One in five employees worldwide is lonely at work, . And you might not know who those employees are in your organization.

“One of the things that people are getting wrong is they think it’s rare to be lonely at work,” says Constance Noonan Hadley, associate professor at Boston University Questrom School of Business and the founder of the Institute for Life at Work. “People don’t talk openly about their loneliness due to stigma, and they also don’t show up in a way that signals to others, ‘I'm lonely.’”

Because there are clearly established norms around workplace behavior, it’s more likely for employees to hide their true feelings to conform to their company’s expectations. 

, co-authored with Sarah Wright at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, suggests that not only is loneliness a common issue in the workplace — it’s something that companies can address through changes to jobs and work environments.  

It’s clear that companies should be invested in tackling this problem. “There’s lots of about just how damaging it can be for the bottom line of the company,” Hadley says.

"It shouldn’t be assumed that if you’re in the office you’re not lonely, and if you’re working remotely, you are lonely. It's much more complicated than that."

Leaders can expect higher healthcare costs due to loneliness. “ shows high rates of illness and early mortality associated with loneliness, everything from cancer to dementia,” she says. “If you’re an employer paying healthcare costs, then you’re going to be spending more to cover all the medical bills.”

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Loneliness also poses risks to productivity, performance, and employee turnover. Great Place To Work® research shows the importance of meaningful connections with colleagues for employee well-being, and highlights the impact of these experiences with employee retention, agility, and more.  

What is loneliness in the workplace?

The scholarly study of loneliness in the workplace is only a few decades old.

Most of the previous research has been into general loneliness, such as among older people, and not people’s experience in the workplace. In their latest study, Hadley and Wright examined 1,000 knowledge workers who were either low, moderate, or high in loneliness to understand the personal and job features that set apart the highly lonely employees.

Which employees are most likely to be lonely?

“Some have said this is a young person’s problem, they grew up on social media or they’re just new in their career and they’re working remotely, so of course they don’t feel connected. That’s not what we’re seeing in our data.”

While personality traits like introversion increased the likelihood that employees were lonely, there are high numbers of lonely employees for every personality type. 

Hadley and Wright’s research found that role level and work style both had an impact on loneliness. More junior employees were more likely to say they were lonely and fully remote workers were also more likely to be lonely.

Age was not a factor, Hadley says. “Some have said this is a young person’s problem, they grew up on social media or they’re just new in their career and they’re working remotely, so of course they don’t feel connected. That’s not what we’re seeing in our data.”

Gender also didn’t make a difference, but there was evidence than non-white employees were a bit lonelier than white employees.

Even though full-time remote workers were at higher risk for loneliness, a return to the office won’t solve the problem. “It shouldn’t be assumed that if you’re in the office you’re not lonely, and if you’re working remotely, you are lonely,” Hadley says. “It’s much more complex than that.”

There are large numbers of employees from all work styles and demographics who report being lonely.

For companies, this requires a similarly universal approach to the issue with remedial programs that connect with every employee.

What companies can do to fight loneliness

"If there’s no slack in the system, you are really asking a lot for people to figure out how to bond when every second of their day is supposed to be productive."

As part of their research, Hadley and Wright have six suggestions for companies to reduce loneliness in their workforce:

1. Start with a baseline of measurement. Before taking action, make an effort to measure how your workforce is doing. Employee surveys with a validated tool or model are crucial.

“You have to take care to make sure you use good practices, such as making sure confidentiality is assured, clarifying what you’re going to do with the data, etc.,” Hadley says. Hadley and Wright created the to help companies measure loneliness effectively.

2. Identify the drivers of loneliness in your workforce data. The exact population of workers that struggle the most with loneliness will be different for every company, Hadley says. However, leaders should expect to find core elements of their workplace culture to play a prominent role.

One common example is when workers don’t have downtime or space for activities like a virtual coffee with a colleague. “We say if there’s no slack in the system, you are really asking a lot for people to figure out how to bond when every second of their day is supposed to be productive,” Hadley says.

3. Make building bridges part of performance reviews. Time spent connecting with co-workers is often considered “non-promotable” and therefore is not prioritized. This comes down to what leaders say is valuable to the company and how those behaviors are tracked and rewarded in annual reviews.

Hadley recommends adding a simple question to performance reviews: “Did you build bridges and foster relationships this year?”

4. Invest in your social calendar. While there is no one kind of social event that dramatically tips the scales, a regular calendar of events does reduce loneliness. Hadley says, “You need to build organization-sponsored social activities into the rhythm of work. People that were lonely worked in jobs where there were occasional social opportunities, but not at the same scale or frequency as those who were not lonely.”

5. Offer more than one kind of employee group or program. While Hadley and Wright didn’t ask specifically about employee resource groups (ERGs), Hadley warns that companies should not rely on only one group to provide belonging for employees.

ERGs can have immense value for underrepresented groups and provide quick integration for employees joining an organization, but the goal over time is to achieve a broad base of relationships in the organization. “I don't think you can drive up belonging-based productivity and job satisfaction if your social group is very delimited by one particular factor,” she says.

