Do organisations set up ERGs to fail?

Introduction

The short answer is ‘not intentionally’, but, functionally, often yes. This is because organisations generally have no more of an understanding of how ERGs function than the staff who are moved to set up and support them. 

Some organisations have an insightful, experimental, and empathic executive leadership. Others do not. I mean no criticism, because executive leaders do the best they can with good intent. However, they may be unaware that their good intent isn’t manifesting as they intend. 

There is often a lack of clarity about how the role of ERG Champions are understood. As sponsors and mentors with a brief to nurture the ERG toward success? Or as champions of the ERG cause? It’s often only the latter, and this is where major problems arise.

So much depends on the capacity of people to respond to the best of their ability. Sometimes all the players are limited. Sometimes the executive is keen, but the ERG membership isn’t up to the task. Other times the ERG membership is passionate but lacks the skill to sell its passion to the executive leadership and get them on board. Executive sponsors and champions can make a critical difference, but only if they grasp potential of an ERG, and they have a brief from the organisation’s senior executive leadership to take on a nurturing role.

I was fortunate when I became DCJ DEN Chair in November 2016. The Secretary of my department had a well-merited reputation as an exceptional leader. My executive DEN Champion was deeply principled, empathic, and energetic. Four years after she left, we remain in contact. I also had outstanding support from Managers Inclusion and Diversity. Also, I had the good fortune of a background of engaging with business and organisational leaders over 4 decades.

In my case I came to the DEN Chair role with all the stars aligned. I was able to engage with key players and build relationships of mutual trust and respect. 

Whether an ERG can be successful depends on several factors I will explore below.

What is an ERG?

An ERG is an organisationally authorised body of staff volunteers acting in the interests of a specific interest group. But there is not always an organisational strategy for supporting the ERG’s development and performance – or a clear contract about outputs and outcomes.

The intent is good, but the execution often lacks finesse. The lack of automatic support to ERGs by sponsors and champions raises the question about how an organisation understands what an ERG is. Mostly they are proposed as good ideas by advocates of an interest group, but who may not fully understand what is involved in delivering the desired outcomes. I was a very successful ERG chair for 3.25 years and it’s only been in the past couple of years that I have developed a more mature understanding of what an ERG is. I ceased fulltime work in June 2021 and subsequently spent 18 months in near full-time research. That reflects how complex the challenge is. Here is my current theory:

• An ERG has 3 primary functions:
  • To identify legal and moral imperatives and obligations in relation to diversity groups that an organisation is struggling to honour.
  • To work collaboratively with the organisation to act to meet those imperatives and obligations. This is an evolutionary approach rather than seeing deficits and assigning blame.
  • To represent the concerns of members who are adversely affected by failures to meet these legal and moral obligations. This requires tact and diplomacy and must never become adversarial.
• Some ERGs act to celebrate the diversity their membership brings to the workplace community, and through those celebratory acts increase the spirit of inclusion. Others are primarily problem-solvers. These two functions must be understood as distinct and are in response to membership wishes. It’s not okay to duck problem-solving responsibilities and substitute the celebratory role – but it does happen.

Here I focus on the problem-solving ERGs because they have the most complex and challenging function.

As DEN Chair I intentionally developed the DCJ DEN as a de facto business unit. My rationale was that an ERG had to operate as at least as sophisticated as any other business unit involved in driving change authorised by the organisation. 

Driving change from a voluntary perspective is an even more complex challenge. The ERG sits outside standard hierarchical and cultural norms. In many respects it is entrepreneurial – and that can be an issue in public sector organisations. ERG leads can be highly effective ‘wild card’ disruptors, but that’s a high skill impact that is best intentionally supported by executive leaders. Otherwise, that ‘wild card’ spirit can be mistaken as subversive.

An ERG comprised of well-intentioned amateurs cannot, in my view, achieve what its members most need – genuine equity and inclusion. The ‘amateur’ perspective assumes that good intent is sufficient, and that change is triggered by rational response to data and response to moral imperatives. That’s not how reality works. Often the best that can be achieved is a slow response to a need that can be drawn out over several years. It may not be intentional ‘slow-walking’ but it certainly isn’t prioritising reduction of harm in a timely manner.

Driving attitudinal and behavioural change is complex and difficult. It’s not for amateur efforts, no matter how noble the cause is. There’s a reason why change management is an area of professional expertise. Change is slow in any case for a variety of reasons. This is often despite the efforts of mainstream business units. There are complex structural, cultural and psychological factors to be engaged with and navigated.

