Battle against burnout
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When done right, employee resource groups foster belonging and create physiologically safe spaces. They are also part of a much-needed comprehensive organizational strategy to help reduce burnout. Recently, LinkedIn gave employees a paid week off to help reduce stress and burnout, and now they’ve announced paying the global co-chairs of their employee resource groups $10,000 a year starting next month.
Culture Amp and Paradigm surveyed over 7,000 individuals and found that a sense of belonging was the single metric consistently tied to employee engagement and experience. Employee resource groups typically engage based on commonalities around life experiences, race or identity. Their primary function is to provide personal and professional career support so that everyone has equal access to development. Employee resource groups (ERGs) are a great avenue to convey belonging. When employees feel supported, they’re more likely to be happier and less stressed at work.
But they aren’t just valuable for engagement and creating a solid corporate culture. An employee resource group can also help deepen a company’s understanding of developing customer-centric messaging (marketing) and services or products purchased by a diverse customer base. According to the Census Bureau, the demographics within the United States are changing, with minorities expected to reach majority status by 2044 due, in part, to the projected growth of Asian, Hispanic and multiracial populations.
Deloitte reports more than 80% of millennials experience higher engagement at work when their employer provides a truly diverse workplace culture.” In addition, according to Salesforce, employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to perform their best at work.
So, why are we now just starting to see more companies like Twitter and Justworks paying group leaders or making sure their work makes up a percentage of their current job role? Adding extra work on top of their 9-5 signals how much you value your resource groups, and it’s a recipe for burnout.
Teuila Hanson is the chief people officer at LinkedIn. LinkedIn has 10 ERGs, 20 global co-chairs, and more than 5,000 members and allies. Hanson says, “historically, these employees take on leadership roles and the associated work in addition to their day jobs, putting in extra time, energy, and insight. And despite the tremendous value, visibility and impact to the organization, this work is rarely rewarded financially”.
Along with overwhelming workloads and a lack of resources, burnout stems from insufficient rewards that aren’t equitable and overwhelming demands between work and life, such as sometimes faced by caregivers and parents. J. Stacy Adams, a workplace and behavioral psychologist, first developed the equity theory in the 1960s. She believed that employees seek to maintain equity between the inputs they bring to a job and the outcomes they receive against the perceived inputs and outputs.
Thankfully, it looks like this trend will continue as we ramp our efforts to support all employees on their journey from burnout or languishing to career fulfillment.