6. Define leadership participation. How leaders participate in programs to build community in your organization makes a big difference, Hadley says.

“Leaders have responsibility not only to show up at these events and help host them, but also to actually be humble enough to say, ‘Maybe I need more networks, too,’” she says. The best leaders won’t expect to show up and dispense wisdom but will see value in building new relationships, even for themselves.  

The first step in building belonging and inclusion is investigating the contours of your workforce.

What demographic groups are underrepresented or overrepresented? What are the gaps between the experiences of different groups?

Those are hard questions to answer when you only have a handful of members of a particular demographic group in your organization. The number of responses from a group in your employee survey might not produce a statistically significant sample. Popular strategies like creating an employee resource group (ERG) might not make as much sense, either — but that doesn’t mean these groups shouldn’t get support from the organization.

When employees look at the roster of ERG groups at a company and don’t see one that fits their identity, they can feel overlooked, or worse.

“In some cases, they might feel that they can’t be their full selves at work,” says Matt Bush, senior strategic advisor at Great Place To Work®. “In a worst-case scenario, people might assume there is antagonism towards their identity in the workplace.”

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How to support invisible groups

First, companies can ensure that employees feel comfortable sharing their identity with their employer.

“You may actually have more members of a group in your company, but not know because you have not created the conditions for them to be open about who they are,” Bush says. A self-ID campaign is a crucial early step to increase visibility and build trust.

“What we always recommend is coming up with a listing strategy and inviting members of your target group to collaborate with you,” Bush explains. Questions to ask include: “How would you like your organization to show up for you?” and “How would you like to be seen in the organization?”

Different groups will want different kinds of support. Employees might want to create an ERG, but they might also prefer something smaller, such as specific programming around a cultural holiday or awareness day.

Finally, if there is a specific group that your organization is looking to engage, you can lean on external resources and subject matter experts.

“Whether it’s a speaking engagement or someone that you can bring into consult, inviting in external leaders and experts can fill in the void,” Bush says. You can build a relationship with a resource and vet them over time, starting with a small engagement and building into a more meaningful partnership.

Nested ERGs offer important subgroups

Great Place To Work’s report “Untapped Energy: The Potential of ERGs” offers insights on adapting these groups to offer inclusion and belonging to smaller subgroups within an underrepresented demographic.

These subgroups can be crucial for giving smaller subgroups a place to experience the full benefits of ERG participation. Bush gives the example of a women’s ERG, which can have a vast amount of diversity within the group.

“A member might say: ‘Yes, I’m in a women’s ERG, but I'm still very much a minority here because I’m a Black woman,’” he says. To counter this experience of marginalization, some ERGs will create subgroups with dedicated separate meetings, programming, and goals.

Another strategy for ERG leaders is to open membership to all employees.

“This is something that a lot of companies disagree on,” Bush says. “Should ERGs be exclusively for people who identify as part of a group, or should they be also inviting to people who are allies or people who do not identify as a member of that group?”

Whatever strategy you adopt, it’s important to clearly communicate your approach. Some companies add a plus at the end of ERG names to expand expectations on who can participate and how groups will operate.

Make your ERGs work for all

To ensure that your ERG strategy creates space for every employee, Bush offers four tips:

1. Start with clear community agreements that provide space for all participants

“We always recommend that when ERGs are started, founding members in the organization work together to come up with a charter that makes sense for the goals of the people, the community, and the business,” Bush says.

These are often positioned as agreements, not rules, and are intended to guide behaviors and practices that will be productive toward the goals to the group. One example: Always have space and open floor time for subgroups in the ERG at group meetings.

2. Don’t prioritize demographic groups based on their prevalence in the organization

It’s a mistake to allocate your resources and levels of engagement solely based on who you think is represented in your organization, Bush says. Even if you are pretty sure you don’t have a single employee that identifies with a particular group, there is still value in raising the visibility of that group and its experiences.

“Whether it’s acknowledgement, education, lunch and learns, guest speakers — the value of these activities can still benefit the organization,” Bush says. “One day you might have someone who identifies with that group in your organization. You might have customers or suppliers who identify with that group. Building more understanding and empathy between groups is always beneficial.”

3. Find ways to get involved outside your organization

When looking to engage with underrepresented groups, consider opportunities outside the workplace. Find relevant charities where you can donate or sponsor a volunteer event, Bush recommends.

“Those are always beneficial, not only for the people who identify as those groups, but also just for your entire workforce to build bridges for themselves and develop the skills to build connections across wider, more diverse groups,” Bush says.

4. Start where you already have engagement and momentum

If you are just getting started with your ERG strategy, start by offering an ERG to employees who are actively requesting more support and resources. When one ERG launches and starts having events and producing results, other groups may want to follow suit.

“ERGs should be employee-led,” Bush says. “If some employees just have more energy or are just more gung-ho about doing it, let them take the lead.”

Employee resource groups (ERGs) can be effective tools for building a more inclusive workplace.

They are unmatched listening channels and serve as crucial catalysts for transformation and change inside the best workplaces. Great Place To Work® research on ERGs has found that ERG members are 40% more likely to feel good about their company’s impact on the community and 30% more likely to have confidence in their executive team.

