Welcome back to the HR Connection. My name is Sabrina Baker. I am the CEO and founder of Acacia HR Solutions. We are an embedded fractional HR support firm, supporting small businesses in the 1 to 500 employee headcount range, and this podcast is built for others in HR handling that same range. You can be an HR department of 1, you can be an office manager, you can be a CEO who's just winging it, you can be that marketing person who handled that event one time and now you have all of HR on your plate. Whoever you are, if you're doing HR in a 1 to 500, this is the place for you. Today I thought I would go a little bit off our beaten path. Rather than share with you how we handle onboarding, or handbooks, or documentation, I thought I would talk about conferences, specifically HR conferences, and whether I think they are worth your time and your money. There are a lot of conferences, so many HR conferences, and fall is conference season, so they're going to be coming up. You might be thinking about whether you should go to one. Maybe you've always wanted to go to the Shermannual Conference, or WorkHuman, or Unleash, one of the major events, and you're just on the fence and you're not sure whether they are a great spend of your time and your budget, which I'm sure is probably limited. So today I want to give you my opinion. Of course, it's just my opinion, and somebody else who attends conferences may have a different one, but as somebody who has attended a lot of conferences over the years, has been to her fair share of the big events, I wanted to give you my take, specifically if you are managing HR in a 1 to 500, on whether I think they are a good way for you to learn and develop. So we'll talk about the budget, we'll talk about the time piece, but let's just really focus on do I think you're going to get learning and development out of these conferences. Let's talk about it. Let me start with where my conference experience comes from, because it's actually multifaceted. I've actually been able to see conferences from many different angles. Long ago, when I was still in-house, my last corporate job, I was the director of HR for a call center company. We had about 3,500 employees, so a different environment than I'm in now. But one year my VP ran a contest, and I can't remember now, it was around metrics, I think, but the call center HR manager who had the best metrics in something, that individual and their director got to go to the Sherman conference. And so that was my first time at a Sherman conference. It was in Vegas. It was hot. It was overwhelming. It was massive, but she and I got to attend and see what that was all about. Then in 2010, when I started the business, I knew that if I wanted to build a personal brand, get my name out there, that I was going to need to maybe do some speaking. I started a blog. This is, you know, early days of blogging and Twitter. This was back when Twitter was cool. All of that stuff. And so I was lucky enough to start to build a name for myself and have conferences like Sherman, WorkHuman, and LinkedIn, and some of those invite me as part of what they call the blog squad. So I guess this would be like early stage influencing, maybe. I hate that word, but I think maybe that's what it was. But there was a group of us that, you know, we would get called in to come to these conferences and we would be asked to write blogs about the conference or live tweet the conference, things that were happening. And those were a ton of fun and I made so many great friends and I'm so glad that I was able to be a part of that. I also spoke at a lot of conferences, so both local, like California HR, or some of the larger Sherman conferences, I would speak. And I oftentimes, building the business, would realize I am one of the only ones, or few ones, in the room thinking about the 1 to 500 space. Nobody else is really here thinking about how different that space is and the different content that they need. I also spent several years being the co-chair of the Illinois Sherman Conference, co-chair of the conference itself, so not Illinois Sherman overall, but just managing and organizing and putting together the Illinois Sherman Conference. That was three or four years of my life. I can't remember now. So I have this perspective of being an attendee, of being a speaker, of being a blogger, of being an organizer. And that's where everything that I'm going to tell you today, that's where all of that opinion comes from. So this is not just like I went to one conference and had an experience, but this is years of all of those different facets and then my decision now on whether I think the conferences are worth it or not. I don't want to bury the lead. I don't want to prolong my answer, so let me just give you my opinion. I do not go to conferences anymore. Well, I say I do not. I do not to the level that I used to. I used to really be at three, four, five conferences. I felt like I needed to be at every one. And I learned over the years that I was spending a lot of time and a lot of my own money to be able to attend these conferences that when I tried to take the information and relate it back to the work I was doing, I really struggled. And I just could no longer justify the time and the spend in going to especially some of these larger conferences. So let me give you three main reasons why that is true, three main reasons why I think it is not always a great use of your time and your money. And then I'll tell you what I think we can do instead as small business HR practitioners, where I do think there is opportunity