Author: Kristina Proffitt

An employee resource group for women is one of the most common ERGs companies create. 

But why?

And how should you go about setting up—and supporting—yours? If you’re considering starting an employee resource group for women in your organization, you’ve come to the right place.

Why you need an employee resource group for women

The potential benefits of an employee resource group for women aren’t just about attracting more female candidates to work for your organization. It can also increase the number of female leaders in your business, which helps you innovate—and therefore make more money.

Women’s experiences at work are different from men’s, from navigating women’s health to gender discrimination. Providing support through initiatives like ERGs and mentoring helps female employees navigate these common challenges.

It can also offer you key insights into how your female employees feel.

For example, King Games, the company behind the Candy Crush Saga games, conducted a survey and found that non-male employees often lacked confidence to grow their careers and felt out of place.

Supporting these employees resulted in a 6% increase in female hires in a year.

How to start and support your employee resource group for women

Now that we’ve discussed why an employee resource group for women is important, let’s look at the key elements you need to set up and manage yours:

Find the right leaders

The right leader for any ERG is important. You want your women’s group leaders to be able to connect with other female employees and explain the benefits of joining.

You need someone who can create a respectful, safe space where women can talk about the problems that they face.

For example, they may wish to discuss women’s health, menopause, or pregnancy. They should be able to do this openly and honestly, without judgement.

A leader who can establish rules and norms will play an essential role in the tone of your employee resource group for women.

Compensate them accordingly

Make sure you thank group leaders for their additional time and energy in some way.

Running a community is no easy task. It requires a certain type of person, and you need to keep them motivated to run their group. Offering them incentives will keep them active and engaged in all aspects of their job.

This could be by augmenting their pay, adjusting their workloads to ensure they have the bandwidth to manage an ERG (without burning out), connecting them to development opportunities, or other ways to recognize their achievements.

Establish the basics

Make it clear where your employee resource group for women stands on including trans women, non-binary people, male allies, etc.

What you decide will affect who joins, the activities you do, and how people—internally and externally—perceive your business.

Identify your executive sponsor

Executive sponsors validate your employee resource group for women. They can also help mentor group leaders by teaching them the tenets of leadership if they don’t know them already.

On top of that, they can help with getting buy-in from senior executives, for example to get ERGs involved in business innovation and keep you ahead of your competition.

Let’s not forget that businesses that are more diverse and have more female leaders are more innovative, more eco-friendly, and make more money.

Generate interest

There’s no point in creating an employee resource group for women if no one wants to join. 

Make sure there’s enough interest from employees to join your ERG and make it worthwhile, especially for those team members taking time from their days to run it.

Share the knowledge

Put everything leaders, sponsors, and members need to know about your employee resource group for women in one place. That way, if anyone needs to find past or present information, they know exactly where to look. It becomes a faster process for everyone.

Activity ideas for your employee resource group for women

When organizing events, keep in mind that different times will work for different people. Don’t always organize something in the evening, for example; consider lunchtimes or mornings, too.

Also, don’t orient everything around drinking. You don’t know who does or doesn’t drink, or for what reason. You don’t want to pave the way for awkward conversations about why someone doesn’t.

When I didn’t drink, I got asked why I had soda every time I went out. It got repetitive and frankly didn’t make me feel welcome; it made me feel judged. I have several teetotal friends who still experience this.

Also consider ways to engage your remote team members just as much as your office-based employees.

When remote employees are left out, it’s often because companies don’t consider creative ways to support them and try to fit old models into new ways of working.

Volunteering

The most powerful way to support a community is often not with money, but with time.

Listening to people; helping them do something they couldn’t do on their own; keeping them company so that they don’t feel alone. It doesn’t cost anything but time, but it can make a huge difference to someone’s day.

You could arrange for members of your employee resource group for women to volunteer at a women’s shelter. Or if your team is remote, either enable them to organize their own volunteering opportunities or work with an organization that can help you find opportunities in your team members’ locations.

Book club

When people love a book just like you did, it can form the basis for a strong friendship. 

I’ve had many friendships start from a mutual love of a book or TV show. It shows that you’re interested in similar things and share similar values.