Some great workplaces are using ERGs to improve the experience of employees with disabilities, a demographic that is often overlooked and underappreciated. 

At Navy Federal Credit Union, its “Diverse Abilities Network” is the second ERG to be launched at the company. The group is designed to support employees with both visible and invisible disabilities, with membership open to caretakers and allies, as well.

Launched in May 2023, the group’s success is measured against three strategic pillars: education, career development, and belonging.  

“Meetings — which happen on a monthly basis — have some sort of component to tie to one of these strategic pillars,” says Athena Villarreal, manager, diversity, inclusion and belonging & corporate social responsibility strategy and optimization at Navy Federal Credit Union.

Activities include “Accessibility Corner,” where the team shares tips and tricks to improve the experience, such as how to turn on closed captioning or turn off distracting notifications. The group also launched a cross-functional project to develop new best practices to support neurodivergent employees.

“[ERG members] are helping to provide perspective and feedback in real time, says Villarreal. One example is a new benefit the company offers called Joshin, which supports neurodivergent employees and offers coaching for managers on how to work with different learning and communication styles.

The group also has the opportunity to volunteer or support causes that matter to them and support external partner groups like .

Learn more about industry-leading ERG strategies at the For All Summit April 8-10 in Las Vegas!

Responding to employee needs

Would your company benefit from having a resource group for employees with disabilities? For Navy Federal Credit Union, the group was started as a direct response to requests from employees at the company.

“카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 employees were asking for a space where they can get together and talk about things,” says Villarreal. When the company offered events or celebrated observances on the topic of disabilities, they saw impressive engagement rates.

With this input, Navy Federal Credit Union launched the ERG and within 48 hours, it had more than 400 participating members. Today, more than 1,100 employees at the company belong to the ERG.

Apart from membership, Villarreal and team measure engagement to understand how their efforts are landing with employees. Digital communications channels like chat offer metrics, and the team measures readership on content pieces and educational resources shared on the company intranet.

Collaborating across resource groups

When employee resource groups collaborate, the results can be profound.

Navy Federal Credit Union’s other resource group, focused on the military community, found common cause to have a discussion around PTSD awareness in June 2024.

“A leader from each of the ERGs provided their own experience and they shared their own stories to the group, which was received really with open arms,” Villarreal says. By joining together, the groups were able to expand the conversation and offer powerful evidence of shared values and experiences employees have, regardless of past life experience.

Lessons learned

For other companies thinking about launching an employee resource group to support employees with disabilities, Villarreal offered six tips:

1. Be sure to connect with crucial HR and operations partners

"Make sure to connect with key partners like employee relations, medical accommodations, employee benefits, and wellness teams," Villarreal says. "This makes the effort a collective action and allows the team to route questions to people with the power to make change."

2. Prioritize privacy and safety

“There is a specific privacy aspect to this type of ERG,” Villarreal says. She advises setting clear guardrails around confidentiality and how information shared in ERG meetings will or won’t be disseminated. At Navy Federal Credit Union, it was important to be clear that joining the group didn’t mean a participant was disclosing any personal experience.

“This is a safe and judgment-free zone geared toward supporting employees,” Villarreal says.

3. Demand the inclusion of employee voices

Make sure that you are hearing from and including the voices of employees with disabilities in your organization.

“There’s a really important phrase for disability inclusion: ‘nothing about us without us,’” Villarreal says. “Representing lived experiences accurately is a really meaningful part of this particular ERG.”

4. Get leaders involved from day one

The quality of the engagement you receive from top leaders in the organization is an important signal for employees about how safe they are to share their honest experiences.

“If there can be explicit leadership support, that will absolutely open pathways forward,” Villarreal says.

5. Sweat the small details

When thinking about activities or events for employees with disabilities, small details can have a huge impact.

“For things like event activation, specific details really matter, like sign language interpreters, or offering closed captions in a digital setting,” Villarreal says. In another example, Navy Federal Credit Union’s ERG members specifically requested a quiet, sensory-friendly space for employees to decompress.

These accommodations can dramatically change how an event is received and encourage participation in future events.   

6. Don’t wait for a big budget to get started

You don’t have to wait for the perfect campaign or a big ERG budget to start transforming your workplace culture.

“I know we’re a huge organization, but the way that we were able to get started was by celebrating observances like Autism Acceptance Month,” Villarreal says. These observances created the momentum to unlock potential for new programming.

For others looking to start a similar group, Villarreal recommends focusing on a small calendar of observances or events and then using employee feedback to gauge what the company should do next.

When celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, companies must consider the vibrant tapestry of diverse cultures, identities, and experiences that are found within the Latinx community.

Growing up between two worlds has given me a unique perspective, bouncing back and forth between the rich Maya highlands in Guatemala and the San Francisco Bay Area. Even as a mixed race, bicultural woman, I’ve only scratched the surface of the rich diversity within the Latinx community.