We are well beyond any romantic notion of ERGs. Change resistance is fundamental to us as individuals and organisations – which are comprised of the same individuals. Change is best generated when change agents collaborate and act as partners. This assumes that the ERG and the organisation are aligned with a common vision of what to be achieved – and a shared intent to make it happen in a timely manner.

That partnership must understand that what is aspired to by staff in general and intended by executive leadership is often undone by mid-range managers and operatives. This isn’t intentional evil, or even the corruption of self-interest. It has been present in all organisations since the advent of civilisation.  In the 1980s the ‘management guru’, Tom Peters, gave me my first lightbulb moment in comprehending organisational culture. I was a union delegate at the time. He said reality was sloppy and messy. I suddenly grasped why the union and management made such a hash of addressing problems. Aside from egos blundering all over the place neither of us could analyse the problem effectively or propose an effective solution. As a result, we were in constant fruitless and unnecessary conflict.

Messy complexity is not novel or unexpected, but it must be understood. Obstruction of progress by individuals is common but it’s not necessarily malignant ill will. It may simply be that other things have precedence. We do not have unlimited cognitive and emotional capacity to treat every matter requiring our attention with the objective and dispassionate attention others expect us to give it. That’s the human reality of decision making in a complex organisation functioning under a variety of constraints.

Managers are normal people with demanding roles. Over the past few decades, we have changed how organisations are required to behave in relation to their staff. But we haven’t lessened the BAU demands [in many instances they have increased], and we have added a massive additional burden of things managers are expected to know, respond to, and be responsible for. Organisational cultures haven’t adapted sufficiently to the new requirements. Nobody is to blame, but we all have to fix it. Organisational evolution is uneven and messy.

I do not believe you can fully understand what an ERG is, or can do, without a decent grasp of organisational psychology. It’s not a field I am qualified in, but I read in it at every opportunity.

An ERG can be a wildcard with immense transformative and innovative capacity. But it needs the right leadership and the right support before it can realise its potential.

The ERG leader

Whoever leads an ERG sets tone. I was fortunate in that I came into the Chair role with a good level of leadership experience under my belt (but not a lot of management experience). I was okay about taking the responsibility of leadership on, and I had a theory about how to lead well. ERG leads may not have this background, and this creates risks that can be ameliorated by support from the organisation.

As a consultant supporting ERGs, I have worked with ERG leads who have no professional leadership experience. All have had the potential – which is why they volunteered for the role. But they have needed two things:

• The opportunity to go through the psychological adaptation to a leadership role. This is more complex than generally understood and can longer than is ideal.
• An understanding of what is required to lead well. This is where coaching and mentoring by skilled and experienced leaders can make a critical difference.

An organisation can ensure that all ERG leads automatically are assured of leadership mentoring and coaching by ERG Champions and Executive Sponsors. The fact that this doesn’t automatically happen reflects the degree to which organisations don’t fully understand what an ERG is, how it fits with their objectives, and how to best help it be effective.

ERGs typically elect their leaders. This is often a bad idea. The ERG leadership role is a demanding one and a popularity contest doesn’t give us assured good outcomes. Membership elections deliver erratic results – very hit or miss. Given the vital role of ERGs that potential for random results isn’t the best option. A superior alternative may be a formal competitive selection process.

If ERG leads lack leadership experience and standing two problems can arise. The first is deferential reflexes will kick in when they are engaging with more senior staff. The second is that they are not confident in engaging with executive staff in discussions or negotiations. ERG leads must see themselves as legitimate leaders with equal standing when they represent their ERG members, and the organisation must support this. But if ERGs are elected with no pre-requisites on experience and standing (which is often the case) they can become ineffectual and intimidated.

Recently I attended a webinar at which representatives from the HSBC Bank spoke of how ERGs in their organisation operated. Leads were selected by a highly competitive interview process. This is an excellent idea. It acknowledges that being an ERG lead is a skilled role and getting the best person for the job is paramount. The crucial insight for me was that the ERGs had high standing in the organisation and being an ERG lead carried status and credibility – enhancing one’s professional profile.

Who gets to be ERG lead and how they are selected matters. So too does how an organisation supports the leaders to do the best job they can.

How organisations can avoid failure of their ERGs.

