At their best employee resource groups (ERGs) provide a space for connection, mutual support and career development for their members. They benefit the organisation by driving strategic priorities and help the communities they advocate for by addressing inequity and creating positive change. 

But at their worst, ERGs can become demotivated and negative. They can generate additional and non impactful work for themselves and others, and also create risks through organisational misalignment and agitation for change that might not actually be possible or desirable. 

In this episode Kerry Boys and Phil Cross deep dive into what an effective ERG looks like and how we can ensure they impact our organisations and our teams positively.

Kerry Boys: At their best employee resource group, provide a space for connection, mutual support and career development for their members. They benefit the organisation by driving strategic priorities and help the communities they advocate for by addressing inequity and creating positive change.

That's the question we're gonna be discussing in today's episode.

We are Leaders For Good, DEI and Culture Change Experts. And I'm Kerry

Phil Cross: I'm Phil Cross. And, before we get into the, the meat of the discussion today, before we look at some of the ways which ERGs can enhance their effectiveness, let's think about in a bit more detail about why effective ERGs and forming them can be challenging.

So, ERGs or employee resource groups, or employee affinity groups, which are, loosely speaking groups, which come together to act as the voice and agents of underrepresented groups, within organisations. So they, often associate to, to come together to represent, women, LGBTQI+ communities, communities for people with disabilities, et cetera, et cetera.

There are some massively effective ERGs out there that are very well structured, very, very well formed, and have a, have a huge impact, but, More often than not through the work we do with organisations, this comes up time and time again. ERGs can, as Kerry just said, miss the mark. And that's because they're not put together often with the same, same rigor, the same thought, and the same, the same sort of attention to process as you'd see from other teams within an organisation.

And that's because they are a cluster of people kind of putting their hands up on a voluntary basis to do this on top of their day jobs. And that can lead to, that can lead to, lack of effectiveness. So what we're gonna look at today and break down are six areas which we see, see that really, really do impact ERG effectiveness in organisations.

And everyone within the ERG should be aligned to this and, and, and, and understand this very, very clearly. And a big part of this is understanding where they fit into the broader organisational context. So that might include how they plug into the organisation's overall diversity, equity, inclusion strategy or overall culture or people strategy.

And how, how that ERG contributes there, what, what it's role is within that, within that broader strategy. It should also be done in, and, and they should go without saying, but, but often, often it's not. It should also should be done in consultation with, the community that they represent as well.

Kerry Boys: I think what's really interesting for me on this area around purpose and strategy is that we often expect our ERGs to be able to do this without any support. So actually building strategies. Isn't an easy process if it's something that people haven't had any experience in. And it isn't an easy process if we've got no context within which to do it.

So we see many organisations with ERGs where they don't have a diverse sector and inclusion strategy, where the ERG members themselves haven't been any, given any context on the broader organisation and what they're trying to do. And then we expect them to have a, a clear strategy and plan of action.

Phil Cross: And, and that, that links back to, again, something we're gonna talk about later, which is that capability and capacity. Hey, the , again, a group that's made up of people who've put their hands up doesn't necessarily have all the requisite skillsets, and as you said, hasn't necessarily had the experienced developing a strategy and a roadmap.

And, and if that's lacking, then that support that the broader organisation can offer.

So one of the big, big challenges we see for ERGs is they wanna do so many things and so many people are sharing ideas with them.

So big part of this is how do we prioritise? How do we set clear guide rails for what we say yes and no to, and then how do we communicate that, so that we're only focusing on those things that are gonna make the biggest impact, and of course, which we can achieve within a relatively low level of time. Given we're doing this on a volunteer basis, normally on top of existing roles.

So this can have a huge, huge impact, both in terms of motivation for the people internally within that ERG, but also the impact they can make.

So if, an ERG is operating in isolation. They might end up, they might end up rolling out an initiative or celebrating something at the same time as there's a lot of other activity going on. So their efforts, you know, may fall flat, or just add to, add to a already a kind of noisy environment for people within the organisation.

So, them being able to operate in, in that broader context, allows them to sort of, Have the have the maximum effectiveness with what they do and when they do it.