Even the label of “Latinx” assumes a shared vocabulary that doesn’t feel authentic to many members of the community who more readily identify as Latino/a/e. There is no one-size-fits-all description of Hispanic or Latinx heritage, much less our collective experience in the workforce.

Today, 19% of the U.S. population identify as Hispanic or Latinx. According to the U.S. Census, by 2060, more than one in four Americans will be Hispanic or Latinx and 78% of net new workers in the labor force will be Latinx.

These numbers show just how important this demographic is for companies — but the rich diversity of this group makes it hard to know where to start. For example, it’s important not to conflate groups:

• Latinx: People with ethnic backgrounds hailing from Latin American countries
• Hispanic: People with ethnic backgrounds coming from Spanish-speaking countries

These groups do overlap, but they are not necessarily the same. And within these groups, there is plenty of diversity: Indigenous, Afro-Latino, first- or second-generation immigrants, bi-racial and other backgrounds.  

For companies looking to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, start by identifying goals that fit the needs of your unique workforce. This could include learning about the various groups and cultures represented in your organization, doing a deep dive to uncover practices that will help Latinx employees rise through the ranks, or diversifying your supply chain.

A good place to start is to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with input from your employees.

At the average U.S. workplace, only 64% of Latinx employees say people celebrate special events, compared to 94% of Latinx employees at Best Workplaces™ (companies that made the Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For® or the Fortune Best Small and Medium Workplaces™ lists).

The gap shows a clear opportunity for companies to build trust, even with minimal investment. To make sure that those celebrations are inclusive and welcoming for the wide range of diversity found in the Latinx and Hispanic communities, consider these recommendations:

1. Consider the best language(s) to engage with your Latinx employees

For employees who speak English as their second language, investing in translation or bilingual communications is one way to acknowledge their unique experiences and needs. If sticking with English, good communications practices can also help:

• Use simple and clear language. Avoid jargon or slang.
• Use multiple tools to share your message. Provide written, verbal, and visual communication to accommodate different learning styles. Consider offering translation tools in tech solutions like your virtual meeting platform.
• Prioritize regular feedback. Ask employees about their experience to understand where language barriers might be holding back parts of your workforce.

 2. Don’t make assumptions about the needs of your Latinx employees

Without asking for feedback, you can easily miss important aspects of the Latinx employee experience. First-generation immigrants will have different needs and pain points compared with second-generation employees, as an example.

Just because someone identifies as Hispanic or Latinx doesn’t mean they speak Spanish. And then there’s the natural intersections of other identities, with women having different needs from men, employees with disabilities having both visible and invisible experiences, or those with Afro-Latino heritage having a different experience from others. 

With this rich variety of backgrounds and experiences, Latinx employees will have a similarly varied range of career paths. Great workplaces should offer mentorship, with Latinx employees who are offered training and development opportunities being 40% more likely to feel connected to the purpose of the organization — the No. 1 driver of retention for all employees.

3. Tap into employee resource groups for next-level listening

Employee resource groups (ERGs) are transformative tools for building a culture of inclusion and belonging.

Great Place To Work® research found that ERG members are 40% more likely to feel good about their company’s impact on the community and 30% more likely to have confidence in their executive team. Members are also more likely to say they consistently participate in innovation.

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To create groups that meet the needs of the incredible diversity found within the Latinx and Hispanic communities, consider a nesting structure where groups can hold sub-committees or work groups that create a safe space for different identities within the overall group.

If you don’t have an ERG, use other channels to directly engage members of this community. Ask company leaders to share their personal stories, heritage, and career journeys to help employees feel more comfortable sharing their own experiences.

Don’t forget to have fun. Celebrating Hispanic Heritage and culture is serious business, but don’t take yourself too seriously. Fun in the workplace can improve well-being and even build trust with employees.

At many companies, there’s a huge disconnect between how management sees the culture and how employees experience and talk about it. To eliminate that gap, smart companies create and implement employee listening strategies that give them a clear picture of employee engagement and their overall workplace culture.

If you’re at a company with fewer than 100 employees, creating a network of employee resource groups might not immediately make sense for your organization.

However, Once Upon a Farm, one of the Fortune Best Small Workplaces in 2024, has adapted the employee resource group (ERG) concept to fit the needs of its 87 employees. Its Employee Engagement and Empowerment Committee, or E3, functions as the one resource group for all employees and offers an essential listening channel for the organization.

The E3 committee has 23 members, but only seven-to-10 of them join a monthly call to discuss upcoming activities and activations for employees. The group also has an active Slack channel, where more of the 23 members participate.

“It’s a cross-functional committee,” says Melissa Ninegar, senior director of people and culture at Once Upon a Farm. “The company is fully remote — and this is one of the ways that we can get everyone from different departments to collaborate and create some engagement opportunities that are informed by our cultural values.”

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A crucial listening channel

Members of the group can share feedback on all aspects of their experience at the company.

“We get a lot of great feedback on the cultural health of the organization,” says Ninegar. “How are we doing as a remote company? How’s your relationship with your manager? How’s your faith or your confidence in the company? How are you doing with your team and how are you doing individually?”

