Strategies to Build a More Inclusive Business

Improved workplace representation has direct business impacts. Diverse teams are generally more innovative and drive more revenue growth for their companies compared to competitors. Diverse leadership teams are also 35% more likely to achieve better financial performance than their industry peers.

To harness your own organization's diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives, consider adding employee resource groups, or ERGs. They can lead to happier employees and an improved experience for customers.

Kickstarting an ERG

An ERG is a voluntary, employee-led group that supports a company's diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI efforts. Creating an ERG can help to create a more diverse workplace and a supportive environment for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ employees and other marginalized communities. Here are some ERG best practices to get started.

Set goals

It's important to define your organization's inclusion goals and understand how developing this resource can help you achieve them. For example, your goals may include expanding your management team's diversity by 50% within the next 3 years or developing more inclusive recruitment strategies.

Get input

ERGs for women, Latinx, Black, LGBTQ+ employees or those with disabilities may provide valuable input to help craft strategies to achieve diverse goals, such as partnering with community colleges and organizations to develop an internship program that will improve your recruiting pipeline. You may also consider engaging a multigenerational workforce at your company.

Provide training

These groups may also offer ideas for training and development programs that can help you identify diverse, high-potential talent for future leadership roles. Some ERG members may even be candidates for these opportunities. Creating a mentorship program and empowering women in leadership roles can benefit your business and the staff helping run it.

Build inclusive teams

As you work to develop ERGs within your organization, consider the following employee resource group best practices.

Recruit volunteers

Empower high-potential, engaged employees who may be willing to volunteer to lead or participate in an ERG. These employees may already be involved in other initiatives within your company or have won recognition for their work. Managers can also identify employees who can positively contribute to an ERG, which enriches leadership with diverse perspectives as well.

Get leadership buy-in

To build buy-in with potential ERG members, express your company's commitment to DEI and let them know it's a core part of your strategic plan going forward. Discuss what joining an ERG will entail, such as monthly meetings, planning events and providing input for strategic companywide initiatives throughout the year. Make sure your human resources team and other senior leaders are involved.

These conversations are important because they'll demonstrate that you've established a plan for creating these groups and understand why ERGs are so critical for employee engagement and improving your organization's culture.

Adapt goals

Once you've recruited employees to develop these groups, work with them to establish goals and determine how you'll measure success.

These goals should align your company's broader goals with priorities that are important to ERG members. For example, you might establish metrics for diversity across employee retention, recruitment and promotions. ERG members also may have goals, such as incorporating diversity metrics into the performance review process for managers or establishing a company policy to interview at least one diverse candidate for a managerial role when these positions become available.

Along with these goals, the ERG should have its own internal goals, such as establishing a mentorship program for new employees or organizing events yearly within the company and in the community.

Launch and promote your team

After the ERG has established its goals, promote these groups in your company newsletter, intranet portal, internal emails and on social media.

Promoting these groups before they launch and throughout the year could help them recruit more members who can contribute diverse perspectives and ideas that impact your company in a positive way. Create a logo and brand identity so employees can identify and look forward to recurring diversity efforts.

Run a retrospective

Whether it's quarterly or biannually, meet with ERG members to evaluate how they're tracking toward their goals. Discuss accomplishments, pain points and how the company can better support them, including allocating more resources for events and working with managers to free up more time each month for activities.

This is a good time to review your company's progress toward broader diversity goals and assess how you can adapt your strategy to achieve those goals.

The bottom line

Diversity is key to building a business that can function in today's global marketplace. An ERG is just one of several ways your company can make meaningful progress toward diverse growth, foster improved creativity and collaboration in your workplace and have a positive impact on the communities you serve. Connect with your staff and discuss inclusive team efforts that fit your business needs.