solely on their day job. Some left because they were downsized or quit their jobs to focus on their family. And some left their role as an ERG leader because they simply could not run an employee resource group under the challenging Covid‐19 work environment. Those who were able to remain in their ERG leadership role often indicated that the search for the next ERG leader should begin. These individuals burned out due to all the heavy lifting they had to do to run an employee resource group effectively during the dynamic and unprecedented period that began in 2020.
All this sudden and concentrated leadership change at the top of many ERGs has exposed insufficient pipelines of new potential ERG leaders. Not enough ERG members have been groomed to assume leadership roles of an employee resource group. Additionally, companies have not adequately made ERG leadership roles highly desired, resulting in fewer employees wanting these roles. This succession planning crisis, and all its implications, will be analyzed in Chapter 5.
Skeptical Middle Management
One thing that has not changed much in the past 10–15 years is that middle managers at organizations still are mostly skeptical about the value of employee resource groups. These middle managers struggle to see the benefits that ERGs provide. Some are still convinced that ERGs are divisive as opposed to being entities that promote unity and inclusion.
I once spoke to a focus group consisting of managers at one company who saw a lack of engagement by middle management as a key obstacle for their employee resource groups. It was difficult to blame some middle managers for not being more supportive of ERGs because they simply didn't know what these groups were about. Some were not aware they even existed or lacked clarity as to what ERGs do. Given such lack of awareness about ERGs, it was easy to see why there were not more supported.
Other middle managers were more transparent and shared their concerns about employees spending too much time on ERG activities and not enough time on their regular job. These managers shared their reality of having too few resources to meet challenging goals and that they need their employees focused on their work. And still others conveyed the impracticality of allowing their employees to attend ERG meetings or events when it required their employees, who were mostly hourly, to be at their desks answering calls or on the production line putting out product.
Regardless of the reason, ERGs need more active engagement from middle management. They need managers to support employees who wish to participate in employee resource group activities. Better yet, ERGs need more middle managers themselves to join employee resource groups. But in order for this to happen, both employee resource groups and middle managers have to do their part.
Employee resource groups need to do a better job of defining their value proposition (including metrics‐that‐matter) to middle management. Employee resource groups must convey how and why their activities are relevant to middle managers. Conversely, middle management should be more proactive in finding out what ERGs are all about and why these groups are prevalent across corporate America and what employees get out of their involvement. However, until both stakeholder groups accomplish this, the lack of middle management support is a reality that ERGs must contend with for the foreseeable future. The strategies highlighted throughout this book will hopefully convince more middle managers of their importance in endorsing and advocating for ERGs. The lack of middle manager support will be analyzed further in Chapter 2.
Narrowing ERG Ambitions
Employee resource groups are struggling to deal with two goals that appear to be mutually exclusive. On the one hand, employee resource groups have been expanding their value proposition beyond just social activities. Employee resource groups now have robust career advancement initiatives; they strive to elevate the cultural competency within an organization; they support community outreach and as mentioned previously; and they desire to make a larger business impact.
But employee resource groups' budget resources have been depleted due to the changing work landscape that began in 2020. ERGs membership numbers took a dip as overall employment levels dropped. Some companies reduced the budget dollars they had previously allocated to their ERGs, citing reduced budget cuts across the organization as the reason. And with employees now working from home, many previously planned ERG events and gatherings simply were not feasible. The result is employee resource groups with big ambitions being confronted with the reality of a new workplace. The bold plans and activities that ERGs had at the beginning of 2020 have been reduced. Employee resource groups have had to pivot in an environment that now places greater emphasis on prioritization. “Underpromise and overdeliver” is the new mantra being embraced by employee resource groups under this new reality.
Some employee resource groups are handling this transition effectively. They eliminated events that did not align with the overall mission of their ERG. There is increased collaboration amongst the employee resource groups as they partner to do events jointly in an effort to reduce the redundancy that results when ERGs operate in silos. Employee resource group leaders have become better skilled at saying “no” or “not now” when ideas for future activities are given by ERG members. And ERG leaders have improved at delegation, resulting in a broader array of members contributing to doing ERG work. Yet the question remains that when things go back to normal, if they ever will return to how things were before, will ERGs continue with the less‐is‐more mentality? Will they be successful in having a broad value proposition while being more selective in their pursuits? I believe the answer is yes, but only time will tell how employee resource groups will operate after the effects of the pandemic have passed.
ERG Leader Development
For many, many years, it was surprising to see organizations ask much of their employee resource group leaders but offer little to help them be successful. ERG leaders are still often left on their own to figure out how to elevate member engagement, develop an ERG strategy, and manage a group that is made up of employee volunteers with no direct reporting relationship. ERG leaders have been asked to articulate their impact on the organization without being given access to data to measure such impact. Companies want metrics from their employee resource groups but offer no training to the leaders on how to establish appropriate metrics. I could go on and on, but you get my point; much is asked of ERG leaders when often not much is given to them in the form of organizational and development support.
Fortunately, many organizations have seen the error of their ways. But to be clear, we are not talking about professional development workshops that ERGs offer their members. We are talking about professional development that organizations offer to the leaders of their ERGs with the goal of making them more effective.
There is tremendous growth in the number of companies holding regular internal ERG summits. These summits usually bring together the leaders of ERGs to hear from corporate executives, learn about diversity and inclusion goals, network with other ERG leaders, hold panels with ERG leaders at other organizations, and so on. These summits usually require a significant investment by an organization. Some companies that do not hold their own ERG summits will send their ERG leaders to external organizations that organize ERG conferences focused on professional development.
In some cases, an employee resource group does not hold a summit per se, but invests in professional development workshops for their ERG leaders. Occasionally, existing internal professional development content is delivered exclusively to employee resource group leaders, especially if such development content might not be available to the employee.
For example, the home improvement retail organization Lowe's Companies, Inc., based in Mooresville, North Carolina, conducted a session for its business resource group leaders on how to use a new internal assessment tool that helped identify employee work style and communication preferences. BRG leadership
