ATTENDING A CONFERENCE as a delegate is a rewarding experience. It provides numerous opportunities for learning, sharing ideas, meeting new people, building networks, visiting new places, generating new initiatives and providing time out from the day job for reflection (Baron, 2014). The benefits to both the LKS and individual development are varied and sometimes unexpected, whether attending or participating.

As a manager or supervisor you will need to balance your service needs with the personal development needs of individuals in your team, whilst trying to be fair and equitable to everyone. However, promoting conference attendance and attending conferences yourself proves your commitment to learning and professional development, which is vital in creating a successful team.

One way to make an informed decision about whether a member of the team should attend a particular conference is to ask them to provide you with a business case as to why they should attend. This means that they will really have to reflect on the conference and why their participation would be useful to them and to the LKS. You can also add the condition that, on their return, they will write up a report and give a short presentation on what they learned, in order to cascade knowledge to the rest of the team.

You could encourage staff members to give a presentation at the conference that they wish to attend. In fact some organizations make having a paper accepted at a conference a requirement for receiving funding to attend. If a member of staff does have a paper accepted, they get all the learning and networking benefits of attendance at a conference. They learn about presenting at conferences and they promote your project or service.

Obviously, attending a conference can be expensive in terms of the actual costs involved and the participant's time out of the office. There is preparation time if they are presenting, travel time, expenses and a possible overnight stay, all of which can mount up.

Local conferences can help to minimize costs and can be a great way of making connections with new people, creating local networks and building on existing knowledge and skills (Baron, 2014).