The type of books your employee resource group for women recommends also help set the tone. Will they be focused on professional growth, popular reads, or spreading the word about lesser-known titles? Different types of people read different things and will be attracted to different types of book clubs.

Lunch and learns

Empowering members of your employee resource group for women with the chance to learn about new skills and topics is important. It can boost both engagement and productivity, while expanding your team’s abilities. Plus, scheduling things during their lunch hour means it won’t conflict with any personal commitments outside of work.

Everyone needs to eat lunch, so why not have it do double-duty? Members can catch up with each other, get some solid nutrition to power them through their afternoons, and learn something new to help them either in or outside of work (or both).

Topics could include new skills relevant to your industry, time management, wellness and mental health; the options are endless!

Mentoring

Mentoring for women in the workplace can lead to huge opportunities for growth and development, helping them navigate the challenges that being female in the workplace creates.

An employee resource group for women is the perfect place for team members to find mentors, as it will naturally attract people at different stages of their careers.

Conclusion 

Having an employee resource group for women shows that you understand the unique challenges women in the workplace face and want to help them navigate that terrain.

It comes with benefits beyond just socialization and belonging; it helps you grow your business, too.

Make groups smarter with Workrowd

It’s not easy to set up or run employee resource groups. Not if you want to do it right. 

Workrowd can help you get more from your employee groups through tools to collect feedback, share initiatives, connect employees, and more. Get in touch today to find out how we can team up to better support your employee resource group for women, along with your entire team.

Employee resource groups are an important part of making your team members happy and growing your business. But to ensure that both your business and your employees get the most from them, you need the right ERG leadership.

The right leaders will create an interesting, engaging community that leads to networking and growth opportunities for your employees, and a boost to your business.

The wrong ERG leadership will result in a non-existent community that’s inactive and unengaging. And nobody wants to be a part of that.

With that in mind, here are our top ERG leadership tips:

Pick active leaders

Back in the day, I was active in a lot of online forums. The ones that survived all had one thing in common: the leadership team was active and clearly cared about the site and its community. They kept things up to date, communicated any changes or issues, and spent time engaging with members, too.

The forums still needed active members as well, but there was a trickle-down effect. If the leaders stopped caring, so, too, did the members.

To run your employee resource groups, you need people who are interested, engaged, and good at rallying the troops.

If the group is for a particular subset of employees, ideally you want ERG leadership to be from a similar background. That way they can understand and empathize with the challenges the employees in that ERG face.

Choose someone who wants to do it

An important part of leadership is the enthusiasm to actually do it. If someone doesn’t want to take on an ERG leadership role, but they feel pressured into doing it, they likely won’t put the required effort in. As a result, your group will fall flat.

Someone who gets forced into ERG leadership, instead of doing it voluntarily, will feel resentful and stressed. It will lead to them either quiet quitting or leaving your organization completely. Which puts you in an even worse position than you were before pressuring them to lead the group.

Change leadership periodically

Changing ERG leadership periodically helps keep things fresh and fair. It can attract new members who may prefer different ways of doing things or initiatives instigated by new leaders that previous ones wouldn’t have done.

Rotation also stops leaders from burning out. That ensures they stay engaged with their day job, which should still be their main priority.

Get members to vote on and nominate new ERG leadership as well. This helps members stay engaged. They can also nominate people who may not otherwise put themselves forward but would be great at the job. Don’t forget how important it is that they actually want to lead, though!

Create a knowledge base

If you’re going to change ERG leadership periodically—or just want to make everyone’s lives easier—a knowledge base ensures anything someone within a group might need to know is easy to find.

It’s useful for new members or existing ones wanting to refresh their memory. It also reduces the stress for new leaders taking over. They don’t have to waste time finding information on organizing events, budgets, other important team members, etc.

Connect your groups

Employee resource groups shouldn’t operate in silos. They’re all individual communities but they should interact and share tips and advice. This advice can ensure that new ERG leadership stepping up doesn’t fall into the same challenges or traps. It provides crucial networking opportunities for people, too.

Get executives involved

Your executive sponsor not only legitimizes an ERG, but can also help with things like getting budget sign-off, planning/organizing events, recruiting new members, and getting groups involved in business decisions like new tools.

