Introduction
I have come to the end of a 2-year casual consultancy with my former employer, working with leads of ERGs. I know I was of great help to some. There were elements that frustrated and disappointed me as well. That aside, the experience necessitated me taking a deeper dive into what an ERG is and how it operates, and what Inclusion is about, than I understood at the commencement of my engagement.
Below I want to reflect on what I learned about ERGs and Inclusion.
One ERG Lead is not like the other
There are some basic rules about effective leadership – as there are in any setting. But how they are manifested is utterly dependent on the individuals.
The first thing I had to do was understand that my job was not to turn other ERG leads into a replica of me. I knew that of course, at a theoretical level. The harder part was making it practice. There were ego and reflex things to be addressed or accommodated – in me and the people I worked with.
There is an abundance of excellent sources on leadership. Some ERGs leads will read some of them. Others are either not readers or think they already know how to lead. Some do, most don’t. All can do with upgrades to their knowledge and capabilities. Not all leads agree.
Some ERG leads have leadership experience. Others do not but are highly capable and can grow into the role with support.
Leads have different ideas about their ERG’s mission. These ideas tend to match their assessment of their own capabilities and reflect their own biases. I had to better understand that not all the ERGs had the same problem-solving focus I had had as the lead of a Disability ERG. Some ERGs saw their mission as principally celebrating diversity and Inclusion. As it happened, I worked more with problem-solvers. I think this was my bias at play. Each problem-solving ERG needed to develop its own style and method. Not all problems are similar.
Having a strong strategic sense of one’s organization’s culture and politics makes a difference. Hence ERG leads will have varying levels of awareness, depending on their experience in the organization and how complex that organization is.
As a fledgling consultant I had to get my head around these factors, for which there was no playbook. I then had to get to know each ERG lead well enough to develop an understanding of their capabilities. As this was a voluntary relationship I succeeded with some and failed with others. Not everyone wants a consultant hanging around.
Leadership is a skill apart from the ERG’s mission.
In this instance ERGs were selected via membership vote. As a consultant I was allowed to learn how many ERG members voted. It was significantly less than 10%. Given that there were no key capabilities required of Leads beyond the desire for the role this meant those who were elected to the roles didn’t always possess the minimum capabilities to perform in the leadership role without considerable support.
The vital lesson here is that leadership selection must be conducted on the basis of an assessable selection of capabilities, and not the random consequences of elections.
Leadership is a team affair.
ERGs in the sector I worked in were established based on the staff association model. This foundation led to assumptions that there is a primary leader (the Chair or co-Chair), a deputy chair (in this case 3) and (in some cases) a management committee.
The problem with this model is that it places an emphasis upon managing the affairs of the group rather than attending to the group’s purpose for being. If we think in terms of a tennis club – its purpose is to facilitate the playing of tennis. It’s not about managing how the players come together. That’s a valid function of the club, just not the primary one.
In many organizational environments these days, staff are time poor. Volunteer members of the leadership team aren’t necessarily the best Inclusion practitioners and Inclusion practice isn’t necessarily confined to the leadership team. This can put too much of a burden on a handful of people who are time poor to start with. Lean administration and intense focus on Inclusion practice is a better model.
This means a practice support group is a better model than a management committee. This can help the leadership team engage in Inclusion practice, not chairing or managing the ERG.
A better overall model for an ERG is a team rather than association, and my preferred model (for now) is what I call a peer-to-peer model.
One of my main innovations as a Disability ERG lead was to develop a Guidance and Action Group (GAT) which was the core 15-member advisory group and which I ran as a professional de facto business unit focused on delivering outcomes for members. Admin was minimal – and I did that myself.
Looking back now, that model was not something suited to everyone. The peer-to-peer model is my current best evolution of the GAT idea.
Volunteer doesn’t equal amateur
In the sector I worked in ERGs are seen as voluntary staff-led groups modelled on a staff association. Now I think this is very outdated.
This model has led to the assumption that an ERG is an amateur body – by both the ERG and its organization. But trying to address the problems of advancing Inclusion using well-intentioned amateurs without related professional grade skills doesn’t serve the needs of the ERG’s members.
Here is an essential point. By under-estimating the complexity and difficulty of achieving greater Inclusion we have left some ERGs struggling to get traction and gain much success. This is a challenging role to take on and there must be a reasonable effort:outcome ratio. If the challenge is under-estimated that ratio will be poor.
An ERG as a professional partnership with its organization
An ERG has only one function – to serve the Inclusion needs of its members. The low participation levels in elections of office holders should tell us that administration of the ERG is not a high priority. Candidates for offices are not selling their skills as Inclusion change agents but as administrators.
The members deserve the best leadership they can get, and the organization should require the best leadership that can be obtained. This is because the Inclusion needs of staff are primarily an organization’s responsibility that it cannot rightly pass off to a group of volunteer staff members. The logic of having an ERG is that the organization needs staff engagement in meeting its Inclusion obligations – as a partnership – a collaboration.
In my time as a consultant the major concern raised by ERG leads was not having the time to work on what the ERG was supposed to do. I have previously argued that it is okay for ERG leads to put in their own unpaid time so long as this was about doing recognised professional development work. Running an ERG well takes a lot of skill and sits outside core business. It could be seen as akin to doing a course of study. I will come back to this because it now needs clarification.
