While workplace wellness offerings, such as healthy snacks, fitness challenges, and access to mental health services, can significantly boost employees’ well-being,they sometimes lack the specificity needed to address individual needs effectively. After all, your employees have diverse, specific needs and are more likely to participate in a program that speaks to them. That’s where employee resources groups (ERGs) come in.
Run by and composed of employee volunteers, ERGs provide a structured space to connect with coworkers and impact workplace culture. They are similar to affinity groups but are more formal, structured, and able to drive major change in the workplace. For example, a health and wellness committee might develop and evaluate wellness strategies, propose new initiatives, and suggest alternatives to current approaches to improve team wellness.
No matter their focus, ERGs should support or improve company culture and contribute to employee wellbeing. Plus, successful ERGs may also boost your organization’s recruitment efforts by improving its brand image as an empowering, supportive place to work. In this guide, we’ll explore how ERGs can promote employee wellness and how to create your own.
1. Fostering Inclusive, Supportive Environments
Around 75% of employers agree that mental health stigma is an issue in their company cultures, which can hold employees back from their greatest potential. Decreasing stigmatic attitudes helps employees feel welcomed and appreciated at work, integrates them into your company culture, and motivates them to contribute to your organization’s goals.
ERGs can contribute to an inclusive environment by empowering employees to work together to advocate for their priorities. Let’s return to our earlier example of a health and wellness advocacy ERG. It might promote inclusion in the workplace by:
- Providing resources on common mental health struggles, such as depression, anxiety, and burnout
- Pushing for health insurance with better mental health services coverage
- Creating initiatives that improve work-life balance, such as flexible hours and hybrid work environments
- Hosting work-sponsored events to promote mental wellbeing, such as post-work yoga
All these initiatives help employees feel welcomed and supported in their mental health journeys while decreasing the stigma surrounding it.
2. Empowering Employees from Underrepresented Groups
One of the most challenging parts of running an organization is ensuring all voices are heard and acknowledged. After all, if the C-Suite is focused on pushing your business objectives forward, employee wellness can fall by the wayside. However, with 41% of employees saying they left a job because they weren’t listened to, collecting feedback should be one of your priorities to promote a loyal, engaged workplace.
This is especially true with underrepresented groups. Diverse teams are 87% better at decision-making than homogenous teams—yet, unconscious bias can interfere with achieving your fullest potential as an organization.
ERGs provide an official framework to cut through unconscious bias by empowering employees from underrepresented groups to make their ideas and opinions known. Management is more likely to listen to a large group of people, especially when they have decision-making power sanctioned by the organization. Plus, as previously mentioned, a major benefit of ERGs is that they allow employees from underrepresented groups to form support networks with those from similar backgrounds who share certain characteristics.
3. Improving Employee Engagement
As the purpose of ERGs is to give employees a voice, they provide more opportunities for employees to make their mark on the workplace. According to 360MatchPro, prioritizing employee engagement can improve overall wellness by:
- Heightening productivity
- Enhancing innovation
- Improving employee retention
- Strengthening employee relationships and workplace culture
- Boosting reputation
- Improving employer brand and talent acquisition efforts
ERGs can also be used to create employee engagement programs. These groups can take employee ideas into account and make suggestions to managers and leadership that complement any overarching trends, resulting in the formation of programs in which employees are excited to participate.
4. Driving Professional Development
Your employees expect more from their jobs than compensation—they want to be challenged and provided with skill-building opportunities. Crafting a meaningful professional development curriculum is important to helping your employees feel fulfilled and inspired by their work.
Creating an ERG devoted to establishing professional development opportunities will help you provide relevant, high-quality educational materials to employees that nourish their curiosity. For example, within your professional development ERG, you might have sub-categories of employees devoted to sourcing conference invites, identifying and recommending industry certifications, and curating a curriculum of educational materials.
How to Start Offering ERGs
Since ERGs are integrated into the fabric of your organization, start by standardizing how employees can start their own. Each organization’s process will be different depending on its goals and company culture, but here are the basic steps everyone should take:
- Assess interest via a survey or by asking managers to reach out to their direct reports
- Set objectives and goals, such as intended outcomes of an ERG program and key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Gain official approval from leadership by submitting a formal proposal
- Establish governance and standards to ensure all ERGs have the same power
- Train interested ERG leaders so everyone understands how to properly manage and contribute to their group
- Track progress by using employee engagement software to gauge success and identify areas needing improvement
Promote your new ERG offering by mentioning it in company-wide communications and one-on-one meetings between managers and direct reports. Highlight the most appealing benefits of hosting an ERG to garner significant employee interest. Once ERGs are off the ground, you can support them from a leadership perspective by hosting quarterly check-ins and providing guidance.
Keep in mind that it’ll take more than just leadership approval to start improving employee wellness with ERGs—employees will have to put in hard work to get their ideas off the ground. As you roll out your program and ERGs start making an impact on your organization, be sure to thank the dedicated employees who went the extra mile to improve your workplace environment.