Monthly meetings are a chance to share plans for upcoming events but also make sure everyone has a chance to share their perspective.

“You can’t just keep telling yourself that you’re doing a good job and assuming everything is going great,” says Honoria Hayes, people experience specialist at Once Upon a Farm and a manager of the E3 committee.

“We really want to hear what everyone thinks because that’s how you foster that culture where everyone feels like they can come to work and have a hand in building this environment,” Hayes says.

How can SMBs celebrate diversity and inclusion?

A core responsibility of the E3 committee is creating programming to honor awareness months and cultural holidays across the organization.

The committee might book a guest speaker or organize a donation to a nonprofit that supports a specific group. The committee has an annual budget of $30,000, which it allocates monthly with the ability to roll over funds month-to-month.

“If we want to go a little bit bigger one month, we have to keep in mind that we’ve got to be scrappy elsewhere,” Ninegar says.

For Pride Month, the committee brought in an external speaker to raise awareness about transgender people and their experiences.

For Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the committee partnered with an organization called Confetti, which curates a list of experts that can teach classes on a variety of topics. The result was a workshop for employees about the contributions of Asian and Pacific Islanders to American culture and their many achievements.

For Black History Month, the committee’s programming was careful to be educational but also joyful.

“We wanted to provide something that was focused less on the tragic parts of the Black experience and a little bit more on the joyful side, because we are happy people, too,” says Hayes. “We wanted to say, ‘Here’s something else that you can celebrate.’”

Hayes often presents several options to the committee, but choosing programming for a particular month or awareness day is a group effort. For Pride Month, the group wanted to make a donation as well as invite a guest speaker. To select a group for the donation, Hayes sent out a quick survey to the E3 committee to get feedback.

ERGs build belonging for remote teams

An ERG can play a crucial role in connecting remote workers as well.

At Once Upon a Farm, the E3 committee sponsored a “Nourish and Nurture” Slack challenge in response to employee feedback that remote employees felt unable to create a healthy work-life balance.

“People want to be responsive in a remote work environment,” says Ninegar. “Anytime an alert goes off, it’s really tempting just to respond to it — so we are always going to have to work that much harder to protect people’s boundaries.”

The Nourish and Nurture challenge asked employees to share a picture or share a post about how they are taking care of themselves.

Each post counts as one point — adding a picture counts as a second point, with a maximum of two-points earned per day. Points can then be used to redeem prizes at the end of the challenge.

“It was such a success that everyone asked, ‘Can we keep this open?’” Ninegar says. As sponsors of the challenge, the E3 committee was instrumental in getting buy-in for the effort and leading adoption of the program for employees.

Measuring success

How does Once Upon a Farm know if its E3 committee is having the desired impact? In a word: surveys.

“We do the big annual engagement at the end of the year,” Ninegar says. And after every meeting, Ninegar and Hayes ask for feedback. To confirm that people are sharing their genuine experience, Hayes looks carefully at engagement during the event.

“I’m always looking to see how many people are attending, what sort of comments are they dropping in the Zoom meeting.” Hayes says. “I trust that everyone’s going to always give their honest opinion, but actions speak so much louder than words.”

Tips for other SMBs

Hayes and Ninegar shared three tips for others trying to create their own resource group at a small- or medium-sized company:

1. Money helps — but it isn’t everything

“You just got to put the legwork in,” says Hayes. “Research, ask your network, see who knows who. There’s always going to be someone willing to help and to further your organization’s learning.”

2. Lean on your values

“Anytime you can invite your mission or your values into any space, it’s going to better inform the work that you’re doing,” Ninegar says.

At Once Upon a Farm, that means addressing sustainability and finding activities that connect with what employees care about.

“If we’re raffling off any kind of prizes, I try to support a smaller business, get something secondhand, or get a gift card that supports a business that’s woman-owned or API-owned,” Hayes says. “We always try to carry that through when it comes to our work.”

3. Stay curious

“One of the biggest hurdles in doing this kind of work is that you want to be able to lean on what you already know,” Hayes says. “That can be a great starting point, but you don't know everything.”

That often means relying on external partners or taking the time to research a topic before launching a program. “Be open to furthering your own knowledge first,” Hayes says.

It is hard for marginalized workers like LGBTQ+ employees to feel seen and heard at work — even at great workplaces.

Great Place To Work® research found that LGBTQ+ workers were less likely to say they feel psychologically safe in the workplace by seven percentage points. When employees don’t feel safe, companies are less agile and resilient to the disruption they face from AI, volatile markets, and more.

That’s why high-trust workplaces beat the market by a factor of nearly four over the long run, and why diversity and inclusion is a against recession.

How can companies ensure LGBTQ+ employees feel welcome and safe to be their full selves at work? Here are five tips:

1. It’s not enough to have LGBTQ+ representation in leadership — leaders should talk openly about their LGBTQ+ experience

HR leaders and business executives often focus on representation, but it makes a big difference how LGBTQ+ individuals express themselves (or don’t) when in leadership positions.

