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Last week, we sent two of our key staff members to a three-day conference. Given that Emira is on maternity leave right now, that meant we were operating with a skeleton crew – just me and one other staffer – while they were away, which from one perspective could appear to be a major blow to productivity. (Happily, we got by okay, though we were certainly happy to welcome them home.)

Of course, these kinds of professional development opportunities are an investment in our employees' skills and knowledge – an investment that has a longer-term payoff. But what other benefits can you gain by sending your people off to a good conference?

I've learned that there are three areas where you can focus your energy to ensure maximum return on your pro-d investment:

1. Divide & Conquer: Sending the right people to the right conference

It would be easy to spend all our time and money attending conferences - in the tech world, it seems like there are a hundred events taking place at any given time with the potential to teach our team new skills, connect us with new prospects, and give us a forum in which to demonstrate what we do best. So how do we choose?

• Many hands make light work: Have your staff keep you apprised of the conferences they want to attend. In a small firm like ours, the leadership doesn't have the capacity to keep abreast of all the events we could send our staff to, so we invite our employees to email us with details on the opportunities that are of interest to them.
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• Think local: Although many of the conferences that matter to us take place elsewhere, there are lots of great events nearby that we try to take advantage of. The savings in travel costs are attractive, of course, but so are the opportunities for forging real-life connections that are easier to maintain over time.
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• Look for speaking opportunities: If you've got a team of experts, show them off. Attending a conference can be a great way to meet new people, but being a presenter raises your company's profile, establishes your staff as thought leaders, and vastly increases their chances of making valuable contacts.
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• Shop for the right fit: Although I enjoy rolling up my sleeves and getting techie, that's no longer a significant part of what I do for a living – so when it comes to events that focus on the hands-on side of our work, I leave them for my development team (unless I'm invited to speak, of course). All of our staff members love learning new things, so it's tempting for all of us to go to workshops where we can geek out on code, but we focus on matching the right person to the right event.

2. Give Your Staff a Professional Development Budget

We give each of our employees a maximum number of days per year of pro-d time; the time limit means they have to weigh the benefits of each event against the time it will absorb from their budget. You could do the same with a dollar figure (although we haven't gone that route so far – we simply weigh the cost of each event against the prospective gains and book accordingly).

I like this approach because it gives your team a clear sense of how you value their professional development; it also allows them to make informed recommendations and requests when it comes to attending particular events.

3. Communicate Your Business Goals

If you don't tell your staff what constitutes success, there's no way they can achieve it. So before you send them to an event, make sure they know what you need them to get out of it. If they're in sales, their goal should be prospecting (and they probably already knew that) – but what about the rest of your team? How can they make the most out of their conference experience?

In our case, we sent two programmers to a software event, and we sat down with them well in advance to discuss several goals we had, which included:

• Branding: Spreading the word about our company's approach and experience, to establish us as leaders in our field. In concrete terms, we asked our two guys to look for opportunities to convene breakout sessions, speak up during Q&A sessions, and network with delegates from firms whose work we admire & respect.
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• Learning: Beyond the technical information we knew they'd be absorbing, we gave them a list of business questions we've been thinking about, and asked them to find out how our colleagues in the sector are addressing them. 
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• Fresh ideas: One of the major benefits of conferences, in my experience, is that they open you up to new possibilities and give you a chance to see the big picture. We knew that if our staff were given the time & space to explore their work from new angles, they would come back energized, focused and with a clearer sense of priorities. 

The Professional Development Payoff

On his first day back in the office, one of the employees we sent to the conference was bubbling over with all the stuff he wanted to share. In the course of a ten-minute conversation, he gave me about fifteen solid, actionable ideas for improving our work that ranged from productivity tips to marketing strategies. I've scheduled a meeting next week to hear about their experiences in more detail and to sketch out implementation plans, but I can already see the value of the experience.

I'm also considering asking our two travelers to share the highlights of their conference experience with the entire team, with an eye to sparking a collective conversation about the challenges and opportunities we face as a company.

What else could we be doing to maximize the return on our professional development investment? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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