Voluntary work should not replace paid hours. This creates a question of perception as well as practicality. At what point is it reasonable for an organization to sanction and support an ERG in helping it meet its Inclusion obligations (a key element of staff welfare in the workplace) and then not enable the ERG to do what is necessary for it to be an effective partner?
When is unpaid work okay?
The work of a competent Inclusion change agent is demanding and requires an education and skill acquisition. It should be supported by an organization as the development of high-level skills that have considerable value in other roles influencing behavioural change.
This could be the basis for setting up a developmental program that requires out-of-hours work – provided there is also appropriate formal recognition. The scope of the program should be negotiated with participants – but with required core components.
Resource group or reference group?
A manager I was talking to came up with this insight – preferring Reference over Resource – but I realised I had initially misheard them and missed its import.
ERG as Employee Resource Group vs ERG as Employee Reference Group sends 2 distinct but related messages.
We need to ask ourselves what resource a group of employees is – the lived experience of not being included. By contrast reference is a verb – and denotes a relationship – a group referred to as a source of expert knowledge. In the case of disability this is not just the experience of living with disabilities but also of experiencing exclusion in the workplace because of those disabilities. Let’s also add the potential of expertise in policy formation, management and leadership and other areas of professional insight.
Following the principle of nothing about us without us an organization’s efforts to eliminate exclusion must include the insights of the people being excluded in the following ways:
- Assessing the sufficiency of policies
- Feeding back on the efficacy of policy informed actions
- Advising on the level of compliance with policies at a local level
- Reporting on the impact of exclusion on individuals and teams.
Expanding the embrace of ERGs
ERG membership tends to be predominantly junior staff. There are many reasons for this. In the case of disability, senior staff are less inclined to say they have a disability for fear of discrimination from their peers. If ERG membership flags membership of a discriminated against minority group it’s not what you want to be known for. Being ‘one of us’ is way better. Members of minority groups are less likely to be present in senior grades. And being a member of a staff-led volunteer group isn’t a good look for an executive.
What I have proposed in the peer-to-peer model is that executive sponsors and champions aren’t roles apart from the ERG but members of it – but without ranking authority.
This has a few advantages. First, it brings executive expertise and insight into consideration of issues. Second, it feeds insight on Inclusion issues into executive leadership ranks. Third, it validates membership of ERGs by senior managers and executives.
The problem of being staff-led
Under usual conditions the organization controls the conversation, and the ERG is a passive partner. This was the model of the ERG I joined in 2010. We were able to speak up when we were asked whether there were any questions. But as a rule, it was staff-led only in the sense that meetings were chaired by a member of the ERG. The organization was, otherwise, fully in control.
I changed this in May 2018. The ERG identified issues and initiated engagement with the organization. The ERG wasn’t just staff-led in its internal functions, the drive to make the work experience for staff with disabilities fairer and safer was also staff-led.
While the organization had the duty to ensure the work experience for staff with disability was more inclusive it needed the ERG to drive the cultural change necessary to make this a habit practiced by staff at all levels.
The dynamic between leadership, policy and culture is not well understood – by leaders, policy makers or ERGs.
Conclusion
My success as an ERG leader is at the foundation of my former employer’s current ERGs. But the rationale for how they now operate wasn’t fully based on what I did. The result has been a misunderstanding of how an ERGs might best operate and hence I was invited to consult. The upshot is that some ERG leads have benefited from engaging with me and I may have influenced some changes in how ERGs are understood. But it is also clear that we don’t see eye-to-eye on a theory of what an ERGs is and how it might operate.
What I did to be successful isn’t fully translatable to any other ERG lead. I had a unique set of experiences and skills. By that I mean only that they were mine, not that they were superior.
What I did was to set up some key elements for success. The peer-to-peer model is my version of what I did well matured into a foundation for contemporary ERG.
However, there are also several not negotiable elements as well:
- ERG leads must have a minimum set of capabilities and must be selected by and agreed competitive process that is not an election
- ERGs must be seen as a professional partner in assisting the organization meet its Inclusion obligations. This should be confirmed in a policy.
- There must be a clear contract between the organization and the ERG that places a priority on addressing Inclusion needs of members and has a clear contract that forms the basis for understanding what resources are required and provided, and the setting of accountable outputs and outcomes.
In the final analysis exclusion causes injury and it hurts. Eliminating exclusion in a workplace is neither easy nor quick. But it can happen easier and faster when efforts to make it happen are done well – and professionally.
I was successful only because I had 15 ERG members who formed the Guidance and Action Team. I have said that these people were the heart of our ERG. They were because they had been hurt and were still hurting because of being excluded in some way. They were a constant reminder to me of the ERG’s purpose – to end suffering.
While I was successful at the time I can see that ERGs need to mature to be able to meet the realities of now.
There’s a very interesting essay by Alberto Vásquez Encalada on Disability Debrief in which he laments that Disability Inclusion workers have become professional and have lost the passion to drive Inclusion with the energy of years ago. What he means is that they have become professional bureaucrats and no longer change agents. He makes a powerful point. But I want to add that a lack of professionalism as a change agent can turn an ERG into a staff association unable to trigger the change it was established to foster. Hence it cannot do what was formed to do – end the suffering of its members.