Starting your Employee Resource Group: A Guide for Employees.

In the first part of this short series, I explained Employee Resource Groups from the perspective of an organization who supports and empowers them. In this post, I provide guidance to the employees who want to establish a new community group and work together with stakeholders to make their group visible and impactful. In part three, I explore how organizations can recognize and reward the work of ERGs.

Photo by Zac Ong on Unsplash.

Why is community important, particularly in a working environment?

Mentioned in the previous post, psychological safety and sense of belonging are very important in order to empower employees and help them bring their whole self to work. Building a strong network or community is a very important step in creating this sense of belonging. Employees with a strong sense of belonging can contribute more fully and are more likely to stay longer. This sense of belonging contributes to an inclusive work culture which all employees benefit from.

Getting Started

First, find out if your organization already has an ERG program (it may be known by another name such as an Affinity Group program). If so, see which groups already exist. Existing groups are a great way to find advice on internal support systems and important stakeholders to connect with. If your organization does not have a formal ERG program, you do not have to wait to start your own group. In my opinion, you do not need to ask anyone for permission to start a new employee resource group. Many employee groups start as an informal volunteer group of colleagues who have a shared identity and intentions to see the organization improve. A group can start with as few of two passionate organizers.

Here’s a short list of actions to help get you started.

1. Find your team. Find a few colleagues who want to work together on your topic, this is often done by word of mouth, but you could also use your internal communication channels.
2. Schedule your first meeting. Keep it casual like a breakfast or lunch in order to get to know each other. Decide together what is the topic of your group and who is your target membership. Try to decide on a name.
3. Schedule a workshop. Organize a basic workshop to define the following things (keep in mind these may change as your group matures): What is the main purpose of your group (for example: networking, professional development, community support, etc.)? What impact should your group have? How will you measure that impact? What is in scope for your group to work on? What is out of scope? What communication channels will you use? Will you have regular meetings?
4. Create your charter documentation. After you have defined the above details about your group, document it in a charter which defines the group including its purpose and scope. Save this document to a shared drive to make it easy to find moving forward.
5. Set up your communication channels. Consider setting up an email list, chat room, google group, etc. I’d recommend the following channels: a centralized email list (for communication from the organization to the group), a chat room (for discussion and decision making) and a group on the organization’s intranet (to make discovery of your group easy for your colleagues).
6. Set up your regular meetings. When scheduling your meetings, consider accessibility of meetings for parents or others with limited availability or remote colleagues to make sure as many people as possible could participate.
7. Brand your group. Ask a friend with graphic design skills to design you a logo for your group.
8. Spread the word about your group. Use internal communication channels, all-hands meetings, posters, etc. to invite new members to join. It’s good to make the commitment clear: how many hours per week are expected, are there different ways to participate?

Maturing Your Group

Now that you have some co-organizers, a charter document and communication channels, it’s now time to build relationships within the organization and make progress on your goals.

1. Define specific roles among your organizing team. I’d recommend starting with: Spokesperson (primary point of contact for the group), Membership Officer (tracks membership of group and welcome new members), Scribe (tracks communication within meetings and shares it with the group) and Treasurer (once your group has some budget, this person tracks budget expenses and makes the budget visible for the group).
2. Map your stakeholders. Determine who are your main stakeholders in the organization. This may be your HR team, leadership team, administrative team or others that can support you in achieving success.
3. Search for an executive sponsor. A strong executive sponsor will make the success of the ERG their priority but without taking ownership or taking away autonomy of the group. They can empower your group and give it visibility within the community and help you work towards success. This white paper on executive sponsorship of ERGs is a great resource.
4. Create a roadmap. This should include planned activities for the next six months. It’s good to not plan too far into the future as priorities and membership often changes. Your roadmap may include: internal projects, hosting networking events (internal) or meetups (external), supporting external organizations, volunteer projects, etc. Make sure your events are in line with the purpose you defined previously.
5. Ask for financial support from your organization. Money can empower a group to work on more ambitious projects. After you’ve created your roadmap, determine how much money is needed to make those projects successful. Create a budget proposal that details how much you are requesting and for what projects and initiatives. Be sure to talk about the impact the projects will have on the organization and your community. Not all organizations will offer financial support to ERGs. Do not be discouraged, you can still accomplish much community and organization engagement without a budget.

