Are HR Conferences Worth It? Community, Networking and Employee Wellbeing.

HR consultant and community builder Polina Demidova explains when professional events create real value, how corporate experience shapes business judgment and networks, and why in-person connection matters after years of remote work. The conversation also covers summit sponsorship, art as a business and wellbeing tool, employee choice, and the practical realities of building an HR venture.

Polina Demidova · Founder, HRocket · Ambassador, MMG HR Summit Community
Hosted by Ksenia Izotova and Timur Novopashin

Polina Demidova is the founder of HRocket and an Ambassador of the MMG HR Summit Community. Her background spans administrative and HR roles in banking, Coca-Cola, Yandex, Playrix and fintech, followed by work with startups and other businesses on recruitment, HR processes, team effectiveness and career development. Her current interests include cross-cultural communication, professional communities, employee wellbeing and projects connecting art with business.

Connect with Polina on LinkedIn
Learn more about HRocket
Explore the MMG HR Summit

HR conferences can be worth the time and budget when you arrive with clear goals: learn from relevant cases, meet peers or partners, and continue the most useful conversations after the event. Their value is not measured only by the programme or the number of contacts collected. It comes from the quality of the community, the relevance of the people in the room and the actions that follow. For HR vendors, sponsorship works best when the audience and activation support a defined business objective rather than visibility alone.

Corporate HR experience can show how people’s decisions connect with budgets, operating priorities, stakeholder expectations and informal influence. Polina describes large organisations as a place to learn both structure and the internal relationships that make work move.

The useful lesson is not that every professional needs a corporate career. It is that HR becomes more effective when it understands how the business creates value, who makes which decisions and how trust is built across functions.

Professionals can carry this knowledge into consulting or entrepreneurship by translating HR activity into clearer business outcomes and by maintaining relationships beyond a single role or employer.

HR conferences build networks when they create repeated opportunities for useful conversation, shared learning and collaboration. The strongest outcome is rarely the number of contacts collected during one day; it is the quality of the relationships that continue afterwards.

For organisers, this means designing more than a sequence of presentations. Roundtables, peer discussion, introductions and follow-up formats can help participants move from passive attendance to genuine exchange.

For attendees, preparation matters. Decide whom you want to learn from, which problems you can discuss honestly and what value you can offer other people in the room.

In-person HR events are becoming more valuable because they restore context that remote communication often removes. Tone, attention, informal discussion and the ability to read the room can make it easier to build trust and exchange practical experience.

That does not make online communities obsolete. Digital formats improve access and maintain relationships between events. The most useful model combines online continuity with carefully designed moments of face-to-face connection.

An offline event earns its place when it gives participants conversations, perspectives or collaboration opportunities that would be difficult to create through another webinar.

HR vendors get value from event sponsorship when the audience matches their market and the package supports a defined objective: qualified conversations, category credibility, partnerships, research or content. Logo visibility by itself is usually an incomplete measure of return.

Before sponsoring, clarify who will attend, how participants interact with partners, what activation is possible and what follow-up data or content will be available. During the event, useful expertise and relevant conversations generally create more trust than a hard sales pitch.

Afterwards, assess outcomes against the original goal and continue the strongest relationships. Sponsorship should be treated as part of a broader relationship and content strategy, not as a one-day purchase.

Art can support workplace wellbeing when it creates space for reflection, creativity, connection or recovery. Its role is broader than putting artwork on office walls: the format should be connected to the people, culture and purpose of the programme.

Employee choice is equally important. A single wellbeing activity will not suit everyone, and participation should not become another performance expectation. Offering several relevant options respects different needs and makes engagement more meaningful.

HR teams should define the problem first, involve employees in the design and evaluate the experience without making unsupported medical or productivity claims.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability while preserving the speakers' meaning.

Ksenia Izotova: Polina, thank you so much for being with us. Happy to have you here. Can you please briefly introduce yourself for our listeners?

Polina Demidova: Yeah, thanks for having me here today. I’m an HR professional. I’m now running my own company and a number of additional projects connected with different fields. My HR Rocket Agency is an agency working together with companies and candidates. I’m helping candidates with finding the job, let’s say, or more with a consulted way to the path they might look at to grow as professionals. And for the companies, it’s all types of activities connected with HR consulting — recruitment, of course, as one of the key areas I’m working with them on. Also different types of consulting, creating projects, helping companies to follow the projects and doing some research they might need.

Based on my experience, which I think it’s now also important to mention — I’ve been working for huge corporations such as Coca-Cola, Yandex, Playrix, and also several fintech companies. And with the majority of some other companies, I had projects working as a consultant.