ERGs are composed of volunteers on a mission. They are not, however, necessarily run by skilled or experienced staff. Not all organisations set minimum criteria for ERG leaders (standing, seniority, relevant experience or skills). Arguably an organisation has a responsibility to support an ERG to be as effective as it can be, rather than leave things to chance.

Its one thing to assent to the establishment of an ERG, and another to actively ensure that the ERG understands that it is accountable to its members and to the organisation. It’s not unreasonable that an organisation should impose upon an ERG and require it to be accountable and meet an acceptable professional standard. In this way an organisation honours its obligation to ensure that staff members seeking to improve equity and inclusion outcomes are competently represented.

I have encountered push back against this attitude from some disability ERG leads. I think the best response is a comparison between the outcomes my recommended approach has delivered compared to what outcomes those who have pushed back can boast of. This isn’t the place to make a detailed comparison, but I am sure the reader will understand my intended meaning. ERGs must be professional and must be integrated into the organisation’s operational culture if they want the evolutionary changes that benefit their members to manifest sooner rather than later – if at all.

Here are some things an organisation can do to reduce the risk of ERG failures:

1. Ensure the ERG and the organisation have a shared vision for the ERG’s purpose, what outcomes are desired and what outputs are required.
2. Require an ERG to develop a compelling value argument which justifies why its demand for resources [time, funds, attention etc] makes good sense as an investment. 
3. Understand that an ERG, although run by volunteers, is still performing a professional and an accountable role. That role is advocating for, and seeking to assure, the welfare and wellbeing of a sub-set of staff members.
4. Understand that this role is complex and difficult. The calibre of ERG leadership is a critical factor for success. So is the nature and level of support the organisation provides. Training, mentoring, and coaching must be available to ERG leads as a matter of course.
5. Formally recognise ERG leadership roles as high-status skilled roles and require them to be competed for like any other formal role. These roles must also be acknowledged as valid professional roles – and celebrated as such.
6. Celebrate ERGs as valued bodies delivering professional standard services to their membership.

Conclusion

An ERG can be a tokenistic response to pressures upon an organisation to conform to social expectations. But it can also be a canny partnership between an organisation’s executive leadership and its staff in an understanding that cultural evolution toward inclusive values is naturally slow. A reason for that slowness is the resistance by middle management which is caused by various reasons:

• Middle management can be poorly trained in contemporary management and leadership approaches and is consequently ill-equipped to deal with the more subtle issues of inclusion and equity. Some organisations are still operating on a 20^th Century model of management which saw staff as disposable ‘wetware’ in the process of producing required outputs.
• Middle management is under intense demands to respond to business as usual. Issues related to inclusion, diversity and equity concerns are not routinely encountered, and often require immediate knowledge that isn’t easily available. Staff welfare still remains a secondary consideration relative to the primary business focus. We have increased expectations about staff welfare but not yet the means to meet them in a systemic and effective way.
• Our understanding of how organisational cultures work seems to me to be universally poor. The science of management and leadership has progressed immensely in the past 3 decades. But the extent to which current managers are up to date with contemporary thinking is not high. We mostly think that management/leadership is an art. But art without the science of what is manipulated is rarely successful. This applies to ERG leads even more so. There is a distinct disadvantage in taking up a leadership role with no understanding of contemporary leadership approaches.

In essence an ERG is a critical part of a feedback loop. Policies, strategies and programs are developed and implemented in response to evolving values about staff experiences in the workplace. But they don’t necessarily work out as intended or anticipated. An ERG communicates to the organisation what must be fixed, amended or evolved. Resistance to that message is natural and normal. An ERG must overcome that resistance skilfully – and with respect and compassion.

Organisations operate under resource constraints as a matter of course. There’s often barely enough means to achieve an organisation’s core business let alone embrace the additional attention and effort to meet employee welfare and wellbeing obligations. Some large enterprises are all in on DEI because they recognise that it has a business benefit worth investing in. But for many others it’s an added compliance pressure nobody has had time to fully appreciate. Its not resourced or supported as a human-centred priority. It’s more a cost to be controlled than an investment that generates a benefit.

Its in everybody’s interests to have an ERG skilfully exerting respectful pressure on a workplace culture to evolve a little bit faster. Inclusive workplaces retain skilled and experienced staff and perform better. There is no downside to an effective ERG. But they require focused effort from an organisation’s senior leadership to ensure they can meet their potential as change agents in support of commonly agreed and valued goals.