working outside a busy venue needs to know where to direct students if one entrance becomes congested, while a steward supporting a queue should know who to contact if numbers increase beyond expectation.

Security is a separate consideration. Freshers’ Week frequently includes licensed venues, evening entertainment and events where alcohol is available, so appropriately qualified security staff may be required depending on the duties involved.

Event staff, marshals and security personnel are not interchangeable. Each group has a different role, and the staffing plan should reflect the responsibilities required rather than placing everyone under one generic job title.

Why September Staffing Needs to Be Planned Early

September is a particularly busy month for temporary staffing across the UK.

Universities and Students’ Unions run welcome programmes at broadly the same time, while the wider events industry is moving into its busy autumn period. Exhibitions return after the summer, conferences increase, and brands begin new seasonal campaigns, all drawing on the same broad temporary staffing market.

This is why it makes sense to begin planning Freshers’ Week staff as soon as dates and approximate requirements are known. You do not necessarily need every final detail before starting the process.

If you already know that welcome staff, marshals or a team leader are likely to be required, those conversations can begin while the finer details are still being confirmed. More lead time also gives you greater choice, particularly if you need a larger team, several different staff types or people working across multiple university locations.

Last-minute requirements will always happen, but building an entire Freshers’ Week team once September is under way is a very different challenge from finding one additional person.

Briefing Freshers’ Week Staff Properly

Temporary staff can only work with the information they are given.

Freshers’ Week creates a particular challenge because students often ask very specific questions about the university. Where is registration? Which building is this society in? Where is student services? What time does the event close?

Temporary staff do not need to know everything, but they do need enough information to be genuinely helpful and should know where to direct questions they cannot answer.

A good briefing should explain the event purpose as well as practical details. Understanding why their role matters helps staff behave proactively rather than simply standing at an assigned position.

Marshals need to understand the areas they are responsible for, brand ambassadors need to understand the campaign they are representing, and team leaders need enough information to see how the whole event fits together. The aim is to provide useful context without overwhelming people with information they are unlikely to need.

Safety and Crowd Planning During Freshers’ Week

Freshers’ events often involve large numbers of people unfamiliar with the venue, while some activities take place late into the evening and include alcohol. Those factors make sensible crowd planning especially important.

Good crowd management is often almost invisible to those attending. Problems become noticeable when queues block routes, too many people arrive through one entrance, or students stop inside a doorway because they do not know where to go next.

Temporary staff positioned around the site provide additional eyes and ears and may be the first people to notice that crowd movement is changing. That only works if communication has been planned properly. Staff need to know who they report concerns to, how to contact that person and what they should do if plans change.

Martyn’s Law and University Events

Universities should also be aware of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, widely known as Martyn’s Law.

The legislation applies across the UK and is intended to improve preparedness at qualifying premises and events. Higher education settings can fall within its scope depending on factors such as the type of premises and the number of people it is reasonable to expect will be present.

For Freshers’ Week planners, the practical point is not that every event suddenly requires a completely different security operation. It is that preparedness, communication and staff awareness should already form part of sensible event management.

Temporary staff should understand any relevant emergency procedures, know how instructions will be communicated and understand who they need to report to if they notice something concerning. Those arrangements should be determined by the university, venue or event organiser as part of the wider safety plan, with temporary staff properly briefed on the procedures that affect their role.

Freshers’ Week Is Also a Major Opportunity for Brands

Freshers’ Week is not only important for universities. It is one of the most attractive periods in the calendar for brands trying to reach students.

A large group of people has just moved to a new town or city, and many are actively making decisions about gyms, banking, food delivery, supermarkets, entertainment, mobile services, transport and local businesses.

That makes the student audience valuable, but it also creates a lot of competition. Students may walk through rows of stands at a Freshers’ Fair and leave with bags full of promotional material, so being present does not automatically mean being remembered.

This is where experienced promotional staff and brand ambassadors can make a difference. Rather than simply handing out leaflets, they can start conversations, explain an offer, demonstrate a product, encourage competition entries, distribute samples or support data capture.

For brands planning activity around university campuses, student marketing campaigns supported by promotional staff can also take place beyond the Freshers’ Fair itself, including around student accommodation, city centres and other locations where student footfall is naturally high.

The format should always follow the campaign objective, whether that involves sampling, demonstrations, competitions, app promotion or roaming brand ambassadors.

Case Study: Reaching Students in Headingley

One student-focused campaign we supported in Headingley, Leeds demonstrates why location and staffing can sometimes matter more than creating a large activation.

Headingley has a strong student population, so the campaign focused where the target audience was already spending time rather than asking students to attend a separate event.

We supplied two promotional staff to engage with people in the area and distribute promotional material to the intended student demographic.

It was a relatively simple campaign, but that was exactly the point. The client did not need a huge team because the objective did not require one. What mattered was having approachable staff in the right place, speaking to the right audience and understanding what they were there to communicate.

The same principle applies during Freshers’ Week. A small team of well-briefed ambassadors in the right location can sometimes achieve more than a much larger team positioned somewhere with poorer footfall.

Getting Freshers’ Week Staffing Right

There is no standard staffing formula for Freshers’ Week because every university, venue and campaign is different.

The most useful approach is to think about what students will actually experience and then decide where temporary staff can make that experience easier. Consider where people will arrive, where they may become confused, where queues could develop, which areas need monitoring and where additional support would have the greatest effect.

Brands should apply the same thinking to their own campaigns by considering who they want to reach, where those students are likely to be and what they want them to do after engaging.

From there, the mix of campus guides, event staff, team leaders, marshals, security personnel and brand ambassadors becomes much easier to determine.

Freshers’ Week should ultimately feel welcoming, energetic and well organised. When temporary staff are chosen for the right reasons, positioned where they are genuinely useful and properly briefed before the event, they help make a very busy week behind the scenes feel much simpler for the people attending it.