After I started working for the corporations and moving to Cyprus, I understood that Cyprus is a very nice beginning for me to use this market and to start running my own company, at least to give it a chance and to see if it’s working or not. Now it’s celebrating almost a year and a half, I would say. So yeah, we’re still actively developing.

If talking about additional projects, I do also have a project connected with art. Working with artists themselves, with gallerists, helping them also to find the proper contacts and networking.

I’m an HR ambassador for the community in Cyprus, which is growing now more as an international one. As an HR ambassador, I’m leading the HR community and we’re annually arranging an HR summit. This year it’s the second edition of it. We’ve had more than 250 participants for a two-day event. We brought several speakers from other countries and also arranged online webinars with speakers after the event who were not able to visit the summit.

Timur Novopashin: What would you say are two or three main lessons and learnings that you got when you were working in the corporate world?

Polina Demidova: Number one is how you communicate with your colleagues. Working for huge corporations, it’s important to know the exact person who is responsible for which specific topic you might need. Based on that, as soon as you know the key person who might help you with finding the solution, then 50% of the job is done. As soon as you know whom you have to call, it solves half of the problems.

And then, based on their experience, you can also learn faster — they could tell you what exactly you need to do. I would say learning from people and having the support from them. And the most important thing is also being collaborative at some point. We are working with people and for people.

Timur Novopashin: It totally resonates with my experience. We gotta stay close to the decision makers because that’s how you can influence the strategy of the company, the way we work. Staying close to the decision makers and understanding how decisions are made is essential.

The second part that I would highlight from what you shared is definitely learn other ways of working. We’re all different. We work in different ways, and we’re all efficient in different ways. We utilize different approaches. It’s definitely non-contributional personal development as well to see how other people work, how they get to the results they want. Maybe you can implement something from their practice and processes to your own personal or professional life. Collaboration that you mentioned — that’s the key.

Building on that, from my corporate background, I would say that first of all, you got access. You have access to a wide network of professionals with different expertise, so you better utilize this network and access while you still have it. Understand what the revenue engines in the company are — how the company earns money. That’s essential. Sometimes HR professionals and other back office employees forget to do that, but it’s essential. If at some point you would like to start your own business, understanding how business is done, how the company’s earning money, what are the revenue centers — essential. You got this access, go and learn. Ask people.

The second thing that I would add is that while you still have this access, you gotta build an active network. Not just connect with your colleagues on LinkedIn, but actually build a meaningful connection. When you start your own company or just start working as a consultant, independent entrepreneur, it will help you. The network would bring value.

Polina Demidova: I wouldn’t add more, to be honest. I think nowadays there are a lot of technologies which are changing our life at some point, but still this collaboration and networking possibility gives us way more at some points rather than just talking with AI, for example.

Timur Novopashin: Let’s talk about the Mediterranean HR Summit, a big event forum that happened in Cyprus. Tell us more about it. Sounds fascinating, and I believe it’s one of the biggest events in the Mediterranean region. Tell us more about this big, exciting event.

Polina Demidova: Talking about the summit, this year was our second edition of it. We met with one person who had an idea that okay, I want to bring the HR community together. For me, it’s always been one of my fields of interest because I do like communicating with people, building networks and creating something interesting and valuable for people. I found this idea very useful from my personal values, and that’s how we started.

There are several of us who’ve been working together since the first summit, which was actually for free — the first trial version, let’s say. We brought, I think, more than 250 people. Because it’s been free for one day, I think it’s been more than 300 people who’ve been visiting the summit back to two years ago. This year we had around 250 people who’ve been visiting the summit for two days, and it was super nice for me because this year it’s been a commercial project. We started selling tickets.

Of course, it’s always nervous that you’re doing something commercial — if people are coming, how it’s going to be the feedback and everything. Based on the feedback we’ve got in personal messages or feedback from the research we’ve done after the summit, it’s been very nice feedback that motivates us to continue our job, to continue the possibility to work together and to grow the community and to bring HR professionals back together.

Ksenia Izotova: There were three HR communities on Cyprus, right?

Polina Demidova: Let’s say yes. There are still some more conferences or meetups. But the one which brings all of them together — meaning Russian speakers, some other foreigners who’ve been moved to Cyprus, by any chance — so yeah. And based on that, we’ve brought all of them together, at least we’re still trying. So I would say it’s a never-ending project. You have to work with the community constantly.

Ksenia Izotova: So you were not building your own community, you were unifying, uniting already existing communities. Is that so?