When LGBTQ+ employees see a leader who is “out” and willing to talk about their experience, that sends a message that this a safe workplace, says Kenia Rivas-Duarte, customer success manager and member of the LGBTQ+ employee resource group (ERG) at Great Place To Work.

Especially early on in an employee’s tenure, how companies talk about and celebrate LGBTQ+ identities can assuage fears. “Seeing people in leadership who are out and who represent the LGBTQ community lets you know you made the right choice,” Rivas-Duarte says. “It’s that reassurance: ‘Yes, I picked a safe working environment.’”

2. Audit the onboarding experience — what messages are you sending?

When employees join an organization, there are lots of messages that are sent both explicitly and implicitly about how a company is embracing people of different backgrounds and identities.

One example? Filling out a job application where companies ask about the gender with which a candidate identifies. If the application only offers two choices — male or female — that sends a message that the company doesn’t recognize a more complex view of gender.

3. Move beyond awareness with employee resource groups

Your ERGs can be crucial programs to help LGBTQ+ employees build community and develop confidence in the workplace.

“It’s been extremely important joining an ERG, especially being a new employee and still trying to build relationships,” says Rivas-Duarte, who just celebrated her first anniversary at Great Place To Work.

“It’s a community within a community, so it allowed me to ask questions,” she says. “It made me feel more safe, more secure, and it helped me with my onboarding process.”

What really unlocks ERGs within an organization is when they contribute to specific business goals. Rivas-Duarte recommends that ERGs ask questions like:

• How do we help LGBTQ+ folks with professional development?
• How do we help folks feel more comfortable to be themselves in the workplace?
• How can we be an HR partner to help improve the onboarding process?

4. Ensure every employee has an inclusive leader

Relationships with your direct manager have a huge impact on the employee experience. Employees are listening to the kinds of questions their leader asks to understand whether they can share their full experience at the workplace.

Rivas-Duarte says that in her work experience, having a leader who asked about her life outside of work, including taking time to learn about her partner, was an indicator of how comfortable they were having an LGBTQ+ employee.

“They would ask how my weekend was, and include, how’s your partner doing? How’s your spouse?” she says. Inclusive leaders also normalize the LGBTQ+ experience by asking similar questions in team meetings.

“It makes you feel like you’re just a regular person with a relationship or a spouse,” Rivas-Duarte says.

5. Make sure to talk about LGBTQ+ issues beyond Pride Month

For Rivas-Duarte, starting her journey at Great Place To Work during Pride Month was a uniquely special experience. The experience of having everyone celebrate LGBTQ+ employees was affirming and uplifting. But what about LGBTQ employees who join a company at other times in the year?

That’s why a commitment to inclusion and belonging should be activated all year round. “There’s always a mention of underrepresented communities in everything we do at Great Place To Work,” Rivas-Duarte says. Whether in content on the website, company all-hands meetings, or conversations with her team, she always sees a commitment to inclusion.

“That’s always top of mind for us, making sure that we’re bringing up these topics,” she says. “It was great that I started at Great Place To Work during Pride month, but the level of comfort and safeness that I feel would’ve been the same because it’s a continued commitment.”

Join us in Las Vegas!

Register for the next For All Summit™, April 8-10, to connect with leaders and experts from great workplaces around the world. 

There have been plenty of prominent voices pushing back on diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging (DEIB) in the last year.

Given all the objections, company leaders might ask the question: How many employees at my organization are opposed to our DEIB initiatives? The short answer: fewer than you think.

Great Place To Work® analyzed more than 521,000 employee surveys collected via its proprietary analytics platform. Using natural language processing tools, researchers combed employee comments to understand how they talked about DEIB.

Of the 24,000 employee comments about DEIB, 83% of those comments voiced support for DEIB activity in the company. That means that for every comment that opposed or complained about DEIB programs in a company, there were five voices arguing that DEIB efforts in the company were worthwhile and should continue — or even increase.

Creating DEIB momentum

The basic concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion work have existed in corporate America for decades, even if the words have changed a bit over the years.

However, 2020 and the murder of George Floyd sparked heightened levels of investment and commitments to scaling DEIB practices. Juneteenth became a national holiday for the first time, honoring the history of Black Americans’ freedom. 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 made lots of commitments to invest in marginalized communities, hire from underrepresented groups, and purchase goods from minority-owned suppliers.

In companies, we saw a renewed interest and investment in employee resource groups — sometimes starting an ERG for the very first time. This was a moment of DEIB momentum, where everyone was bought in and making big changes to organizations.

Now four years removed from the protests, the attention being paid to DEIB is waning. For leaders with DEIB responsibilities, it begs the question: How can DEIB progress be kickstarted again, and in a sustainable way?

ERGs as agents of change

Great Place To Work research found that the entities most likely to build DEIB momentum in a company are employee resource groups (ERGs).

In a report titled “Untapped Energy: The Potential of ERGs,” we looked at the work of Damon Centola, Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology, and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. His work on how social networks influence behavior change shows that a large group rarely changes because of one influential leader. Instead, change often starts on the periphery of a group with several ambassadors or advocates building acceptance that eventually leads to change for the whole group.

