What Does It Mean to Belong at Work in a Time of Uncertainty?
Introducing Sharehold’s Redesigning Belonging Research
Belonging is one of the greatest challenges of our time. We are more connected than ever, yet loneliness in America is increasing. The number of Americans who report not having close friends tripled from 1985 to 2004. From 2018 to 2019, the number of Americans who report feeling lonely increased from 54% to 61%. Studies show people with fewer social relationships have only a 33% likelihood of survival compared to those with adequate social relationships. This reveals that loneliness has as much impact on life expectancy as smoking.
In addition to the personal impact, loneliness’s effect on business is staggering. Cigna’s 2020 Loneliness Index reports that workers lacking quality relationships with colleagues are 22.8% more likely to feel lonely and lonely workers think about quitting their jobs twice as often as non-lonely workers. This is compounded by the inability to be one’s full self at work: 61% of all workers feel the need to “cover” at work, 50% of whom report decreased commitment to their organization. Research also shows that attempts to conform and fit in can emphasize the ways in which people feel they do not belong, consequently negatively impacting job performance.
Belonging, therefore, has become the Holy Grail of Human Resources. Organizations now include belonging as a marker of success alongside diversity, inclusion, and retention. At the time of this publishing, leading organizations including GitHub, Twilio, Levi Strauss, and the California State University system are now hiring for director-level and C-level roles focused on diversity, inclusion, and belonging.
But what does it mean to belong at work? Why don’t we have a universal definition or the language to talk about belonging within professional environments? How do we foster belonging at work, especially now in this time of uncertainty?
Introducing Sharehold’s Redesigning Belonging Research
I’m excited to share Sharehold’s Belonging at Work research with you. This is an internal project, led by the curiosity of our team, that seeks to explore and answer the question:
What does it mean to belong at work in a time of uncertainty?
We’re about a third of our way through this research and will release our findings this fall. You can sign up to be the first to receive our insights on what it means to belong at work in a time of uncertainty here.
It’s unusual to share in-progress, private research (vs. open innovation models) transparently; a design research norm that we’d like to challenge. At Sharehold, we believe that by expanding the definition of shareholder to include everyone in an organization’s orbit increases equity and belonging for those who are actively contributing to collective success. In turn, we believe that sharing insights with those who participate in research is the best practice. Sharing the research process transparently builds co-ownership over the insights and any resulting potential solutions while increasing the accountability and integrity of those conducting the research (in this case, our team).
While we work towards our final insights, Sharehold commits to sharing, as best we’re able, our research process as we explore what it means to belong at work in a time of uncertainty. This will include some of the sources of our initial literature review, interview highlights, and in-development insights. We invite you to follow along with us and share your reactions along the way. You can also sign up to be the first to receive our insights this fall on what it means to belong at work in a time of uncertainty.
For those interested in partnering on this research or bringing this research into your work or team, please email us at hello@sharehold.co.
Read on for more below.
Why We’re Doing This Research
In early 2019, Sharehold was inspired by a client project that questioned the potential and limitations of belonging. We began to explore what it would look like to conduct our own research, rather than our usual path of researching in collaboration with a client, guided by the client’s questions. We saw the potential for a Sharehold-led research project to not only support our client work, but to create value and resources to support the work of our peers.
We began with a literature review, guided by our collaborator and community expert, Carrie Melissa Jones, of some 30 academic studies, whitepapers, and resources on belonging. Our goal was to understand the landscape of existing research on belonging. Quickly, our team was drawn to focus more closely on belonging at work for four reasons:
- Belonging at work intersects with our expertise in community design and our growing organizational design practice.
- Work is a relatively discrete environment of community. It’s a starting point from which we can take learnings to other community contexts (e.g. universities, ecosystems, online groups, etc.).
- There is an existing body of research on belonging at work that we can learn from and to which we can contribute.
- Belonging at work is a highly relevant topic for this cultural moment.
In early 2020, we expanded our library of existing research on belonging to more than 70 sources. The Sharehold team was prepared to move forward with a study on the state of belonging at work and an exploration of better ways to measure it.
Then, COVID-19 happened.
