Introduction
I am a great fan of the podcast This Isn’t Working, set up and hosted by Tanya de Grunwald. It is doing the hard work of re-imaging how HR might perform its roles better and how an organisation’s leadership might better engage with the politics of inclusion and diversity.
In the episode ‘No Debate’ Is Dead – What Now? [came out 10/09/26] Tanya made some comments about staff networks/ERGs that were fair enough in the conventional sense, but which excluded other perspectives – because they aren’t widely known.
I agree with Tanya in that staff networks/ERGs are often not only of no real use but can be a source of trouble within an organisation. They can be disruptive and destructive because they push a political agenda. But they can also be vehicles for positive transformation.
Below I want to reflect on the notion that a staff network/ERG (henceforth just ERG) can be a potent transformative influence.
What an ERG is not
There isn’t, so far as I know, any written down history of ERGs. My direct knowledge of ERGs goes back to July 2010 when I became a founding member of one set up by our organization’s CEO. It had one function – to provide insight from staff with disability to inform HR on developing policies, procedures and practices to ensure access and equity for staff with disability.
HR did all the secretariat work as well as all the policy, procedure and practice development. The ERG was a partner with a clear role. It had a chairperson who had only 2 jobs – run the meetings and sit on a committee.
That was simple and clear, and it worked well for a few years. We were helping the organization meet its identified responsibilities. The organization was in control at every level. And then it wasn’t.
Circumstances changed but the original intent wasn’t reviewed. The ERG continued but no longer with the level of control upon it, or the support it had enjoyed. It could now be more self-determining. Many things subsequently changed – but one thing did not. The ERG remained a collaborator or partner on helping the organization meet its recognised legal responsibilities toward its staff.
An ERG may have a proper role reminding an organization of its legal obligations. This can get quite tricky at times. But it has no proper function in trying to introduce attitudes, beliefs or behaviors which are not arguably part of an organization’s legal responsibilities.
That is to say it has zero entitlement to any engage in political activity undertaken within paid working time or using the organization’s resources or property. And, unless the organization is privately run and its executive leadership has the direct authority to promote or approve political activity by staff, no organization’s executive leadership should give staff authority to engage in political activity regardless of whether it is sympathetic to the cause.
That sounds like a dogmatic statement, but it is not. I have worked in 5 federal and 5 state departments, 1 NGO and 1local government and I have been a contract manager for funded business and disability organizations. Organizational governance isn’t a vague notion.
The need for a goal, a theory and a contract
These needs didn’t become clear to me until I started to do research into why the ERGs that I was contracted to support were having such a hard time. The ERG leads had a common, and real, lament. They didn’t have the time. They had been modelled of the successful Disability ERG I had led – but on a version my successor had adapted, which excluded a key factor I attributed to my success and included an innovation that had some value, but which increased complexity for subsequent ERGs.
I was Disability ERG lead for 3.25 years, stepping down in March 2020. From May 2018 I was allowed to work 3 days a week on the Disability ERG’s business. In September 2020, based on my track record, the organization’s executive embarked on a bold experiment. It offered my successor a fulltime role as EEG lead and other disability related work.
So, why was I allowed 3 days a week as Disability ERG lead? That was unheard of at the time. The simple explanation was that I was delivering results. I ran the Disability ERG as a de facto business unit. The ERG was invited to present at the 2019 and 2020 Australian Network on Disability’s Annual National Conferences to report on the innovations developed and the outcomes delivered.
It is only looking back now that I can see that I had a goal – to end suffering experienced by staff with disability because of inaccessibility, discrimination and abuse. I also had a theory of sorts – hence the notion of the ERG as a de factor business unit. I also had a contract of sorts. The ERG was funded for a 2-day planning session which produced a plan which was presented to, and endorsed by, the executive board.
During my consultancy I asked the ERG leads to give me an ‘elevator pitch’ statement of their ERG’s value to the organization. None could. When invited them to write a strategic plan for the next 12 months only one did so with ease and another did with quite some effort. There seemed little capacity to readily develop a clear sense of their purpose – either in terms of goals or overall function. A common theme that was favored was ‘celebrating diversity’ – but you don’t need an ERG to do that.
