Set Your Employee Resource Groups Up for Success (Step 1 of 7) - Identify Your Why

For each of the next five weeks, I will publish a piece of my forthcoming whitepaper, "7 Steps to Set Your Employee Resource Groups Up for Success." Many thanks to Kim Lessley on the SAP Insights team for her help in editing and revising.

I have taken interviews and conversations with people from a number of industries and companies in preparation for this and I welcome any comments or thoughts you might have! Thank you.

-Aaron

7 Steps to Set Your Employee Resource Groups Up for Success

 You might already know that Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)* are volunteer employee-led groups within organizations whose goals and mission align to a specific group or focus. And you also might know that ERGs can provide an organization with a wonderful sense of community, cross-cultural and group education, and provide an outlet for leadership training and networking.

But do you know how ERGs contribute to an organization’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIBs) efforts? And how aware are you of the challenges of building one group or a strategy behind multiple groups?

That is what we will seek to share here. Building an ERG (to say nothing of building an entire ERG program) is much like building a consumer-grade product - there will be mistakes and challenges to overcome, coupled with the successes that make it all worthwhile.

In this article, my hope is to present a straightforward "how to" guide that will pose challenging questions and provide lessons learned - all in the spirit of making your journey toward ERG creation (and enhancement!) better and easier. This guide includes seven steps.

1. Identify your why (This is where we are today!)
2. Build your coalition (…of truly dedicated volunteers and sponsors)
3. Define roles and responsibilities
4. Execute
5. Execute
6. Execute
7. Review and refine

Before we actually dive into these, you might notice that execution is listed three times. This is not an accident.

Assuming you have identified your why, built a coalition of deeply engaged colleagues and sponsors, and articulated who does what (and why!), execution is THE most important aspect. None of the ERG leadership team gets paid to do this work. You don't want the official Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) team running this because you need people who are not working on behalf of the organization to launch this group. You need volunteers whose motives are true and independent from organizational leadership. And while your official DEI team can and should support your efforts with enterprise-wide efforts, they can't run this show for you.

*Note: you may see or use terms like “business resource group” (BRG) and “employee network group” (ENG). There does not appear to be a standard, and for the purpose of consistency, I will use the term “employee resource group” (ERG) here. 

Second note: this document is written with a North American lens, which will likely not be completely applicable in other regions - that said, the fundamental steps will be broadly relevant to anyone who is looking to launch an employee resource group.

-----

Step #1: Identify your why

Each employee resource group that is founded within a company has their own reason for launching. ERGs can form to support the needs of a variety of different groups, including but not limited to, groups organized by:

• Gender
• Culture, race, ethnicity, national origin
• Sexual orientation
• Military service
• Disabilities
• Parent and caregiver status
• Age
• Religion or faith
• Gender identity

According to a Boston College Center for Work and Family article, the first ERG was founded for Black employees at Xerox in 1970. Over time, the types of ERGs created within organizations has grown to include a variety of different identities, but the reasons for their creation are unique to each group and time period in which it was launched. It is this reason that is crucial to define “the why” up front.

For example, Asian employees in high tech organizations are overrepresented compared to the general population, but not at senior executive levels (see the Ascend Foundation's report, Hidden in Plain Sight: Asian American Leaders in Silicon Valley). Thus, the why for an Asian ERG will likely be different than the why for a Black employee group, but this does not mean the two groups will not share common goals or values (i.e. career advancement of members).

A strong example of an organizational why comes from the Colorado-based cybersecurity company Coalfire Systems, which launched a women’s network (RISE – which stands for “Recruiting, Influencing, Support, and Education”) long before they formalized their DEI efforts. Chalice Beam, a senior manager at Coalfire and co-chair of RISE, told me their group focuses on driving the representation and championing of women in cybersecurity roles, both inside and outside their organization. “We try to build each other up,” Beam said referring to how they encourage women and their male allies.

If your organization has not solicited feedback from its employees on what types of DEI efforts they need to feel included or a sense of belonging, SAP SuccessFactors and Qualtrics can provide your HR team and business unit leaders with the insights to identify employee priorities and needs.

In my next article, I'll address how to build your coalition with the right colleagues and stakeholders. Join us next Monday for that post!