Belonging When We're Not Together

Belonging.

As the oft-missed ingredient in D&I conversations and glue that holds all Diversity and Inclusion strategies together, I have spent years as both its fangirl and advocate.

I have made statements like this:

“Without an environment that perpetuates a sense of belonging, even the most effective recruiting strategy for diversity and inclusion will be rendered futile.”

I have churned out hard-hitting stats, like these:

“High belonging is linked to a whopping 56% increase in job performance, 75% reduction in sick days and 50% drop in turnover risk. For a 10,000-person company, this would result in annual savings of more than ￡47M!”

And to any naysayers, unleashed this:

“When Culture Amp and Paradigm measured employee experience across seven factors of diversity, belonging, and inclusion. They found that belonging is most strongly and consistently correlated with employee engagement.”

Because when I talk about creating cultures that enable peak performance, what I’m really talking about is creating cultures of belonging. Where marginalized, underrepresented or excluded people feel that they have a purpose, that they can contribute and affect change, that they matter.

But the thing is, in all the work we’ve done with our clients, we kind of took something for granted - that we’d be together!

That we could build the foundations of our work on in-person interaction, and that our survival wouldn’t rest on isolation - the antithesis of belonging. So the question quickly became:

How can businesses make colleagues feel they belong, when we are unavoidably made to work apart?

So for the PUSH team, it’s been AFGO. (Another F***ing Growth Opportunity - my fave new acronym. You can take the girl out of media…)

So, how do we do this?

Firstly, we wanted to remind ourselves of the reasons why people typically feel like they don’t belong at work. Isolation and separation might have momentarily stolen the limelight, but these feelings of disconnect existed long before COVID:

Reason 1: An absence of shared characteristics

(Feeling different from colleagues, which can arise through differences in ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or simply social or professional background.)

Adah Parris (Futurist & Ted 2019 Emerging Innovator) addressed this at PUSH’s recent WHAT NOW? Event. She reminded us that, at a microscopic level, we as humans would literally not exist without diversity, yet despite this, millions of people feel that they cannot be themselves at work. And so, if we want to create mentally healthy workplaces and a culture of belonging, then people need to feel safe to be their ‘whole self’ at work.

And look, just because we’re WFH, the rules don’t change.

We don’t want people morphing into cookie-cutter employees before every zoom call, anymore than we wanted them leaving their authentic selves at the turnstile. So along with Adah and our other wonderful WHAT NOW? speakers, I’ve put together a few suggestions for how you can promote authenticity within your teams, even when we’re not physically together.

Share your stories:

Practically this means creating spaces and time for people to share their experiences, realities and stories. Anecdotes - especially from more senior-level people - about the struggle to fit in, or in bringing their authentic selves to work, can be a powerful tool that fosters and nurtures a sense of belonging within an entire workforce. This is just as powerful on Zoom as it is IRL!

Show Support:

Show your support for others’ ideas and work. Go out of your way to ensure that every voice is heard and, more to the point, feels safe to be heard. Every idea needs acknowledgement and respect to demonstrate its validity!

And why not introduce a ‘TOOT YOUR HORN’ initiative. Shout out the wins, no matter how small. Encourage your team to share both their own and each other’s success! This can be done via slack, email, whatsapp, carrier pigeon, or if you prefer - Zoom!

Speak up against injustice:

Beware the murkier side of belonging: We club together for collaboration – but also for conflict.

So encourage people to speak up when they see injustice against themselves or others. This starts with clarity of what is and isn’t acceptable when it comes to behaviours and for leadership to exemplify this at all times. Encouraging non-optical allyship is absolutely paramount here.

Reason 2: They think they don’t matter

There’s a famous story, that when President John F. Kennedy was visiting the NASA space center in 1962, he noticed a man carrying a broom. Kennedy decided to introduce himself to the employee and asked what his job was. The employee, a janitor, responded, 'Well, Mr. President, I’m helping to put a man on the moon.'

It’s a heartwarming account, and the janitor’s feeling of purpose, value and importance can be boiled down to one thing: he feels like he MATTERS.

Creating a culture where every single one of us matters is crucial for developing individual, team and organisational performance. It’s vital that we demonstrate how much each of us matter, particularly at a time when we’re lacking face-to-face contact. So chaps, we HAVE to get better at communicating.

Here’s how:

Acknowledge everyone:

When you acknowledge someone, you recognize their value and importance. How about starting your next meeting saying good morning to everyone on the zoom? Or asking them what emotion they’re bringing onto the call? Small ways that you can acknowledge people even when you’re not together.

Nurture the new recruits:

Millions of people have been onboarded remotely this year, in fact, most are yet to meet their colleagues in real life - imagine that! This has wider ramifications than missing out on an initiation pint down at The Cross Key or shadowing a senior colleague, this is missing out on the hundreds of interactions that happen in between, those off-the-cuff conversations, that for many are vital in building that sense of belonging.

So, encourage new recruits to take part in virtual daily hangouts! They can chat about how their day has been, and what they might be doing when not at work. This way, strong team relationships are formed, even remotely. They will feel part of something, they will feel that they matter.

Tell people that you ‘see’ them:

Start sentences with:

• I hear you
• I understand you
• I appreciate you

And finally,

The ultimate present you can give another is your PRESENCE:

Because how many times have you been in a conversation with someone, and you know their mind is in another place? How many times have you felt 'un-noticed' when someone was looking right at you? And yep, we feel it virtually too! You don't have to be available for everyone all the time, but when you have someone’s time and attention; really make that person the center of your attention and experience.                                

So look, you don't need to be NASA, and this definitely isn't rocket science. All it takes is you committing to the journey. Because this is a continually evolving and ongoing process. There isn’t a company out there who can say ‘We’ve nailed belonging, we can park that now, ’ and especially at the moment, it’s going to be easier to miss, or ignore the signs that someone’s feeling disconnected or abandoned. So, we all have the responsibility to show up every single day, no matter how hard or messy it gets along the way.

But together, we got this! 

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What Now?

Download our 'What Now?' report from PUSH's 3rd annual event and receive an invaluable resource packed full of insight and advice from 7 industry experts, spanning topics such as:

• How to manage the impact of uncertainty on your team 
• How to learn from each other when we aren't together 
• Creating inclusive cultures that enable peak performance. 

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