DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION ZOE BROWNLIE AND KAISA WILSON
Sense of belonging In Aotearoa, we have long understood the importance of place. Many of us feel a powerful sense of belonging to places and people and draw strength from those connections. Zoe Brownlie and Kaisa Wilson take a practical look at how we can incorporate this sense of belonging into our organisations.
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rowing up, many of us can remember singing about turangawaewae at school, and being told about our connection to whenua and the importance of being part of a community. We can remember how family gatherings gave us a sense of belonging and a connection to whānau, and we knew our place and what our role was in all of it. In the past, in Western society, we largely took belonging for granted, but we now know how important a sense of belonging is to human beings, regardless of context. Studies have shown when we don’t feel we belong, we don’t function at the same level as when we feel we do belong. Thinking, creativity, problemsolving and impulse control, among
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HUMAN RESOURCES
SUMMER 2020
other functions, all suffer. These are critically important skills in most workplaces, yet many of us don’t have a sense of belonging where we work, despite spending a large portion of our lives there. On a practical level, studies have shown that a sense of belonging at work has a significant impact on our wellbeing, as well as our productivity, ability to innovate, how long we stay at an organisation, how we speak about the organisation to others, and how many sick days we take. So if we don’t feel we belong, it’s not good for us, and it’s not good for our employer. Belonging goes a step further than diversity and inclusion and focuses on all people not only sharing their authentic selves but being valued for what they bring to their workplace. Research shows that organisations with high levels of belonging have a 56 per cent increase in job performance, a 50 per cent drop in turnover risk and a 75 per cent reduction in sick days (www. betterup.com). So the business case for belonging is solid, but there’s no such thing as a one-sizefits-all option to make it happen. Although many have tried, importing generic solutions for belonging from
other countries has never worked well in Aotearoa. Our unique culture, worldview and values must form the basis of any workplace solution for it to be effective. When we transpose a US, European or Australian initiative into the New Zealand context, we miss an opportunity to have a truly meaningful impact on our organisations and people. Psychologists have recently come to understand how critical context is to the efficacy of what we do. Psychological assessments and interventions, for example, are always ‘standardised’ to the country in which they are being used, because differences in culture and values can render a useful tool ineffective when applied in another cultural context. The same is true for organisational belonging initiatives.
If we don’t feel we belong, it’s not good for us, and it’s not good for our employer. We are lucky that, in Aotearoa, we have indigenous models and ways of working that fit so well with fostering belonging at work for all. Well-known Māori concepts like whanaungatanga (relationship building), wairuatanga (identity or spirituality of people and places),