Tracking and Communicating Success

I strongly believe that it’s up to the ERG (not the organization) to define what impact the ERG should have. But the ERG must also figure out how to track that impact. For example: if impact is sense of belonging among the community, a survey may be the right way to measure this. If impact is the size of the community, then tracking membership and engagement is key. If impact is the influence on the organization, it’s important to look at specific projects and their outcomes to determine impact. No matter what your ERG decides the impact should be, be sure to track that impact.

Just as important as tracking impact, is communicating impact. I recommend to communicate your impact with three main stakeholder groups:

1. The ERG members. To create transparency within your ERG, share your impact and success with them internally. This can be informally at the beginning of each meeting or in your communication channels.
2. Your main stakeholders. Send a regular update (quarterly or half year) to let your stakeholders know what you have been working on and what the impact has been. Especially if you are spending budget from the organization, it’s important to share what the success and impact has been. This also makes it easier to justify budget for the following year.
3. Your organization. Sharing your impact with the entire organization is important for many reasons. It demonstrates the value your ERG has to the entire organization and it also supports visibility and recruiting of new members. It may even inspire other resource groups to form. You can do this communication via an annual report published on internal communication channels or by presenting your successes at a meeting or event.

Recognition

Communicating your success has another important effect: recognition. Almost all ERG work is voluntary. It can take a lot of time and energy to do this type of work in your free time, when you are already tired from a long day. But do not forget to always acknowledge and celebrate your successes with your organization. It’s a personal reminder of how far you have come but it’s also a way to gain recognition for the (sometimes invisible) work you are doing. During performance reviews, mention your ERG work and (if you can) nominate your ERG co-organizers to give performance evaluations for you. As described in the previous post, your organization greatly benefits from the work of ERGs. You too should be recognized for the contributions you are making to your organization.

Getting Help

If you hit roadblocks or are having trouble finding engagement from internal stakeholders, remember to ask for help. Where to find help?

1. Your Executive Sponsor. A sponsor is the perfect person to ask for support because they have already made a commitment to the success of your group.
2. Organizers of other ERGs in your organization. If they have been around longer, they have likely solved many of the same problems regarding stakeholder engagement, budgeting, etc. Ask them what has worked and learn from their mistakes.
3. Diversity team in your organization. If your organization has a diversity team within human resources or corporate responsibility, they can likely help create connections to stakeholders and enable your group with resources and visibility.
4. Organizers of ERGs in other organizations. Some ERGs have been around for 30+ years. That’s a lot of experience. Ask in your network for folks who have established ERGs in their organizations or find linkedin channels for organizers (like Queer Staff Network Berlin or D&I in Germany).
5. Community activists. In many ways, ERGs are community activists within an organization. They have some of same methods for engagement, measuring impact and stakeholder management.

Final Thoughts

I recently hosted a panel on Diversity Challenges at the Vessy Diversity in the Workplace Conference in Berlin. I want to summarize response from the last question I asked our panelists: How do you recharge and stay motivated while working on D&I topics in the workplace?

1. Take advantage of coaching (if offered) by your organization. Take time to self reflect — when to close your laptop and take some emotional distance from your day-to-day work.
2. Don’t work alone, find someone who shares your passion. Ask for back up from your lead to provide extra support for your working responsibilities.
3. Find what rejuvenates for you (for example: relaxation, fitness) and find your social circle that supports you and can be a place to vent and refuel.
4. Try to recognize the personal reward in working on topics that promote equality and find motivation in that opportunity.
5. When you become frustrated, get motivated by recognizing the successes you have achieved along the way.

I wish you good luck in organizing and contributing to a more just and equitable society. As a reminder, you can find the first post in this series here: Understanding Employee Resource Groups: A guide for Organizations.