World Cup fact: Did you know the 2018 World Cup in Russia features 36 referees and 63 assistant referees managing 64 games across 12 separate venues?
Did you also know that there are around 15,000 volunteers across the venues ensuring the events run without a hitch?
Volunteers are recruited from Russia – with a number of applications also received from around the world – and provide support in areas such as ceremonies, transport, media, protocol, language services, doping control and fan services.
World Cup referees: chosen “on skills and personalities”
Referee selection began in September, 2014, with the match officials selected from leagues around the world. According to FIFA, referees and assistant referees were chosen based on skills and personality, as well as the level of understanding of football and ability to read both the game and the various tactics employed by teams. Watch this video to learn about the selection process.
The logistics and scheduling for referees and volunteers has to be managed to perfection. Timewatch understands the challenge of resource scheduling and how important it is to get right. Scheduling 99 World Cup match officials and 15,000 volunteers is not something an event, organization, or business should do with sticky pieces of paper or an Excel spreadsheet. Scheduling by email, phone calls, or voicemail is a manual process that takes time and costs money.
How our scheduling systems would win any World Cup
Timewatch scheduling systems are world class and we’re confident our platforms would win any software World Cup. The Timewatch advantage? Our system syncs calendars – everything that an employee puts into their calendar is visible to the scheduler, and vice versa.
When a scheduler uses synced calendars he or she can immediately know if an employee is available or not for an appointment with a customer. They can find a suitable time that works for everyone almost instantly. What is important – just like a referee’s decision – is accuracy.
If an employee is sick and can’t make a previously-scheduled appointment, our system makes it simple for a scheduler to search across the company to find someone with similar skills who, like a World Cup substitute, can come off the bench for a particular task.
Our system allows the scheduler to quickly find another person to fill in but – and this is important – isn’t able to replace the original employee unless they share the necessary skills. No more strikers being scheduled to replace a goalkeeper.
(Disclaimer: we don’t expect World Cup coaches to use our software to schedule playing time for their 23-man squads but it is perfect for small businesses).
Your takeaway:we can’t guarantee referees will make a decision that you’re always happy with but we can tell you that synced calendars saves resource schedulers’ time, saves employee time, and saves the organization time and money.
* Timewatch does not supply software to FIFA or the FIFA World Cup and all references to the tournament here are examples of how Timewatch resource scheduling software can be applied to current and major global events