A women’s group, for example, can help you identify gendered language in product descriptions. Or accessibility features aimed more at men. (Car manufacturers, I’m looking at you. I am short. Cars are getting bigger. Make it so that I can close the trunk without practicing ballet stretches, please.)

It’s becoming increasingly obvious when certain people aren’t included in decision-making, like in the above car example. Sure, in some cars you can now open or close a car trunk with a swipe of your foot. But only if you’re tall enough. It’s not an accessibility feature if it isolates more than half the population.

That’s one of the reasons why employee resource groups are so powerful. It’s also why getting your senior leaders onboard is so crucial.

When they’re involved with ERGs and encourage employees to join, it has a ripple effect throughout your organization. It lifts everyone up and shows the power in their individual and collective voices and experiences.

Give them a budget

Your ERGs aren’t just casual social groups. They should be a core part of your business. So, like any other part of your business, they need a budget.

How much will depend on several factors, including:

• How many ERGs you have
• What they want to do (it can help to ask them to put together a plan)
• How many members they have
• What their objectives are
• Your business finances

ERGs can then use this budget for training, meetups, tools—whatever will benefit their members the most.

The right ERG leadership will be able to manage this budget and decide what to spend it on in a way that’s most beneficial to the group and your business.

Conclusion 

Leadership in any area is crucial, and your employee resource groups are no exception. Get the right ERG leadership in place and you’ll have engaging communities your employees want to be a part of.

Organize your employee groups with Workrowd

Need help organizing your employee groups to make your leaders’ lives easier? Workrowd is here to help. Our tools save ERG leadership time on tedious admin work so that they’ve got more time to spend on community building. Get in touch today to book your free demo and find out more.

So you understand why employee resource groups are important, but if your organization doesn’t yet have them, how do you start? Here are our top employee resource group best practices for those looking to launch their first ERGs:

Don’t treat them as a nice-to-have employee benefit

While employee benefits are nice to have, your ERGs aren’t one of those things.

It’s easier than ever for employee resource groups to get dismissed as simply nice-to-have DEI initiatives. This is especially true when you’re just starting them for the first time.

That’s why it’s important for you to ensure everyone, regardless of how long they’ve worked for you, knows they’re a core part of your business.

Including your ERGs in key decisions can help with reinforcing this and is one of the most effective employee resource group best practices. For example, if you’re a SaaS business working on a new tool, preview it with members of your disability ERG to get feedback. That will ensure you create something accessible for everyone.

Too often, accessibility is seen as optional, or added on simply because it makes able-bodied people’s lives easier.

But disability comes for us all one day.

Making it a core part of your business has no downside, and having an ERG for people with disabilities helps you get things right the first time.

Establish a formal process

A formal process ensures that if someone wants to set up an ERG, they know exactly what to do. It saves everyone a lot of time and confusion, and is one of the most fundamental employee resource group best practices.

It also helps make sure every group is paired with an active executive sponsor. This will help legitimize the group to employees and show that you’re serious about them being a valued part of your business.

Moreover, give them a decent budget that allows them to actually do things. This could include in-person meetups, online hangouts, speakers, etc. Their executive sponsor can help them acquire and manage this budget.

Hold them accountable

As well as a formal setup process, you also want to ensure they have goals so that they don’t fall into the trap of just being a social group.

Get them to set yearly goals, track their progress, and hold them accountable to achieving them. As with anything else, what gets measured gets managed, making this another one of the core employee resource group best practices.

Acknowledge leaders’ time

It takes time and energy to run a community; it’s an extra responsibility alongside someone’s job that could easily spiral into another part-time role.

You therefore want to acknowledge the time and energy ERG leaders spend organizing your groups. Adjust their workloads accordingly to ensure they have the capacity to actively support their ERG (and protect them from burnout).

You also want to connect them with development opportunities—like leadership training, for example—or other ways to thank them them like increasing their pay. Ensuring your group leaders feel appreciated is another important effort on the list of employee resource group best practices.

Publicize groups early and often

You’re never talking about things as often as you think. Whether it’s mentioning ERGs in job postings or internal communications, regularly reminding employees that those supports are there ensures the people whom the groups can benefit can find them and join them if they choose to.