Polina Demidova: It’s more about growing the community and creating at some point. Even though people lead, if you could say so, they’ve been defined at some point, but still not all of them knew about each of them. Some of them come from other places. So it’s still unifying at some point, yes, but still working and growing and creating, I would say. At least that’s how I see it.

Ksenia Izotova: What activities did you do that brought you the most number of summit participants?

Polina Demidova: There’s been a lot of marketing approaches we’ve done to create visibility and for people to learn about the summit, sharing about them too. It’s been a lot of tools which we’ve used to promote the summit.

Ksenia Izotova: What tools in particular? Let’s dive deeper into the details. I think that’s the most interesting point because a lot of people organize summits, conferences, but not all of them are successful. If Timur and I decide to organize a conference in Brussels, we can collaborate here, you know?

Polina Demidova: At some point it’s a network, of course. Communication with people, sharing with them and they are also sharing with their network as well. Normal marketing tools you are using — social media, media itself, government institutions. It depends on what the goal is for the conference.

Ksenia Izotova: Did you do any pre-event activities like podcasts or meetups or short evenings, breakfasts, like pre-launch?

Polina Demidova: During the whole year we do have events — some of them arranged offline, some online. As I mentioned, it’s like constant work and we are doing it constantly with the team.

Timur Novopashin: Sounds amazing. Okay, maybe I should visit Cyprus at some point.

Let’s imagine, because I assume you’re also open for sponsors, like companies sponsoring the event. If that’s so, let’s imagine that’s your pitch forum. How would you pitch this event to the sponsors?

Polina Demidova: For sponsors, of course, it’s a very useful opportunity because we do have lead preliminaries which they might be interested in, and I would say it would be strange not to be able to use this opportunity.

Timur Novopashin: If your company is interested in connecting with HR professionals working across the Mediterranean region and European region, that’s your opportunity. That’s the platform that you can use. Polina is your contact person. Don’t waste this opportunity.

Why I’m dwelling on this topic too much — now I’m investing a lot of time into exploring talent communities across Europe and different HR events. What I can tell is that people are missing real offline connections. I’ve been constantly told by participants of those events — HR professionals visiting the summits and companies sponsoring them — that the most in-demand format of interaction is actually executive dinners, executive brunches, lunches. Panel discussions, workshops are also interesting, but the crown event is when you bring people together, they communicate on a human level. Look what years of remote working done to us. We crave real connection.

Polina Demidova: You could still find that people are really missing offline communication. We could see it. From one side, we’ve been super happy to have social media being connected all over the world and everything. But then I think we’ve stuck with the situation when people forget how to collaborate and communicate face-to-face — to see the reaction, to see the emotions, and being able to truly understand what this person thinks or feels. Now especially when it’s also developed with AI, I think a lot of people started spending more time talking with AI rather than with their friends or family members. So yeah, we have a lot of interesting changes coming. To have a possibility to collaborate and communicate offline is now super valuable, and people are really missing each other and ready to be close to each other.

Ksenia Izotova: Polina, you’ve mentioned that you already have dates and preliminary plans for the next year. What are the dates? That’s my first question, so that we would plan to visit Cyprus next year. Put that on the calendar.

Looking back at the event that happened this March, what would you have done differently, and what are you planning to do differently next year?

Polina Demidova: It’s going to be from 15th till 17th of April 2027. That’s the preliminary date.

I think at some point you need to accept that you need more people in the team and to share more tasks and to delegate. To have more people at the moment, so then you are not stuck because you are alone and you are not able to solve the question quickly. That’s definitely I think we’re going to change next year — to have more people understanding what exactly is the focus and where we have to react faster.

The second thing is we are definitely going to promote our Go Partners program. We are creating the platform for businesses which are providing services to companies as if from HR — HR tech companies, I would say. But not only from a tech perspective — sometimes it’s just lack of knowledge. You need to arrange an event somewhere, and I have no idea how to arrange an event in Brussels, to be honest. But because of the community, they could share three, five names of people who’ve been working together with them. Based on this referral program, you are able to see that this job was done good, and I have a choice. Not just to search Google or AI, but knowing that you have a reference for some company to be able to provide this service.

So I would say that’s the two main focuses for the next summit, which also helps us to help these businesses because, okay, some of them know about Cyprus or like companies, some of them don’t know. So it also creates additional value for all of the parts of the summit.