for us to learn and develop, and what you can maybe do with the budget if you have one instead of spending it all in one large conference. So the first reason that I do not go to conferences anymore is that the content is not built for me. It's not built for you. It's not built for a 1 to 500. I know that Sherman has a HR department of 1 track. I know that sometimes conferences will say that they have a track for small businesses, and I've been in them. I've been in those sessions. And what I find is that almost everyone is frustratingly about how to manage your time or how to keep up with compliance. And that's wonderful, but that doesn't help me when my CEO is bleeding through threat, fear, and intimidation every single day. Knowing how to manage my time does not help me with the tasks that are never-ending. The reality is, you've heard my soapbox on this, you are managing HR in a small business, you could be the best time manager in the world, the work never stops. There's just always something else to do. And so I found that the content was built for people who have large teams, they have large budgets, and if they say that they have a small business offering, that that offering is so watered down, and I'm going to be honest with you that sometimes condescending, that I just got really irritated. And there are a few speakers who I really appreciate and I value, and they would be in that HR department of 1 track, and I would go and I would sit and I would listen, and I would think, wow, they mean well, you can tell they have not done this in years. They are not working inside of small environments. They are consultants, and they're not doing this work every single day. And so I would get really frustrated because we are doing this work every single day. My team right now is probably on Zoom calls, emails, Slack messages with a small business. We are doing this work every single day, and unless you're inside of it, you can't understand the dynamic fully. And so I got really frustrated because the content was just, it's almost misinformation at times. It's almost wrong information that's not helpful for you. It's just not written for an audience of 1 or an audience of a person who's not even an HR person who's been stuck with HR because they are a people person. It's not built for that. And the frameworks that are given assume resources that you're never going to have. I would go to these conferences and I would fight. I would fight hard. And you can ask some of the vendors. I would go to their user conferences and I would fight hard to please, please have your product be available to less than 100 employees or look at the pricing structure that you have. And what they would do is they would get so excited because they would come to me and they would say, "Hey, we did it." And what we did it means is we watered everything down and gave you absolutely nothing helpful, but now it's in your budget. And it just felt like no one saw small business as a viable market, even though it makes up like 91% of the businesses in this country. No one saw it as a viable market, and so they were not going to put any time and effort into conferences, into tracks at conferences, into vendors at conferences that catered to that space. So I found that the content there for my time was just not worth it. Reason number two is that the networking didn't really match my problems. And so, again, I was meeting amazing people. The Sherman conference has thousands upon thousands of people, like 15, 20 thousand people. There are a lot there. But I was finding that everybody I was talking to was in a large business. These conferences are expensive. If you are going to a lot of these bigger conferences, they are highly expensive, and for a small business, that might be the only budget you have. That may be your whole budget. And so then you walk into a room, you walk into a session, you walk into a networking event, and there's not another single small business person in that room. And so you have nobody that you can network with. You're not growing your network in a way that's helpful to you. You're meeting people. You may be making friends. I have wonderful friends who I met at these conferences who I feel like our kids grew up together. They live on the other side of the country, but I feel like our kids grew up together because when we met, our kids were little and we watched them through Instagram, and when we see each other, we talk about them, and I feel like I know their kids. They're great friends, but they're not doing the work that I'm doing, and so it's very hard for us to network in that respect. So if you are going to a conference with the hope of meeting like-minded people, people who understand the work you're doing, people who can be helpful when you have an issue, who you can call and ask questions and vent and rant and do all those things, then a conference, especially a large one, may not be the place that you're able to do that. I'm not saying those people don't exist at the conference. I'm saying there's 20,000 people. How are you going to find them? There are no networking events usually that are catering to small environments. Same reason, there's no content. It's just not a market that they see as viable. And so it's up to you then to find like-minded people, and that could be really, really difficult. So for me, reason three then is kind of a culmination of all this. The ROI just isn't there. If I think about the time that I spent away from my work, if I think about the budget, the money that I spent on being in the conference, so