Donna Genie (YouTube, Jan 11 2024) gives practical guidance for small business owners about sending employees to conventions. She outlines benefits (new ideas, energy, connections) and begins discussing employer responsibilities around covering registration, hotel, and travel expenses versus employees paying themselves. Emphasis is on compliance with rules and weighing costs vs. benefits.
Taking your staff members to a convention is a pretty big thought process and a big expenditure for most small business owners. So let's talk about how you have to make sure that you're complying with all the rules if this is something you decide to offer. As we know, conventions come up all the time, and even off site meetings or mini conventions, many times it's worthwhile to take your employees to these because they come up with a lot of great new ideas. They're jazzed up and ready and energized to help you grow your business when they get back, typically. And they've probably made some good connections to help be able to further your business and learn new things from other businesses just like yours. So how do you care for that? Are you responsible to pay for the expenses? What happens to their pay? Let's dive in a little bit. You are responsible, most likely to pay for their convention attendance and maybe any hotel or travel. You don't have to, but most studio owners do want to do that if that's the particular situation where you'd like to ask an employee to attend. Now, if an employee wants to attend on their own dime, obviously you don't have any problems with that. But most cases they don't really want to invest that much.