Kerry Boys: Yeah, absolutely.

So our second area in terms of our principles for effective ERGs is about real clarity of both their role and their scope.

And there's, and there's lots of other things that we see ERGs taking on the role of, but what's most important is that that is defined and agreed. So you can see very easily that ERGs are at cross purposes when they might, for example, think they're just about serving a community and creating space for that.

So whether that's lunches or dinners or some kind of social activities, whereas the expectation from their HR and broader organisation is that they are delivering action. And we see that often in terms of misaligned expectations. So not only does the role of the ERG need to be defined, but then the duties of the ERG participants.

Phil Cross: Hmm. I might just start with some thoughts on that second point about the, the roles and responsibilities and the duties of individuals within that ERG and I think ERGs are one thing we see are often too slow to change in terms of, people who may have overcommitted.

So people, again, very passionate about this topic, come together, wanna make change, and that, that they're often doing this just a hundred percent in addition to their, to their, to their full-time role within an organisation.

So people will put their hands up to, to be responsible or accountable for something within an ERG. Find that that's not really doable. They're not able to put the, the time and the energy towards it to drive it forward at the speed that we might wanna see. But that doesn't change, very quickly because again, these people are volunteers and, and because of the lack of, accountability and clarity.

So I, I think there needs to be a more, more haste when it comes to, when it comes to making change with those roles and responsibilities sometimes too.

So, The third point we're going to, we're gonna touch on today, is defined ways of working. So, this applies to within the ERG, as well as the governance structures in place, to support the, to support the ERG from the, from the broader organisation as well.

There's a, there's a whole bunch in there, but I think again, how we form and, and how we organise a high performing team, regularity in terms of cadence and expectation is absolutely key. And I think there's more to say on that best practice being shared across different ERGs as well.

One thing we see time and time again is ERGs act acting and operating within, silos within organisations. And there's very little shared, across them.

Kerry Boys: I might just give an example of that and how some of the programs that we've done have helped with that particular area. So of course we've got really passionate ERGs, but let's assume an average large scale organisation would probably have five or six ERGs.

So how do we send communications that are touching on all of the different underrepresented groups we're serving, much more digestible, makes a lot more sense to individuals that haven't got Headspace within the organisation.

Another example of when we get this working well is policy reviews. So again, a separate organisation. We had six ERGs all looking at all of the different HR policies that exist, and each had recommendations about how we can be improving those policies for all of their groups. Now, for the HR team, that was completely overwhelming because it was happening in a really unstructured way. After working as a collective, we were able to say, actually, let's choose one policy at a time.

Phil Cross: And that making sure ERGs are adequately supported as well. This obviously extends outside of that, but are they getting the, the data they need to make, you know, to make informed decisions? Obviously the people and culture teams within organisations have access to pulse survey data, engagement data, and they get feedback from across the organisation in myriad different ways.

If there a regularity with how that's distributed in a way that's meaningful to ERGs, that actually informs their decisions as well. And obviously the the support goes, a lot broader than that, but the data piece is often, really, really lacking in, in our experience.

Kerry Boys: The one other I'd like to touch on there is just about letting them know their works valued.

We ran a six month program with this organisation and the ERG leads referenced it multiple times during that six month program. So something as simple as demonstrating that very senior people in the organisation do really care about this work and do see that they're really putting time and effort in can make a huge difference.

So it doesn't have to be big things. It can be small, small things that can make a really large difference to the value that they feel.

So if you're enjoying this conversation or would like to talk to us about accelerating your organisation's DEI efforts, please reach out at hello@leadersforgood.org.

Kerry Boys: Okay, principle four, then Team Trust and Connection.

So of course this applies with any team, but the quality of relationships between team members and that's team members themselves as well, as well as broader support roles. So if we have executive sponsors, for example, is a key factor in effectiveness, and we know that building relationships takes time and needs actual focus. So enabling ERGs to understand how trust builds over time. The importance of taking time to get to know each other is really important, and that can look like team building sessions or social catch apps, but demonstrating that the organisation supports that is really important.