A tangible example of this in practice was how individuals chose to wear masks or not wear masks during the COVID pandemic. One influential expert, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, has limited influence to change an individual’s choice to wear a mask or not. However, when a person walks into a room where everyone else is wearing a mask, the social pressure to conform is more likely to convert them.

ERGs in organizations can play the role of internal advocate, helping to normalize behavior change that then drives wider adoption across the whole company.

What predicts DEIB advocacy?

How do you know if employees are going to be advocates for DEIB within the organization?

Great Place To Work research shows that employees who said they had a “great deal” of confidence in their executive team were two to five times more likely to be an advocate for DEIB than those who had less confidence in their executive team.

That’s a strong argument to look at ERG members. In a survey of more than 11,000 employee resource group members — part of The Great Transformation project — Great Place To Work found that ERG members were 30% more likely to have confidence in executive teams compared to nonmembers.

Overcoming resistance

While the resistance to DEIB in companies across the country is real, it’s important to remember that change has never been easy.

There were many in the 1980s who opposed making Martin Luther King Day a holiday. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was deeply unpopular in its time. But decades later, it is remembered differently.

For business leaders and DEIB professionals, the key is to cut through the noise and focus on results. DEIB is good for business — findings that have been reinforced again and again in our data.

Rather than trying to convince the 17% of employees who, on average, oppose DEIB, leaders should find ways to reengage the 83% who are open to DEIB initiatives, but might have seen their commitment drift amid concerns over AI, volatile market forces, and other concerns.

Even better, DEIB leaders must show how efforts to build belonging for all employees lead to business results. When recession fears or a poor quarter force leaders to tighten belts, DEIB programs that don’t have an unimpeachable business case are often the first to be cut.

Tips for building momentum

Here’s how you can build DEIB momentum in your organization:

1. Take time to reflect on your history and progress

Take time to reflect and reconnect to your “why” — what is the purpose and overall objective of your efforts to create a more inclusive and diverse workplace? What experiences from the last few years have shaped those goals and driven your decision? What has or hasn’t changed for your organization?

2. Make your DEIB infrastructure more robust

When DEIB work sits with only two or three people in a company of over 100,000 employees, the entire effort is vulnerable. What happens when a chief diversity officer leaves? It’s easy to lose your entire DEIB staff in a round of layoffs if the team is small.

Instead, think about how you can create wide bridges with many people in many different areas of the company owning a piece of the DEIB puzzle.

3. Empower ERGs to contribute to business goals

Employee resource groups are uniquely situated to transform organizations. They can build resilience and contribute directly to business outcomes from innovation to talent development and training.

In most companies, these groups lack resources and influence that will make the difference for business in the decades ahead.  

4. Celebrate your wins and double down on what is working

As you take stock of your progress towards DEIB goals, take a close look at where things have improved and consider allocating more resources to programs that you can see are having an impact.

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Sustainability has become a global business imperative.

Nine in 10 (90%) global institutional investors revise their investments when companies do not at least consider ESG criteria, per a . In a volatile world, business leaders see the need to their organizations.

And customers demand more sustainability, too. A found that 67% of participants would pay as much as 41% more for a product that was sustainable. The trend was particularly strong with young consumers.

Sustainability is the future of business. To be successful, you are going to need your whole workforce to be engaged and energized to solve problems and find solutions.

A new generation of leaders

To reach climate and sustainability targets, leaders must change.

“We’ve always thought about how do we reach these , but rarely do we talk about the people and the leadership that it requires to reach those goals,” says Tony Bond, chief diversity and innovation officer at Great Place To Work®.

“A leader creates an environment where people can flourish — but there’s also a correlation with great leadership and the ability to lead sustainable development initiatives.”

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At the heart of the issue is trust, the core of what Great Place To Work measures via its proprietary survey. If there isn’t trust between employees and leaders, people won’t come forward to address the risks companies face around non-sustainable business practices.

“Who is in the best position to alert leadership of the risk involved in some of the business practices or products that are being made?” Bond asks. “It’s the employee.”

“If we’re not creating a great place to work, how likely is that person to share this information?”

To meet sustainability goals, organizations need leaders who can build trust.

“About 3.4 billion people in the world work somewhere. Wouldn’t it make sense if we started there and if we created this great environment for people where they work?” - Tony Bond, chief diversity and innovation officer, Great Place To Work

Quickly making change

카지노 커뮤니티 추천 who can quickly adapt will be in the best position to win amid an energy transition and threats posed by climate change. 카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 research shows that high-trust workplaces will be much faster than their competition.

At Great Place To Work Certified™ companies, 82% of employees say people in their organization quickly adapt to change. At the typical U.S. workplace, only 61% said the same.

Some of the biggest drivers of agility come down to an employee’s experience with leaders. When employees say their leaders inspire people to give extra effort, they are 58% more likely to be agile. When leaders have a clear vision for the company, employees are 37% more likely to be agile and 33% more likely when they say managers competently assign tasks and resources.

Clarity unlocks purpose

Effective leadership also ensures that purposeful work drives business success.

