Conference tricks

Conferences have been at the heart of the HR community for years. They have helped people to meet, learn and engage with their peers, and have been a crucial part of the industry calendar.

But are they as must-attend as they once were?

The 2013 CIPD annual conference and exhibition, seen by many as the most important HR conference in the UK, was reduced in length from three days to two. It was a significant move, and one that poses questions about the HR community’s appetite for conferences.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that conferences aren’t considered as essential as they once were, and that attendances are dropping as a result.

One of the basic functions of the conference format is to bring people together. A decade ago, events such as the CIPD annual conference would be the main opportunity for HR professionals from across the country (and from further afield) to meet up.

But in an increasingly digitally-connected world, HR has adopted social media as a tool to interact. A look at Twitter – and a click on the right hashtags – will highlight huge swathes of HR professionals and related folk, getting together. Social platforms enable people to share resources, swap ideas, socialise – pretty much the same benefits they would get from attending a conference.

And of course – this digital and social interaction comes without having to sacrifice valuable time out of the office, or the costs of sending staff to a conference with the requisite travel and accommodation thrown in.

A crowded calendar?

One explanation for the reduction in conference attendance might be the sheer number that take place each year.

It is difficult to attend even a fraction of the events in an increasingly packed calendar, not to mention the challenge to identify which ones are most worth going to. Employers have to decide whether a conference is worth losing members of their team for days at a time.

Nina Harman, Head of Events at the CIPD, admits one of the reasons for cutting the length of last year’s conference was that many delegates found it hard to justify so much time away from work.

She says: “We know from our research that people are finding it increasingly difficult to take three days out of the office. But, they really value the high quality content and networking opportunities that are offered by the conference. We felt a two-day event struck the right balance.

“And all the feedback we got from the 2013 event backed up that decision. We saw not only increased numbers, but also a real buzz around the event. People seemed to find the concentrated format, over two days, really worked for them.”

Harman argues that the shorter 2013 conference is simply the latest step in the CIPD’s efforts to meet the needs of its members. “We constantly review all the career development support we offer to HR professionals, be that in the form of conferences, training or other services,” she says.

“We haven’t got any specific plans to make any other changes right now, but nor do we intend to stand still. We’ll continue to offer a wide range of high quality conferences and other learning opportunities for the profession, and we’ll make changes whenever we feel those will improve what we do.”

Connection without conferences

When considering the future for HR conferences, it’s worth taking a look at Connecting HR, a self-facilitating network of HR professionals and related contributors who engage via social media and at their own events.

As such, members don’t depend on major conferences or large-scale events to keep in touch with industry developments and new ways of thinking.

Notably, the informal events put together by the Connecting HR community use the ‘unconference’ format. This sets them apart from the more formal, structured conferences and events. But the difference is more than simply a semantic one.

Unconferences are deliberately loosely structured and discussions are driven by attendees, who can turn up and start a discussion or join one as they please. If they want to drift from one stream to another, they’re free to do so.

It’s far removed from the ‘sit in a hall for an hour listening to a seminar with slides’ approach that most conferences employ.

HR director Ailsa Suttie is one of Connecting HR’s ‘community champions’, who help to organise events and communicate with members. She says the alternative approach to the organisation’s events help to achieve better engagement and outcomes, and she is adamant that this means attendees get a different set of benefits.

“I remember attending conferences where I’ve sat in a room and been talked at, and I never really learned anything”, she says.

“But unconferences throw up so much more interesting output. They’re led by the people who turn up, and now those users are coming from all over the country to attend. Because they’re different, people feel they can learn so much from them.

“Quite a lot of HR people used to say they didn’t go to HR conferences because they didn’t like other HR people. However, at an unconference or a tweet-up you’re more likely to meet people from different parts of the industry. They’re willing to see things from an alternative viewpoint or discuss different topics.”

Suttie also describes the conscious effort to maintain a distinction between the unconferences and the approach typically seen at the major events.

She prefers to not invite speakers or presenters who could be seen at mainstream conferences, as that blurs the lines between a conference and an unconference, and she questions the attraction of an unconference if it simply exposes attendees to the same speakers and subjects they could see elsewhere.

What does the future hold?

Suttie does see a future for conferences, and points to the CIPD’s use of a ‘blog pack’ of social-savvy bloggers and tweeters to help disseminate output from last year’s event. This meant non-attendees – such as Suttie herself – were able to access information from the conference they would previously have missed out on.

In doing this, the CIPD acknowledges the value of social media for conference purposes, and it could be argued that it increased the conference’s reach as a result. Rather than allowing social media to replace the conference, it is starting to be used as part of the conference itself.

So, perhaps the future of conferences is a hybrid of the formal, old-school approach and the loose, unconference-style format, where attendees drive the discussion themselves and are in greater control of what happens and what they take away.

And by integrating social media, conference organisers are readying the format for the future.

The CIPD’s Harman certainly thinks so. She says: “Everything we see tells us that our conferences remain an important part of the mix. Social media has a very important role to play in helping HR professionals connect and learn.

“Last year’s annual conference and exhibition offered a great illustration of how social media can enhance and amplify the learning at the event, and we’ll continue to look for ways to build on that. Digital technologies also offer all sorts of other exciting opportunities for us to do more and differently.

“We’ll continue to explore and capitalise on these opportunities,” Harman concludes. “But there’s plenty of life in the conference format yet.”

About the author

John Eccleston

John is a writer and editor who has written about HR and recruitment, among other topics, for as long as he can remember. If he's not at his keyboard, you'll probably find him in the kitchen, at a pub quiz, or buying more trainers.