And this is especially challenging when we know that ERGs have relatively low levels of time. To spend on these areas.

Phil Cross: and I think even something as simple as bringing to, bringing to the front of mind, the, the old forming, storming, norming, performing kind of stages of, of team formation and having that upfront as an expectation and something to just reference when things are potentially rocky in the early days of, of coming together.

It's like, Hey, we've gotta find our cadence. We've gotta find what works and who's doable for doing what. And, and it's not gonna be smooth for the interim. You know, putting that on the front of the stage and acknowledging it and using it as a conversation piece can, can be actually transformative in terms of it not feeling personal and, and not feeling as demotivating and not feeling like we're doing the wrong thing.

It feels like that's a normal part of, of coming together as a team. So, absolutely. And again, providing them with some exercises, some guidelines, as Kerry said, to build trust. It doesn't necessarily just happen, happen naturally between, People in all organisations, depending on the culture and, and the style.

Kerry Boys: Yeah. And we've seen that through simple things like working with ERGs on personality profiling.

And you do often tend to get some very strong personalities in ERGs because we do tend to have people put their hands up that are really passionate and advocates and that can sometimes cause clashes. But understanding that, understanding where it comes from, understanding how to work with different personality types is again, gonna make sure that ERG is operating in a much more effective way.

Phil Cross: Yeah, absolutely.

So, thinking about when we talk about this with organisations, we talk about organisational diversity. So we need different levels of seniority, we need different representation from functions, from geographic locations as well. And beyond again, the thing that binds the group together.

Kerry Boys: Yeah, and I think that's really important and a lot of ERGs would invite people from outside of that specific group to be part of the group as an ally, and I think that's really important. Where can we sort of step up and support, where we can, we actually had an interesting conversation with Lydia Ho from Future Super on one of our last podcasts about this.

So I think thinking about the makeup of each individual group as well as more broadly in terms of what groups that we have is really important and one of the areas we've been discussing recently within this is intersectionality. And obviously we may be in an ERG for disability, for example, but that doesn't mean that's the only part of our identity.

We're made up as so much more. So thinking about about how we consider that, within the broader ERG makeup is also a really interesting area.

Phil Cross: Hmm. Absolutely.

Kerry Boys: So our final area then is capacity and capability. So this is about the fact that we really need to equip our teams to be able to make change.

And I think the two areas here in terms of priorities, the first one is knowledge and skill, and then the second area is about time and space. So when we're talking about knowledge and skill, that's about working to ensure ERG members have access to the tools that help grow their foundational skills for driving change.

And they have buy-in from the organisation more broadly and specifically their managers. So we need to have their leaders agreeing that they can spend time on this activity, and ideally this would be built into their KPIs. So if as an organisation we truly value diversity, equity, inclusion, we truly value the work that ERGs do, then it should be part of members KPIs because it's driving our organisational agenda more broadly.

And then, yeah, then, then having that assessment, that self-assessment. Where, where are we strong, where, where do we maybe even over index and, and where have we, where have we got some gaps? And then, you know, how do we go about plugging those and how do we go about supporting our ERGs if we're in that role.

Now for some reason, that sits really uncomfortably to me because it's saying it's something separate to your existing role. And I think from my mind, in an ideal world, we should be carving out space within existing roles to do this. But it's a really interesting route to demonstrate value and it definitely is, does do that and does tick that box.

Just wondered what your thoughts were on that one.

Phil Cross: It's really tricky. I don't have a clean answer there. 'cause part of it creates potentially perverse incentives for people to overwork as well. So, you've got people who might be kind of motivated, you know, a bit too much by Oh, like, I'd like that extra, you know, as well as obviously the good intent that's clearly there.

But this requires real, real discipline and real buy-in from the, those, the managers of, and leaders of those individuals that they aren't overlooked for their, different kind of contribution when it comes to evaluations that pertain to their day job. So what we see is, You know, people who work part-time, for instance, are often, are often marginalised because they, they're not seen as, as effective or as contributing enough as the full-time colleagues.