certainly when I was asked to come and be a blogger or share, live stream the event, then the conference itself was compensated, but they usually didn't pay us or cover our accommodations. So I got into the conference for free, but I had to still pay for my flight, my hotel, my food, and I didn't get paid to be there. So I was out of the business for that time, not being paid, and being put out of pocket for all of my accommodations. When I was going to conferences on my own, same thing, right? Obviously, I was paying for the conference. As a speaker, you often get an entry into the conference, but you're not being paid. Unless you are like a keynote or higher, most places do not pay you as a speaker. So all of that time that I was attending, blogging, speaking, I was doing it on my own dime, and I was taking time out of the business to be able to do it. And yes, I could work a little bit at the conference, or I could work at night, but it was exhausting. You had a full day of conference events, and then to work at night would be really difficult. So for the time and the budget spent away, and then when I looked at, okay, what did I get out of it? What did I learn? Who did I meet that's actually going to benefit my clients or my business? The ROI just was not there. I could not justify three and four days outside of the office for the price that I was spending to walk away with very, very little. And so it just, the ROI for me could not be proven in a way that made sense for me to continue doing it. You know, what happens is whatever's on your desk is still on your desk when you get back, and now it's compressed into less time for you to be able to figure it out. And then the content that I just sat through, based on reason number one, wasn't built to be immediately usable. So it's not like I could come back to the conference, come back from the conference, and be like, "Ooh, now I have all of these tips and tricks, and I have all of these things that I can do to make my life easier." I really had nothing. And if I had to sit down and think about what did I learn, it was going to be minimal. It was going to be hardly anything that was going to actually help me be productive for all of that work that had just piled up while I was gone. So let me just tell you that those reasons and others are the whole reason why I started the HR Connection. It's the whole reason why I have goals to be a voice for small business HR, because I realized that it doesn't exist. It really doesn't exist at scale. And so we started this podcast over a year ago now to be a voice for small business HR and to say, "This is not smaller HR, and time management is not going to fix shit. We have real problems here. It's its own discipline. You cannot take what you're doing enterprise level." The head of HR at Google cannot step into a small business, take all of the strategy and infrastructure and everything that she or he is doing at Google and just scale that down in a 75-person firm and make it work. You cannot. It is its own discipline. And so one of the reasons why this podcast exists, one of the reasons why we are trying to grow a network of small business HR practitioners and grow content on our blog, on our YouTube channel, everywhere, is because it doesn't exist elsewhere. And it's just a real gap that I see and that I saw while I was doing all of this conferencing, that I wanted to give people a place where they felt like somebody understood them. So just my little blurb there about why I'm even doing what I'm doing, and it's because I saw the gap at these conferences. So I didn't just replace those with nothing. I feel like you still have to have content. You still have to have growth and development. And if you are in a small business and you're an HR department of 1, it's really difficult for you to get that inside your business. You can get business growth and development, but HR growth and development is a little bit different. So let me give you a few ideas of things that I did replace the conferences with and things that we are, as a whole, finding more fruitful for us in helping clients, getting ideas, and also networking with like-minded individuals. So the first one is to make sure that I am absorbing content designed specifically for small business, not enterprise content that I have to mentally resize, but content that doesn't require a big team or a big budget to act on. So I really kind of audited the content that I was already consuming. I looked at who was I getting emails from, who was I looking at webinars, or whose content was I consuming on LinkedIn, and I curated that to make it to be people who share, maybe they don't even share specifically for small business, but their content is easily relatable to small businesses. And I find that law firms are really good about this. They typically cater to smaller businesses. There are a few people, other small business people, small business consultants, who I follow on LinkedIn that I think have really good content. So it's about curating your content, looking at what are you consuming just social media-wise, and is that content really helping you, or is it frustrating you because you read it and think, "Oh, well, that would be great if I had the budget and the resource to actually do that." The other thing I did was local HR groups. So I find that your local HR groups are often way better, I think, than the national level. So I would encourage you, if you have a budget for a Sherman conference or something, to maybe spend that budget on a membership to your local HR group, or even to