What’s the point of HR conferences?

The sun is shining, the temps are rising, and spring HR conference season is coming—are you ready?

If you want to get the most and best out of the conferences on your calendar, you’ve got to do more than just show up. You’ve got to consider what you may (and may not) get out of them, and what purpose they stand to serve.

“There’s just so much noise out there and so much fluff,” Eleni DuBois, VP of events at Morning Brew, said during a recent episode of HR Brew’s People Person podcast, later adding, “you have to be very intentional about how you are helping [attendees] spend their time.”

DuBois and Kristen Parisi, a senior reporter at HR Brew, sat down with Kate Noel, SVP and head of people operations at Morning Brew, to discuss HR conferences—their purpose, opportunities, and takeaways.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

What is the point of HR conferences?

Eleni: I would say clarity. They help people zoom out a bit and reset priorities and, I think, really focus on what actually matters.

Parisi: A lot of folks are looking for connection. So many HR teams are very small. Sometimes they’re one-person shops. And so they’re looking to hear from other people about what they’re experiencing.

Is that what’s actually happening in real-time at these conferences?

DuBois: Everyone has different priorities when they attend an event. And so most people are attending an IRL event to network and build some community, but some people just want to absorb the content and learn, get clarity, hear what they’re doing right, get validation. And so I think that mostly, yes, that is the case that people are connecting. They’re connecting on LinkedIn, the fact they’re staying in touch, but others may not prioritize that as much. It may just be there to learn and take that back to work.

Parisi: I think sometimes there’s a disconnect between what the organizer of the event is trying to achieve versus what the attendees maybe are trying to get out of it. And I notice this more with larger events…I went to an event over the summer at NYU and it was very small, just for certain practitioners. There were maybe 150 people in the room. And that one wasn’t so much for networking…people were really learning and engaging in a little bit of room-wide debate…I got more out of that seven hours than I sometimes will in three days at a conference. So I really think it depends on how it’s built.

Do you see gaps or areas of opportunity at HR events?

Parisi: Several companies and organizations that are putting on these events, in the last year especially, have shied away from certain topics…anything relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion. But people still have a lot of questions about that. So I think being able to approach maybe the harder questions. I have so much empathy for everyone who's involved in these situations because you are serving so many people. You want to be inclusive. You want everyone from a brand new HR leader or HR practitioner to a CHRO to feel like they’re going to get something out of it. You want to make sure that there’s a wide range of topics covered and you also don’t want it to feel too formulaic. And I think that comes back to just asking your audience questions or even observing how they’re reacting to different subject matter. But all of that to say it is a difficult thing.

DuBois: It is tough. Our events aren’t breaking news. Our events are helping folks do their job a bit better, but it comes up. It has come up…I would like to hope that events are still a place where you can have real honest conversation.

What should an HR professional walk away with at the end of an HR conference?

DuBois: I always talk about these three things: clarity, which I’ve mentioned earlier, confidence and connection. I think those are three really important things that if everyone that attends our events, if they get that after spending half a day or a day with us, that is money well spent.

Parisi: Did I learn a few things, and is what I learned actionable? Did I take something away that I want to go back home and research and dig into a little bit more? Did I meet at least two or three new people that I feel like I can either learn something from or I can offer something to?...But also, did I have fun?...I want to go someplace and walk away and be like, “Oh, you know what? Today was work. But it was a lot of fun.”

For more from this conversation, tune into the People Person podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, or watch it below.