Mentioning your groups publicly can also be a way to distinguish yourself from competitors and show what your company values are, too. It’s one of the employee resource group best practices that can really boost your employer brand.

Likewise internally, regularly plug them in as many places as you can. For instance:

• Relevant Slack channels
• Onboarding materials
• All-hands meetings
• During events like Pride Month, Disability Pride Month, etc.
• Internal emails
• Intranet

To make it less repetitive, you can showcase the groups’ accomplishments. This further reinforces the fact that you don’t just see them as social groups.

Track engagement as well as enrollment

It doesn’t matter how many people are in a group if nobody has posted since 2019. You need active participants for them to make a difference.

So, when it comes to your metrics, be sure to look at how many people are engaging and how often. This will help you show where the demand and interest are. It’s one of the employee resource group best practices that is often overlooked, but which is very important.

Know when to decline applications

As hard as it may be, you don’t want to accept every application to start a new ERG. Sometimes, there isn’t enough interest, it has too much overlap with an existing group, or you already have too many.

If you have too many, it can lead to employees experiencing decision fatigue. They may either not join any at all or join lots and be less active in them because there are simply too many.

Give them the tools to succeed

ERGs are beneficial for employees whether they work remotely, in the office, or hybrid. So it’s important to find ways to make ERGs accessible to everyone within your organization.

Knowledge bases can also be useful, so new members and leaders don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time they want to plan an event or other initiative.

Depending on the size of your organization, hiring a coordinator or manager to support all of the groups is one of the employee resource group best practices you may want to consider.

Organize your ERGs with Workrowd

Another tool that will make ERG leaders’ and members’ lives better is Workrowd. You can keep everything employees need to know about your ERGs in one place, from what groups are available to upcoming events. So they never need to go fishing to look for what they want to know.

Get them working together 

Any good YouTuber will tell you that part of their secret to success is cross-collaboration. You’ll often find YouTuber A features YouTuber B on a video, then the following week, it’s the other way around.

Sometimes they have similar types of videos, sometimes they don’t. But this cross-promotion is key to any channel’s long-term success.

Your ERGs are the same. After all, they have similar goals: they want to support your business and employees. And sometimes cross-collaboration is the perfect way to do it.

For example, if you’re working on a new product or service, you could get members from each group to test it and provide feedback.

Or you could get them to collaborate on organizing a particular type of event.

There are so many things that you could do. Don’t forget to ask them for suggestions, too!

Conclusion

If they’re not already, ERGs should be a core part of your business. They can help you make better, more informed decisions as well as being a way to attract and retain talent.

Organize your ERGs with Workrowd

If you’re not sure where to start, don’t worry—that’s why we’re here! Workrowd can help you implement all of these employee resource group best practices and more.

From organizing all your employee initiatives in one place to maximize visibility, to tracking their performance so you’re always getting the best value for money and the best results, it’s all at your fingertips. Your employees will want to take part in ERGs and other programs and events more, and you’ll get more out of them as a result. Get in touch today to book your free demo.

All too often, employee resource groups get dismissed as nice-to-haves or solely DEI initiatives. But there’s so much more to why employee resource groups are important for organizations today.

Luckily, while some may question their impact, other companies fully recognize the value of these communities. In fact, 61% of employers even report that they plan to boost their ERGs’ budgets. Would businesses really put that much effort and money into ERGs if they were just a nice-to-have?

ERGs are so significant to businesses’ health that 90% of Fortune 500 companies have them. What’s more, 83% of staff who find their company’s ERGs “effective” or “very effective” report a positive inclusion score.

Employee resource groups can help inform and optimize your business decisions to be better, more inclusive, and more efficient. Which of course helps you become more profitable and expand faster. And every business wants that, right?

So let’s dig deeper into why employee resource groups are important, now more than ever.