go to the local. We have California HR, Illinois Sherman. There's lots of, I think most states have their own local Sherman level conference, or whatever their state conference is. I think that those can be more beneficial. You're going to, the content might still be a little bit enterprise level, but the people, you're likely going to run into more people just because it's more budget-friendly. It's local. You may not have to have accommodations. You're going to maybe network with people who are more similarly situated than others. So I definitely want to shout out local HR groups who I think are doing really good work. They typically bring in speakers. I've spoken at a lot of the local ones here in California, and they bring in speakers who can give you actionable items, things you can walk away with today and do. And even if they're speaking more broad, not just to small businesses, there's still some nugget you can usually get out of that. So I think a huge plug for local HR groups is really important. I mentioned law firms already, but also Chamber of Commerce. So law firm, webinars, conferences. Here in California, a lot of the law firms will do annual compliance updates and legal updates, and those are so helpful because those are broad. Usually, here in California, you have more than five employees. The compliance update probably affects you. So the compliance updates, the legal updates, Chamber of Commerce, we find a lot of value in our California Chamber of Commerce, but even sometimes your local Chamber of Commerce can have really good information, and they typically cater more to small and mid-sized businesses. That's their growth trajectory, is trying to grow small and mid-sized businesses in their area. So because they cater to that, then their audience, the people who are in the room, are also likely in a small business. So you can go to a local Chamber of Commerce breakfast or session, and maybe the topic isn't necessarily on point for you, but the people in the room may also be inside of a small business. So then you can network, then you can brainstorm, then you can share ideas and possibilities. So definitely, I think that law firm content, Chamber of Commerce content is really good. And if my team is looking for webinars, they're looking for blogs, whatever, that's usually where they start to get the information that they need because they know it's going to be catered to that small and mid-sized business more. And then certainly podcasts like this one, come on. I have to plug it. We're so glad, I'm so glad that you are here and listening, and I hope that you are finding value in this and would love to hear from you more. If you have topic ideas, if you want to know how we handle certain things inside of a small business, I would love to hear those things. But I do hope that if you are managing HR in a 1 to 500, you're finding value in this and that you're finding the ability to say, "Yep, she gets what we're doing. She gets what I'm doing here," which is very different than doing it in a 5,000, 50,000 person firm. So here's kind of the bottom line. I'm not telling you that conferences are never worth it. Certainly, they're an experience, and if you just want to go and have the experience, then you should do that. Absolutely, if you've gone to any of these conferences and you have found great value, please keep doing that if that's important to you. Again, this is my opinion and my experience, but people may have very different ones. I would suggest that you run your budget through a filter before you commit. That's all I'm saying. Just if you have one budget and you think that you can do one Sherman conference, I would just say, "Is there other things you can do?" Before you spend that whole line item on a conference, check the agenda. Is there content on it built specifically for small business HR? Is it all enterprise content that you are going to have to translate to your own environment and may never translate? If so, I just wonder if it's a good use of your time. That same dollar amount split differently can often do way more for you. So if you split that across a handful of targeted webinars or even one-on-one coaching, getting somebody who can come in and help another, a consultant or a fellow HR practitioner in a small business who can help you design and develop your infrastructure and be kind of that sounding board for when you need to vent or you need to rant or you just need to ask questions, I think that can be such a better use of your time and your budget. Certainly, memberships into the local HR groups, I think, are worth it. So again, it's not that you should never go, but I just think that you shouldn't assume that because it's a big well-known conference, it's going to be for you, because I just don't think that's always the case when we're talking about small business HR. So that's it. That's my opinion on that. I would love to hear from you. You can connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know if you find small business, or sorry, not small business conferences, but if you find the HR conferences to be helpful, or maybe you've been and you kind of have an opinion like I do, I would just love to hear other opinions on this and see where people are spending their time. Where are you getting your education? Where are you growing and developing yourself and learning the things you need to learn for managing HR in a small environment? I'm so glad you're here. Please subscribe. If you have not already, you can do that wherever you get your podcasts, and I will see you next time.