What was most glaring was that neither the ERGs, HR nor the organization had any agreed theory on the role and function of the ERGs. There were certainly no shared conversations. So, there was no contract. This was especially evident in the lament from the ERG leads about not having time to put into their roles. The ERGs didn’t think to network among themselves to lobby for more time – probably because they didn’t have the time? The organization’s executive leadership may not have been even aware of this but certainly felt no need to enable the leads to have the time they craved. HR either didn’t the resources or didn’t have the capability to intervene.
My point here is not to assign blame but to illustrate how easy it can be for the critical elements of an effective role for an ERG can be either fragmented or absent. In my case as an ERG lead the key elements were there, but not because we all agreed in a rational way that these were what they should be. Instead, the ERG was successful because those elements were functionally present through the good fortune of the right people being in the ERG, in HR and in the organization’s executive at the same time. Maybe ‘dumb luck’? But you still have to play the hand you are dealt well.
Hindsight and research enable me to look back and understand what worked and why. In part it was down to the caliber of the individuals. The executives and HR leaders I worked with were of high caliber, as were my fellow ERG members. We can put success or failure down to key individuals – but inside an organization we need something more – an operating environment and a culture.
Having a goal, a theory and a contract agreed upon by the ERG, HR and the organization’s executive is critical to create the operating environment – and the extent to which that is coherent creates a capacity to positively influence the organization’s culture.
The pointless notion of staff networks
I recently reviewed the NSW Public Service Commission’s guidelines for establishing and running staff networks. I commented extensively on them in my previous post. I still struggle to understand why bother having them. In this regard I agree with Tanya’s remarks about them. The guidelines suggest little more than somebody’s ‘good idea’ that ends up being a tepid soup of ‘feel good’ sentiments.
You certainly don’t need a group of ‘volunteer’ amateurs getting involved in policy. And if staff networks are not intended to have any real power – which they are not – are they anything more than a tokenistic distraction to deflect staff belonging to minority groups from being as aggrieved about their mistreatment as they should do – especially if an organization has a legal duty they are ignoring or underplaying.
At best this vision of staff networks/ERGs is well-intentioned but naïve. It dwells in a fog of good ideas, as imagined by people who have no direct experience of actual exclusion and discrimination. What I saw was ’learned helplessness’. My early encounters with Disability ERGs left me bewildered by people who articulated serious grievances but then settled into a habituated sense of failure. Their disorganized efforts at attracting attention and concern had come to nothing. They assumed moral indifference. But they did nothing to alter their insights or their behaviour.
Hence organizations were content that they were being ‘progressive’ by having ERGs, and the employees who joined them felt a sense of vindication. HR figured it was doing its job. It wasn’t often that anything became an effective locus of change – enabling an organization to meet its legal obligations and ERGs to deliver outcomes for members.
I divided the ERGs I worked with into 2 categories – problem solvers and celebrators. I have a bias toward problem solving because that’s about meeting the needs of staff experiencing real disadvantage and contra the obligations of the organization toward its employees.
I worked in the NSW public sector. It has a policy obligation to ensure a diverse workforce that reflects the community it serves. That imposes a different set of obligations from a corporation seeking to maximize profit or ROI. The public sector has, sadly, no equivalent to either. It is guided by foggy notions of public benefit and political expediency. In such an intellectual/moral environment ERGs have an inherently ill-defined role. I am guessing that the idea of staff networks originated in the public sector because such a vapid notion could not have arisen in any well-functioning for-profit organization.
Employees might join an ERG because it promises a prospect of change to adverse workplace experiences, behaviors and cultures. But the ERGs are not designed to enable such changes, just appear as if they are.
The NSW public sector is subject to anti-discrimination, disability inclusion and work health and safety legislation. All these impact staff with disability. There’s a policy to employ more people with disability under the logic of being representative of the community. There is, however, no corresponding strategy to identify and address discrimination, abuse and bias against employees with disability. This is despite comforting words to the contrary. ERGs could be engaged as a highly effective partner in addressing these concerns.
The alternative approach
I have demonstrated that an ERG can be a highly effective partner in addressing real risks and threats to staff with disability by proving critical lived experience feedback when policies and procedures don’t work – because they are flawed or because they are not being followed.
ERG members are seen as volunteer amateurs. But that’s unkind and unfair. By the time I became Disability ERG in November 2016 I had around 22 years’ experience in disability fields including 6 years as a Disability Support Manager and 10 years as a Senior Project Officer. I also had earned Masters and Masters Honours degrees majoring in Social Ecology and had an Associate Diploma in Applied Management paid for by my employer.
