Conferences Help Recruit and Retain Employees

With budgets stretched thin, salaries tight and benefits disappearing, employers have to think of creative ways to recruit talented employees who still want more than a paycheck for their hard work. A younger, more idealistic generation of workers want the same basic benefits of a job as their older, more experienced co-workers--a decent wage; medical and dental benefits they can afford; time off to travel or just hang out at home; and a pleasant work environment with people they can relate to. 

The manager is usually the one who gets to travel for a week to Las Vegas or the Bahamas for the trade show or professional conference. Employees like the opportunity to network, travel and learn something new. Attending a professional conference is a perfect combination of all three. Attending a conference is an often overlooked but valuable job perk for employees.

An Inc.com article, “4 Reasons Your Employees Should Attend Conferences,” gives four benefits for the employee and the company. Conferences have great speakers, breakout sessions and vendors giving away freebies that are part of the learning experience. But it’s not all about personal development. Keeping the customer’s needs in mind while choosing workshops makes good personal and business sense.

Learning is the most obvious reason to go to a conference. Big professional or association conferences bring in the best speakers with cutting-edge ideas. Get the conference program in advance and plan which sessions you want to attend.  Map out a plan and a strategy. The big-name speakers will pack the meeting space, so go early or risk being shut out. If several co-workers are attending, multiply the experience by attending different sessions and then sharing the information later. If a session is boring, don’t feel embarrassed walking out. Speakers know everyone won’t be engaged. Don’t waste your time.

Conferences are great places to network for personal and company connections. Who can you meet and what products, services or ideas can improve your personal, professional or business effectiveness? While everyone knows you go to conferences to make connections that can bolster your career or get yourself in front of prospective employers, finding prospective partners for the business will impress connections too.

Placing employees at conferences make them part of the “buzz” by having them post comments and content on Facebook, photos on instagram and tweet ideas and comments back to the home office. Content used to sit in a handout or in someone’s brain until they came back and wrote a report or gave a presentation. With social media, the rest of the team back at the office can share in the learning. A blog from the conference floor posted to the company’s website can add excitement to your site and let your clients, customers or prospects know your company is in the game and values employees.

Once back to work, those lucky employees need to find ways to share what they learned. A list of 10 best ideas from the conference and how they can improve processes or products, save the company time and/or money or solve problems is a good start. No one should come back from a conference without brochures, CDs, DVDs or flash drives full of free materials or information that is specifically beneficial to the company. 

Using these tips will multiply the value of a few conference registration fees and hotel rooms. Sending employees to conferences is a win for them and a big win for the rest of the organization.

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