The world fundamentally changed, revealing the ways our cultural, economic, and political support systems fall short. While the world struggled, and continues to struggle, to cope with this pandemic and the loss of many thousands of lives, we must also navigate the changing landscape in which we work. Office workers rapidly shifted to working from home — if they were not laid off. The priority level of belonging at work fell drastically as many of us refocused on maintaining basic needs and caring for others. For many, belonging felt not only trivial during this time, but impossible to determine an accurate baseline of measurement.
As the landscape changed, the Sharehold team gathered to discuss the research, concluding that it is even more crucial to cultivate belonging in the face of serious challenges. We also opted to focus on belonging at work in the specific context of uncertainty to, ideally, maximize the efficacy of our findings. There are new questions to answer:
What does it mean to belong at work in a time of uncertainty? What can belonging now teach us about what it means to belong in a time of prosperity? Is the “business value” of belonging more or less important in this context?
We continued to move forward.
However, just before research interviews began, George Floyd was murdered by the police.
Justifiably, protests began and have since been fueled by further police violence and killings of Black people. People around the world, already subjected to or witnesses of prolonged systemic racism, faced the reality of racial gaps in COVID-19 deaths, with Black and Hispanic/Latinx death tolls much higher than those of white people; the reaction has been powerful and gains steam each day. The New York Times Magazine writer, Jenna Wortham, called the pandemic “an accelerant” on a “tinderbox [that] was ready to explode.” The oppression we stand against is not new, however, George Floyd’s murder served as a spark. Amidst the civil unrest, it is clearly time for workplaces to join the conversation and take action as well.
As we research what it means to belong at work in a time of uncertainty, it’s impossible to separate the uncertainty caused by COVID-19 from other circumstances: systemic racism, rising unemployment rates, socioeconomic inequality, the closing of schools and public spaces, healthcare gaps, and more. The coexistence of these factors makes our research that much more urgent.
Where We Are Now
Currently, we’re about a third of our way through the research process. Our internal constraints, including budget, team resources, and capacity, inform our approach. Our research includes:
Literature Review
Sharehold partnered with community expert Carrie Melissa Jones to lead our initial literature review of some 30 sources in 2019. In early 2020, Sharehold expanded our library of sources to more than 70 sources and counting. At the beginning of this new phase of research, our research team completed an additional, abbreviated literature review of the pieces of research most relevant to belonging at work in a time of uncertainty.
Design Research
This is Sharehold’s area of expertise. Design research is a methodological exploratory inquiry to identify patterns and understand mindsets, behaviors, and motivations. Ultimately, design research asks not just “what?” but “why?” This is a qualitative research method that uses frequency counting. We have begun employing the following design research methods:
- Expert Interviews: We’re conducting design research interviews and collecting written responses from experts in HR, DEI, innovation, and belonging.
- HR & Employee Interviews: We’re conducting design research interviews with employees and HR/Culture/DEI practitioners at companies highly impacted by COVID-19.
- Diary Study: We’re conducting a diary study of employees’ self-reported experiences with belonging over the course of one work week.
Survey
Insights identified through our literature review, expert input, and design research will be validated and quantified through surveys.
Where We Go From Here
I admit that I am, on some days, intimidated by this research. I’m a white woman on my own anti-racism journey. Within Sharehold’s research team for this project (myself, Lianna Woods, and Aly Hassell), we each have our own identities, experiences, perspectives, and biases. We’re also well aware of — and Sharehold’s mission and vision speak to our effort to change this — how design thinking can uphold existing systems of power. This research, like any research, will not be perfect, and we will not be able to answer every question posed by our present circumstances.
This initial approach to research on redesigning belonging for a time of uncertainty will provide strong indications for belonging frameworks for use within teams for both times of uncertainty and prosperity, and both in-person and remote environments. Furthermore, the findings from this research will be applicable beyond the metaphorical office — they will be relevant to all community builders.
We believe that there is a wider conversation to be held among community builders about DEI and intersectionality, a core element of belonging, and that this needs to be an integral part of community strategies moving forward.
Next week, we will share more about the literature review, and we’ll begin to share interview highlights over the next few months.
Please follow along on our research journey in Sharehold’s newsletter and sign up to be the first to receive our insights on what it means to belong at work in a time of uncertainty here.
For those interested in partnering on this research or bringing this research into your work or team, please email us at hello@sharehold.co.