Who ERGs benefit

While thriving ERGs benefit the whole organization, we most commonly see groups focused on the following communities:

• Women
• LGBTQIA+
• Disabilities
• Veterans
• Race and/or culture-based
  • Black
  • Latine
  • Pan-Asian
• Age-based
  • Multigenerational
  • Young professionals
• Parents
• Interfaith

Why employee resource groups are important

Employee resource groups really are pivotal to the health of businesses in the modern world. Let’s look at the benefits to understand why employee resource groups are important:

Make work about more than just work

All too often, it can feel like life is all about work and…nothing else. This can eat away at employees’ wellbeing, which then affects their ability to work.

78% of employees who feel like they belong at work rate their wellbeing positively. In fact, it’s the biggest driver of workplace engagement—91% of employees who feel they belong at work are also engaged.

Given how crucial employee engagement is, this alone is a compelling reason why employee resource groups are important.

Improve retention rates

When people feel like they belong, they’re less likely to want or need to leave. Retaining your star players is therefore also high on the list of why employee resource groups are important.

For example, Dell’s Women in Action ERG helped the company to boost retention rates among its female employees.

Attract more candidates

More than 3/4 of candidates now look for diversity when considering employers. So being loud and proud about your ERGs will help you attract more top candidates.

ERGs show what your business values, something that’s increasingly important among Millennial and Gen Z workers. 89% of employees now want to work for a company that shares their values. What’s more, 39% of Gen Z-ers and 34% of Millennials have declined roles that don’t align with their values.

Sharing details of your ERGs on social media, or even in job descriptions, helps you communicate your values to potential candidates. It then means that people who apply for roles are more qualified, weeding out those who would be the wrong fit for your business because their values don’t align.

Putting your values front and center is another reason why employee resource groups are important.

Elevate your onboarding

Starting a new job can be an intimidating time. ERGs are a great way to help new hires settle in.

You could set up a mentoring program, have a place where they can ask questions, or even organize an ERG specifically for newer employees. They can talk about their experiences and offer each other moral support to make those early days a little easier.

Become more innovative

Innovation is key to standing out in the modern world. It’s also a top reason why employee resource groups are important.

Prioritizing diversity in your business can help you generate new product ideas you may not have thought of otherwise.

For example, Procter & Gamble’s Hispanic and African Ancestry ERGs helped with product creation such as the Pantene Gold series.

And according to BCG, companies that have more diverse leadership generate 19% higher revenues than those with below-average leadership diversity.

Build psychological safety

Psychological safety is vital to a culture of innovation, productivity, and wellbeing. It enables your employees to experiment and try new things without worrying about the consequences to their careers.

As a result, they’ll take more risks, leading to greater innovation and more profits for your business.

In fact, research found that 2/3 of staff feel ERGs contribute to this feeling of psychological safety. Yet another reason why employee resource groups are important.

Boost trust in leadership and colleagues

Trust is another key element to psychological safety. 36% say that ERGs help employees trust leaders more and 31% feel they help them trust their coworkers more. This empowers everyone to achieve more in less time and makes for a more welcoming work environment.

Strengthen company culture

Your company culture is vital to your business success. 26% feel that ERGs helped them connect more to the company culture.

Moreover, 66% of employees believe ERGs help contribute to a strong community feeling, something which gets everyone in your business heading in the same direction, as opposed to working against each other. The more employees work against each other, the harder it is to achieve business goals and the slower everything—and everyone—moves.

Increasing collaboration and boosting company culture make two more points on the list of why employee resource groups are important.

Welcome underrepresented talent

Helping underrepresented talent feel welcomed and appreciated is more important than ever. Having access to ERGs where they can connect with others who share similar experiences and backgrounds shows them you see them, value them, and want to continue supporting them.

Increase revenue

When workplaces are racially diverse, they experience 11.1% higher revenue growth. Over time, that can quickly add up to a huge difference, adding yet another reason why employee resource groups are important.

Conclusion 

ERGs are no longer a nice-to-have employee benefit. The bigger your business, the more important it is to show candidates and team members that you’re serious about treating your employees like real people. Beyond that, it shows that you value what their individual experiences can bring to your business.

Organize your ERGs with Workrowd

If you want to benefit from all of these reasons why employee resource groups are important, Workrowd can help. With tools to help market, manage, and measure your ERGs, and all your other employee initiatives in one central hub, you maximize both engagement and your ROI. Get in touch today to book your free demo.