Ksenia Izotova: I would like to learn more about Polina, your other projects. Apart from the summit, please feel free to tell us about the most interesting projects. You’ve mentioned corporate learning, which is a thing now for sure. Tell us more about it. Was it effective, or do you have any results? Anything that you can share — maybe not company names, but the cases — we would be super intrigued to learn about them more.

Polina Demidova: We do have another project, which is not the only one. One of the interesting ones is the project where we are building the bridge between businesses, companies and art. There are different topics and activities which we are doing and could be done based on the request from the company side. I just yesterday came back from the Venice Biennale, the 61st Biennale, which started last week. You would even meet there at these kinds of events, not only people from institutions working directly or gallerists or artists, but still there are a lot of people coming from business sides. Of course, people who are there are owners of the businesses who are using art as a kind of investment. It’s one of the main goals to have clients who are ready to invest into art.

But for me, what is more interesting is actually creating a possibility for employees to be close to art. It helps on different sides. For example, either the experience or with their motivation. The art in this case could be used as employer brand support when you are able to collaborate with artists. There are some cases on the market where merch for the company would be done in collaboration with an artist, which is quite popular nowadays. Or it could be some exhibitions at the office where you could share works and the works could be sold after the exhibition.

Helping people to work with the level of stress — there is research from, if I’m not mistaken, King’s College in London, where they’ve confirmed that people who are looking at art have decreased levels of cortisol in their body. So it actually has a real value for the employees.

As soon as you are a new, let’s say, born baby who just started looking at galleries, to art, you would never understand what is happening in the artist’s brain while creating this. But as soon as you learn a little bit more about the biography of the artist or the reason behind doing this or that painting or other artwork, you could have a completely different understanding and actually you could be changed. As soon as you looked at some artwork, you could have some inner feeling.

When you are feeling yourself as a machine which is just doing the job and don’t start feeling yourself. I think now there are also some projects for the companies when they are trying to help to prevent employees' burnout or to work with their emotional level, to help them to actually stabilize themselves. It’s more about wellbeing programs.

Ksenia Izotova: Polina, you’ve done plenty of different wellness programs, from art programs to running clubs in-house in companies. What is the most effective program? What really makes the employees happier?

Polina Demidova: I think you couldn’t say that this makes you happier or that because actually we are very different. Employees are very different and programs could be very different. I would say the most important thing is actually to give the possibility of choosing. While doing the running club, we didn’t force everyone to start running. One of the possibilities — others who wanted to create something else, they were able to create other communities. Back to that time, I think running was one of the popular ways of people working with their stress at some point.
 
Being offline, being able to collaborate and being able to find people with whom you are able to feel the same — doesn’t matter what exactly you want to do. I think from a company-wise perspective, it would be nice to find the solution. For HRs, for example, to see where exactly there is a request. Not sometimes inventing and inventing new programs, but just to see what exactly is already existing and probably just have a little improvement. That’s what could also help and to make employees' life better. Sometimes we don’t need to overcomplicate stuff.

Timur Novopashin: I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s a perfect time to round up our discussion on a very lovely topic. We touched wellbeing programs, multitasking, running different projects, bringing together HR professionals on a big platform. But what makes you happy personally? Let’s say if you’re allowed to do just one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Polina Demidova: To have more things to be done. For me, one thing? I don’t have one thing to choose out of everything I’m doing.

Timur Novopashin: So you like staying busy, multitasking, switching different areas, and that’s what makes you happy?

Polina Demidova: I think yes. At some point of course you need to focus, and you have to settle yourself down doing — okay, now we do this and that because you need to deep dive and everything. But what I know myself, I’m not the person who is just going to sit. I’m reading a book and I’m going to read the whole book and then move to another one. Even with reading, I’m reading several books at the same time because today I want to read this part, tomorrow I want to read something else. That’s how it works for me. For me, it’s important being surrounded by different people from different fields — it’s what makes me happy because you are always learning something new. Actually connecting people, this is also one of the important things.

Ksenia Izotova: My question would also be quite a personal one, but connected with business. Out of the projects that you’ve done with a variety of companies, as a business owner, what was the most challenging one, and what was the main takeaway? Difficult projects, challenging projects are usually the favorite babies. What’s your favorite baby and, other than the summit, I’m sure that such a grandiose event can’t be something that you dislike — but what’s the challenge that you faced while working with corporate clients?

Polina Demidova: It’s talking about working in your own company. Even though you could be a very nice person and be able to collaborate and share and everything, still it’s business. Still you have to formalize your services and meet agreements with your customers because they are still customers. Even though you could be very good friends or something, still it’s business.

Timur Novopashin: Polina, thank you so much for joining us today.