Which, you know, if, if you just looked at objectively on a pro-rata basis, they may be more so. But that's not often taken to, into a consideration. So I, I think the more effective route is a disciplined carving out of time. That would be, that would be my suggestion. 'cause I think it can lead to overwork and burnout.

Yeah. Okay. So, You might be asking yourself if you're in a, in a sort of position to do so, if you're a people and culture lead, how do I help my ERGs get there? So we've got some ERGs at our organisation. Maybe they're not operating as effectively or having the kind of impact that you'd hope. What are the next steps here?

So I think the, the first. Thing to do is think about a maturity assessment. So again, getting a view on where your where your ERGs are on that scale of effectiveness. You can use these six tenets, if you want these six principles of effective ERGs to, as a measurement for, as a basis for measurement of ERG effectiveness.

I think, I think it kind of boils down to, there's obviously a lot of nuance within that, but, having a, having a clear plan based on reality and then sticking to it is a good way to think about that. Kerry, any additional thoughts there?

Kerry Boys: Just, I think some examples of how that can come to life.

So what we often see when we do the ERG assessments is there's one or two areas that are the primary challenge areas. So what we wanna do once we've understood that, is then build a program around it and, and it can look like a number of different things, I guess, at the the sort of fullest area, of the spectrum.

One end where we've worked is full sort of 12 month programs working with ERGs to go from the basics of defining exactly what their strategy looks like, understanding their roles, understanding and getting some ways of working and team cadence in place. All the way through to identifying and then putting on education for those groups.

And the results actually of that program were amazing. I think we had a over a 90% MPS and 80% of the ERGs saying they were over 10 times more effective now self-evaluation, of course, than they were before. So we can make some really big change in that way, but it can also look like smaller interventions.

So, There's some organisations where we're running 90 minute intro to effective ERGs, and that's explaining some of these concepts that we've talked about here. So what makes an effective ERG? Helping people understand what a high performance team is, helping them self evaluate and find areas of focus.

Phil Cross: And, and just to round out the conversation and, and to just link that bridge back to the kind of last, last thing you said there, Kerry, which is the support, it, it, this conversation might have come across as slightly pessimistic, I suppose, in, in some regards. You know, there's a, there's a lot of things to consider and a lot of things to do.

So I think that's the main takeaway is, is for organisations from my eyes, is treat your organisations like any other team that you would like to be a high performing team in the organisation and provide them with the support, guidance, resources, necessary to do that. That 's my, big takeaway.

Kerry Boys: And I think for me, and we probably didn't say this explicitly, but when we get these teams working really well and we've got really effective ERGs, they do three things. So they have happy, motivated people within them, which is awesome. Tick, we want our ERG members to be happy. They are supporting and driving the communities that they are there to serve.

Phil Cross: And that happiness and motivation comes from being part of a high performing team as well. It sucks to be part of a team that that's, that's not doing what it should, you know, it feels frustrating.

It feels demotivating and, and it leads to, you know, overwork and burnout when you're part of a team that's kicking goals, that feels, that feels great. So, so, you know, it, it might seem like additional work upfront to get this right, but once the momentum's going, the, the long-term impact is the, the team will be more efficient.

Kerry Boys: Yeah, very good point. Upfront investment as with many things. And then over time we can obviously cut that down. So if you found this conversation today interesting, we have got a blog post all about ERGs and you'll be able to see those six points that we've mentioned here today. So that. Is in the show notes and also on our website under Insights and Posts.

And if you'd like to share that with a friend, we would of course love you to do that. If you want to discuss anything, DEI, Culture Change, ERG related, please feel free to get in touch. Hello@leadersforgood.org is the best email address and we would very happily have any informal chats about anything to do with DEI, ERGs culture change, we geek out on it, we love those conversations, so very happy to have those chats.

Phil Cross: Great.

Well. Thank you all for listening. And we'll see you again next time.

Kerry Boys: Thank

you.

You can also give us a rating or a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. And of course, if you'd like to talk to us about accelerating your organisation's DEI efforts, or if you'd like to provide feedback on anything you heard today, you can reach us at hello@LeadersforGood.Org.