What’s the Value of an ERG?
At my former company, I was an ERG Leader for almost 5 years for our Asian employee group. ERGs are employee led and employer supported groups that help advance diversity and inclusion initiatives across organizations. The Employer Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion estimates that 90% of Fortune 500 companies have these groups in place. While their purpose might differ across organizations, generally, they help create more cultural competence, empathy, networking in the company, and community connections. While Diversity and Inclusion focused FTEs typically account for a small percentage of the workforce, the ERGs are often the employers’ frontline when it comes to anything diversity and inclusion related.
The most common issue ERG leaders deal with is, how do I show “value” of an ERG. In my experience dealing with organization leaders and sponsors, to no fault of their own, they often looked at ERGs the same way they would for the actual business. When I worked for a beer manufacturer, the natural desire was to equate success of the ERGs to business metrics like sales in multicultural communities. Because of inconsistencies in measuring ERGs as business operational units, funding for ERGs is consistently underfunded. While there has been a recent shift from business metrics to the softer metrics, organizations and employees have a hard time measuring things like mentoring, networking, communications, and engagement that directly ties with participation in ERGs.
Organizational Network Analysis of ERGs
I believe that organizations should utilize Organizational Network Analytics to unearth the “hidden” value of ERGs beyond just the absolute numbers of members. As Maya Townsend said in her SNA analysis of a Women’s ERG: networks are made up of “hidden webs of relationships” that people use to get work done. Many employees identify themselves as a part of multiple ERGs, and also functionally sit in many different departments, which will likely make their networks diverse to begin with. What often isn’t measured is the value of the connectivity between the groups and members in the entire ERG network, a way to look at the strength of allyship across an organization if looking at it from a Diversity and Inclusion view.
What I am most interested in learning more about for organizations are:
- How connected are the ERGs between each other in communication? Are there Silos?
- How much bilateral communication happens between leaders/ sponsors and its members?
- What kinds of key actors show up? (e.g., brokers/connectors)
- What Relation signatures appear for ERG networks? (e.g., innovation, influence, ideation)
One of the biggest challenges I foresee is convincing leaders that this network analysis and the data will be valuable for the company. Many companies are not designed around D&I as a strategy, which makes the existence of ERGs challenging, as many leaders are fighting for their groups’ survival. As someone that believes that ERGs are a vital foundation to helping advancing D&I, I am hoping we as practitioners can change how organizations measure ERGs to also look at network analytics to quantify their ERG’s value and reach.
In a previous post, I had mentioned that organizations desire to be able to evolve into social enterprises but engaging on topics of social inequities/ systemic racism cannot be a siloed effort led only by management. Systemic change involves change leadership, and I believe that organizations must look at their ERGs as a major part and lead of that change network. Leveraging the employees’ networks will help start to create the bridges needed to have open conversations across an organization. ERGs can help an organization provide the needed connectivity across different functions and identities.
References
Townsend, M. (2019). What you can learn from Employee networks. Strategy+Business, 94, https://www.strategy-business.com/article/What-You-Can-Learn-from-Your-Employee-Networks
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