The education you will receive at CLEAN GULF is extremely beneficial, though you may need to validate to management your reasons for wanting to attend. CLEAN GULF has compiled a justification toolkit that will help you with those needs. When speaking with management, stress the breakout sessions you will attend, the types of people you will meet, and the companies you will visit in the exhibit hall. A few ideas to include when compiling your request:
Letter to Management: Compile a letter to management outlining the benefits of attending CLEAN GULF. Here is a sample letter to use.
Conference Materials: Offer to share lessons-learned with your co-workers. Bring home your conference materials and share your experience with your team.
Conference Sessions: Highlight the conference sessions most applicable to your job. Bring the highlighted program to management to reinforce the value your attendance will bring to your company.
Speaker Line-up: CLEAN GULF attracts key stakeholders to speak. You will have direct access to these experts in industry and government since Information sharing, question-answer sessions and networking are a vital part of the CLEAN GULF experience.
Networking Opportunities: Interact with a group of emergency and spill response professionals who share your same goals. Contacts you make through networking can be invaluable once you return to work and can provide insight in future endeavors at work for years to come.
Attendee Certification: Customized certificates are available to verify conference attendance and session participation. These certificates may be included in personnel files to show training/education completion.
Exhibitor Line-Up: Between conference sessions, the education continues on the exhibit floor. Exhibitors are there to learn about your day-to-day challenges and discuss solutions. Bring back potential solutions to management that can help your company’s role in incident prevention, preparedness, and response.
Cost-Saving Features: We understand that spending up to three days away from your job can be expensive, so we’ve worked to bring you savings wherever possible.
Sample Trip Report: Create a trip report after the conference. This report should discuss the sessions you have attended and how you will apply those concepts to your job. Once your supervisor sees how much you have learned during the week and how it can be applied in your facility, they will be more likely to send you to a conference again. Here is a sample trip report that may be used when presenting your request.