Why every employee deserves to feel like they belong
- Summary:
- ServiceNow's Chief Talent Officer Pat Wadors explains why it's important to have your employees feel they belong in a diversity-centered corporate culture.
Growing up, my brother was my best friend. Whatever he did, I tried, too. He loved baseball, so every year when spring rolled around, we’d throw the ball back and forth 100 times each night before dinner to practice his pitching arm.
When I was nine years old and my brother was getting ready for the annual little league tryouts, I convinced my brother that I should try out, too – just for the fun of it. Problem was, it was 1972, and only boys played little league then, at least in my hometown. I didn’t let that stop me. I had short hair and a good arm. To fit in, I just put on a cap, told my brother to call me “Bob,” and tagged along to tryouts.
Although I started that day just trying to see how far I could get, something changed for me during those baseball tryouts. I came away dusty, dirty and even bruised from eight hours of playing my hardest. I also realized that I no longer wanted to play just for fun; I wanted to play to win! And I was good. All those hours of practice had paid off: I was the “Pirates” top pick to play catcher, and I felt like I mattered. I was part of a community. A team.
That is, until my sisters yelled, “Yay, Patti!” The coaches realized I wasn’t a boy, and tried to cut me from the team. No girls allowed.
Fortunately, my sisters had my back, and when the coaches checked the rulebook, there was no official rule that said girls couldn’t play. Unfortunately, my teammates didn’t agree – they didn’t want a girl. They stole my brand-new left-handed catcher’s mitt to “encourage” me to quit. They didn’t invite me to pizza parties after our games. All of this made it harder to play my best, but I didn’t give up. I wanted to belong.
As employers, we can learn a lot from my days in baseball. “Diversity and inclusion” are finally at the forefront of our conversations, and companies are prioritizing efforts to welcome talent from under-represented communities, to develop fair practices that represent a wider range of lifestyles, and to realize the business value that diverse teams bring. But I believe that diversity and inclusion without a “culture of belonging” aren’t enough.
To me, belonging creates magic. It means creating a culture of trust, where all voices are heard, and where people feel safe bringing their authentic selves to work. When employees feel like they belong, when they know that they can be themselves, they unlock what makes them great. When any of us are part of a team that values our opinions, we speak up and contribute more.
The benefits of feeling free to uncover the elements that make you, you, are proven. In “Uncovering talent: A new model for inclusion,” co-authors Kenji Yoshino and Dr. Christie Smith (Deloitte University Leadership Center for Inclusion, Sept. 2013), found that when people, whether members of minority groups or not, feel pressure to “cover” – or hide – attributes of themselves and don’t feel they can be their authentic selves at work, their job satisfaction and commitment to their company go down significantly.
The cost of this dissatisfaction goes beyond the negative impact to individuals’ health and feeling of well-being. Gallup’s State of the American Workplace: Employee Engagement Insights for U.S. Business Leaders report (2013) estimated that employee disengagement costs U.S. businesses $450 billion to $550 billion each year.
But when employees can see themselves in an organization, when they trust that voicing an opinion will be met with respect, rather than criticism, they feel they can contribute to their fullest potential. That benefits them personally, as well as their company.
Focus
What does it take to build a culture of belonging? At ServiceNow, we’re focusing on a few areas.
First, it’s a continual journey. As with any change, crafting a culture where people understand that it’s OK to show up as they are takes time – and, evolves as you create awareness and understanding. There are ways to speed up progress, such as educating employees about unconscious bias to help them avoid stereotyping. The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford is a leader around research in this space. Their “See Bias | Block Bias” toolkits help diagnose bias at different stages of the employee lifecycle, and map solution paths. The activities highlighted in their toolkits don’t happen overnight, but they do make a difference.
Second, creating a culture of belonging is closely tied to increasing a company’s overall diversity and inclusion. According to a recent article by Leslie Henderson, professor of Physiology & Neurobiology and Senior Associate Dean at The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth college, we’re born with an innate need to see people like us; it brings us comfort. If people don’t see themselves in the groups around them, they’ll feel alone. Companies that work to actively increase the types of people, beliefs, experiences and mindsets that make up their organizations naturally build belonging. At ServiceNow, we recently shared how essential diversity, inclusion and belonging are to our success. For us, diversity, inclusion and belonging go hand-in-hand. We’re committed to a journey that emphasizes each facet.
Finally, building belonging requires buy-in at all levels. It’s not enough for HR to tell people it’s ok to be themselves, or for a small group of employees to champion it as their initiative. Everyone within a company, top-down and bottoms-up, has to learn to understand what it means to create a culture of belonging, and how to model behaviors to advance it.
At ServiceNow, for example, we asked employees whether they wanted to follow a relatively traditional model and form employee resource groups (ERGs) to focus on challenges and solutions for individual communities, or whether they wanted to come together in a single “community for action.” Overwhelmingly, people told us they wanted a single, central point for community-building and collaboration in order to use their collective voice and efforts to influence change for everyone. This intersectionality is core to our diversity, inclusion and belonging strategy, because shared learning and a unified voice can often generate greater impact. As we go down this path, we’re taking care not to lose individual voices within smaller communities; when there’s a need to bring more nuance to individual groups’ needs, we will.
Think back on some of the most memorable moments of your life. Chances are, at least a few were made more special because you felt the freedom that comes with authentically being you. Every employee deserves to feel like that, too. The healthiest organizations make this a part of their cultures, and their businesses are more successful for it.
Even my youth baseball team figured that out. It took a few weeks and even more practice, but as soon as I built up the strength to throw with my right hand, I made a game-winning out against a really tough team. Finally, my team saw me not as a girl, but as a teammate who belonged with them. They even gave me my lefty mitt back.
A lot has changed since the 1970s, and co-ed teams are normal now. But for me, the biggest lesson back then was how good it had felt to belong to a team as me. The whole me.