In a , Great Place To Work data showed that embracing purpose only led to stronger business performance when employees had clear direction from their leaders. When employees reported meaningful work, and leadership that makes its expectations clear, the companies saw stock market returns that were 6.9% higher than the market.

“This last finding underscores the absolute importance of fostering an effective middle manager layer within firms,” wrote the study’s authors. “Managers who buy into the vision of the company and can make daily decisions that guide the firm in the right direction.”

Great workplaces have leaders who can both set a vision and ensure that middle management throughout the organization can carry their message and empower employees.

At Crowe, setting goals included signing the United Nations Global Compact, which outlines targets to help fight for human rights, the environment, and social good around the world. At Scripps Health, a sustainability webpage was published with articles on how to reduce carbon emissions and reports on company sustainability initiatives.

Publishing a sustainability report is often a crucial step for getting everyone in alignment around ESG goals. “It’s served as a really great organizing framework,” Scott Beckman, director of sustainability for PCL Construction told us last year. “It’s caused a lot of internal discussion when we produce it, from the top levels all the way down.”

At Certified companies, 81% of employees said management has a clear vision for the future of the company, compared to just 59% at typical U.S. companies.

Employee resource groups offer innovation

One tool our research has found to be effective for engaging employees on sustainability? Employee resource groups (ERGs).

Members of ERGs are usually highly engaged employees committed to improving the organization and helping to solve business challenges. 카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 research has found that ERG members at great workplaces are also 30% more likely to have confidence in their executive team than non-members, a key indicator of future success on sustainability goals.

ERG members can also be crucial voices, ensuring that organizations hear from underrepresented demographics when considering their policies. According to the crises created by rising global temperatures and environmental hazards will hit socially vulnerable groups the hardest.

카지노 커뮤니티 추천 that can tap into their ERGs will be able to get valuable insight and context for their sustainability practices, ensuring that their efforts have the desired impact for communities facing the worst consequences of climate change.

At Scripps Health, an employee-led sustainability council focuses on improving operations across areas including construction, energy, food, grounds, recycling, supply chain, transportation, and vendor partnerships. Panda Restaurant Group coordinates with its Panda Green Committee ERG to run a drive that recycled 500 pounds of electronic waste in 2022.

Making the commute green

Is offering remote work a way to make your workplace more energy efficient?

A found that two-thirds of Americans who work from home say they have taken proactive measures to reduce their carbon footprint. Of those who commute to an office, 66% drive a car, while only 7% take public transit.

“Who is in the best position to alert leadership of the risk involved in some of the business practices or products that are being made? It’s the employee.”

More than three-fourths (77%) of respondents to the same survey said that working from home is better for the planet and 58% of Gen Z and 52% of millennials said that celebrating Earth Day while requiring employees to commute was hypocritical. Reasons for this belief came down to increased carbon emissions from transportation and office buildings (63%) and increased use of hazardous materials in workplace settings (58%).

Great workplaces take this into account. Power Home Remodeling, which has a hybrid work model in which most of its employees commute a few days a week, offers employees $3,500 towards the purchase of a new fully electric vehicle.

Tips for leaders

Want to drive sustainability throughout your organization? Here’s what our data says you can focus on:

1. Focus on clarity.

Make sure your sustainability goals are intrinsically tied to business outcomes and company values. Ask: Where can our organization have the greatest impact? 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 that have clear and effective leadership are seeing that a commitment to purpose drives higher business performance.

2. Involve every employee in sustainability.

ERGs can be helpful partners, providing highly engaged and diverse employee populations to tackle issues across the organization. Can your ERGs do a SWOT analysis of your current sustainability practices or attend leadership meetings on sustainability? Consider making sustainability metrics a KPI for ERG groups.

3. Invest in trust.

By becoming a great workplace, your organization can have a profound impact on employees and the communities where they live and work. If every company in the world offered a high-trust culture, the world could make significant strides toward the 17 Sustainable Development Goals outlined by the United Nations.

“If we’re taking care of people’s well-being in the workplace, that’s a big part of this whole initiative, gender equality, decent work,” Bond says. “About 3.4 billion people in the world work somewhere. Wouldn’t it make sense if we started there and if we created this great environment for people where they work?”

When everyone has a great workplace, the benefits will be felt in many different ways. “카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 impact on the external environment, socially and environmentally, can be even greater,” Bond says. 

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Learn more strategies from our workplace culture experts at our For All™ Summit, April 8-10, 2025 in Las Vegas, NV. 

What drives companies on the Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For List to outperform the market by a factor of almost four?

In a word: trust.

CEOs from companies atop this year’s list joined a virtual roundtable with Fortune’s outgoing CEO Alan Murray and Great Place To Work® CEO Michael C. Bush to discuss how trust drives better outcomes for employees and for businesses.

Participating in the conversation:

• Christopher J. Nassetta, president and CEO, Hilton
• Penny Pennington, managing partner, Edward Jones
• Ed Bastian, CEO, Delta Air Lines

Watch the full video to hear these remarkable leaders share.

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Get strategies from the leaders in workplace culture at our For All™ Summit, May 7-9 in New Orleans.

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