system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Paid corporate speakers are a waste of money

1. If they are professional enough to accept money, they probably give the exact same talk to every company that pays them. They probably also write Linkedin articles or books or whatever about the exact same thing. They absolutely are not sharing anything with you that they aren't sharing with someone/everyone else.
2. They know nothing about your company. Any competent business consultant has a lengthy period of studying your company before giving any advance. These guys fly in and give a canned speech hoping to shotgun their 'wisdom' to your employees.
3. If selling morale, then there has got to be better ways to boost company morale. These speakers aren't cheap and neither is the 1-2 hours of time multiplied by the number of employees you gathered. Maybe just buy a ping pong table for the break room instead?
4. If selling a new initiative, the boss should not need a paid speaker to pitch it. If the boss doesn't know the idea well enough to give the speech, its going to be incompetently executed.

The only valuable thing I can think of is using company money to buy 'access' to someone the boss thinks is important to befriend. So bribery in another form (think politicians paid 6 figures to talk at a big company). I mean, that's not a 'waste' of money. But that sure seems unethical.

ADDITION: A number of people have brought up the attention grabbing benefit of having what is basically a 'celebrity' or 'event'.

MY RESPONSE:  I would say that if the CEO cant do it with a personal presentation, that is a lousy CEO. And if the material is readily available, then the CEO should have an obligation to read it ahead of time and try to apply it to the organization he/she knows best instead out outsource. Unless people really care about meeting a 'corporate celebrity', then I dont see why a CEO cant just give an hour long book report.

ADDITION 2: A number of people have basically said 'it is just buying access'

MY RESPONSE: Except a lot of speakers aren't politicians or power-players. A lot of times its just an academic or what is basically a corporate influencer. This just sounds like the CEO buying a friend. (I'm also reading the book about Tony Hsei's death and he seemed to do this a lot.)
gpt
> They absolutely are not sharing anything with you that they aren't sharing with someone/everyone else.

No, but getting that information to your employees can sometimes only be possible with a speaker. If it's something nobody cares about (safety procedures, environmental policies, etc.) and you refer your employees to a book or a video, they'll just ignore it, possibly even feeling that it's not right to waste company time on it. When you book a speech, people feel more obligated to attend it, their time is extrinsically allocated to it, and doing something else while someone is giving a speech is more difficult.

To what extent this kind of talk should exist at all is debatable, but sometimes it has to for optics, liability, compliance with some standard, etc.

 > These guys fly in and give a canned speech hoping to shotgun their 'wisdom' to your employees

They give a canned speech, but usually the more important part is that listeners can raise specific questions / concerns they have, which, if the speakers is actually knowledgeable about what they discuss, can be addressed.

So, for example, if your speakers is a consultant who specializes in implementing a certain methodology, even if you don't take them as a consultant yourself, the people who are tasked with implementing the methodology may try to ask questions relevant to things that could specifically apply to your company.