Being an amateur at running an ERG isn’t the same thing as being an amateur in a host of contexts. A Disability ERG member might be a Senior Policy Officer who brings the added insight of lived experience to the job to policy development.
My point in making the Disability ERG a ‘de facto business unit’ was precisely to instill a professional discipline in what we did. We consulted on policy development from the perspective of being on the receiving end of policies, strategies and other efforts to generated desired change as well as also fully understanding policy formation. It isn’t really the field of esoteric expertise it is pretended to be. In that respect it’s a lot like HR.
By making an ERG a genuine partner and collaborator two important things happen. The first is that an organization that is serious about meeting its legal obligations toward employees will get genuinely frank and fearless advice that gets around the self-interested filters of the standard hierarchy. The second is that there is a professional and civil influence that carries a genuine sense of urgency. Staff experiencing exclusion, discrimination and abuse must not be asked to take a number and stand in line. Response to those needs must have priority.
Conclusion
I largely agree with Tanya that ERGs as they are presently imagined are neither fit for purpose nor otherwise useful to the extent that they should be ‘tolerated’.
They are not ‘fit for purpose’ because that purpose has been neither defined no agreed upon. No business area in any organization should be so loosely defined. I personally don’t see the point in having an ERG whose function is about celebrating diversity. I confess this is a bias. If genuine problems that impact staff members wellbeing and welfare are neglected I can’t see the point in prioritizing celebrations of difference. Let’s be ‘One’ before celebrating that we are ‘Many’. This is an entirely personal perspective that fuels my passion to ‘end the suffering experienced by staff with disability’. There’s no hyperbole in that statement.
You can’t be ‘fit for purpose’ if the purpose is not clearly articulated and agreed upon by all who have a material interest. I have moved away from the idea of an Employee Resource Group to an Employee Reference Group. This wasn’t my idea. It came from a DEI manager.
The difference between Resource and Reference is critical because it relocated the notion of an ERG to entirely within the core business of an organization. This is often overlooked or mistaken. Core business isn’t just about an organization’s outputs but also its governance – not just behaviour but also health.
I have avoided using the word ‘moral’ here because I want to focus legal responsibility because it is clearly delineated and unambiguous. How an organization addresses its legal duties to its employees is about method, style and strategy.
But then there’s moral dimension. Organizational processes can grind slowly as problems of resourcing arise and are confronted. In the meantime, how do you face the staff who, because of their disabilities, are feeling the pain of being excluded, discriminated against and even psychologically abused? This happens out of sight of organizational leaders. And when it is raised by staff subject to such conduct, they are often subject to more of the same.
Without a sophisticated and professional Disability ERG there is no protection, no trusted voice. In the NSW public sector, the number of staff with disabilities who take leave for psychological injury because exclusionary, discriminatory or abusive behaviour by team members or [mostly] managers has been cause for alarm. But the idea than an effective Disability ERG might be able to reduce such claims isn’t a popular notion. I understand why. The logic is just dumb.
I am not arguing that an ERG is the ideal answer. In fact, it isn’t. But in the type of ERG that I developed there is the seed of a solution to the challenge of genuinely meeting the needs of the ‘diversity groups’ we have been encouraged to embrace and include.
The current message seems to be that this is all too hard and stupid, and we should go back to being how we were. My argument is that we need to stop engaging in sloppy emotional reactions and start thinking clearly about how we are going respond like mature self-aware adults.
ERGs haven’t evolved with the workplaces they were designed for over 16 years ago. They are stuck in a time warp because there has been almost no serious thinking directed at them – because they were invented to be ineffectual displacement activity rather than genuine agents to change in response to evidence of inequity and injustice. I don’t think this was an intentional conspiracy – just what we do stuff as humans.
We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite
by Musa al-Gharbi is an excellent exploration of why this is the case.
PurpleSpace is what can happen when you take running an ERG seriously. PurpleSpace’s founder and CEO, Kate Nash gave the keynote address at the 2018 Australian Network on Disability’s [AND] Annual National Conference in Sydney. Kate introduced me to the concept of Networkology. I could run a Disability ERG as a professional body? That was a novel idea. I tried it out and it worked a treat. I was invited to the AND’s Annual National Conferences in the following 2 years to report on our progress. So far as I know no Disability ERG in Australia that was invited to do similar.
ERGs can be imagined as genuine effective agents of change in service of an organization and its employees.
Michael Patterson
[email protected]
11 September 2026