There are many things that employers could provide that "can't be measured in dollars" that would result in bankruptcy. In order to back up the claim implied by the headline, this article really would need some sort of cost/benefit analysis, which is not provided.
My old accounting professor use to say, "You get what you measure".
You can have a great culture among people with a high propensity to want to try new and different things every few years.
Your employees could learn advantageous and/or competitive information from talking with people at the conference. They will bring this back to you and ask for a raise when it turns out it's a bonus for everyone, but that's what we want, right? Maybe it's important enough that you get to pitch the new thing to the CEO and you get a raise as well. Everybody wins.