BELONGING IN THE WORKPLACE

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the global economy contracted by 3.5% between 2020 and 2022, the most significant contraction since 1960. Stress, sadness, anger, and worry were rated at some of their highest levels in decades. During this time, a fundamental issue became glaringly transparent, people in the same workplace were experiencing very different situations depending on their identities. The veil dropped during these years, revealing a raw distinctness of who fit in rather than belonged and who received grace versus indecency. The psychology community predicted that post covid, global engagement, and performance would decline significantly. The reasoning is due to the prolonged states of compounding pressure, isolation, and loneliness. When occurring over lengthy periods, all of these lead to increased mental health conditions, polarized thinking, aggression, and defensive patterning.

Moreover, depending on the intersections of a person’s identity and how they are valued within a community or company change relative to their levels of belonging. As first quarter 2023 reports trickle into corporate top-of-mind publications, the research confirms these predictions, showing that employees can no longer tolerate toxic workplace culture. As a result, quiet quitting and high levels of turnover are on the rise. However, with the economic downturn, inflation, and higher operating costs, organizations are responding with tightened organizational budgets, expecting to leverage their human capital. As the tug of war intensifies between these two ends of the business spectrum, with employees holding onto a marginalized upper hand, one thing is evident, status quo employee motivation is not the answer.

Within this juxtaposition lies an opportunity to flourish, rebound, and grow exponentially because, as history has taught us, the solution lies in the difference between rational and emotional needs being met in these states of conflict. Organizational psychology is founded on the ability to structure systems and policies to enhance human motivation and inspiration - a concept that, when done right, enables organizations the ability to achieve greatness. However, those holding onto status quo leadership styles and traditional human resource management practices must behave differently to get there. Notably, the most up-to-date research shows that best-run global companies have average engagement rates of 73%. Employees of these organizations cite that because they belong, there is an atmosphere where they can be emotionally engaged and thrive at work. The three highestranked emotional needs mentioned in the Gallup (2023) report were: autonomy, flexibility, and belonging. Additionally, teams who experience belonging at work generate higher levels of trust and interpersonal connection, making them more accountable to their shared goals and each other. This distinction not only allows teams to adapt, pivot, and more easily make decisions under high-pressure situations, but it also provides them the motivation and inspiration to keep going in the face of impossible targets and challenges. And suppose belonging hasn’t piqued your curiosity enough when organizations achieve belonging cultures. In that case, it translates into having emotionally engaged customers and stakeholders – resulting in a 65% higher sales growth, a 10% growth in net profit, and a 25% increase in customer loyalty. In climates where people are emotionally invested and perceive they belong, individuals take more responsibility to ensure their teammates also experience belonging. Impressively, hybrid teams and teams who had never even met before (but who were experiencing high levels of belonging) reported they also had: higher levels of communication, learning environments that fostered innovation, flexible policy, and the belief and conviction that inclusive behaviors accounting for diversity and equity were driving their culture. With all these positive elements indicating the benefits of creating a belonging culture in the workplace, organizations and the leaders who run them want to know - how do we do it?

Belonging is a topic that has been researched for hundreds of years; however, it is only recently that the economics of belonging has been deemed essential for the evolution of organizational success and faster economic growth rates. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is often used to explain the factors of belonging climates. The correlation is most often linked back to motivational impact, indicating that individuals are unable to flourish and reach their full potential without belonging. However, most research narrows in on the individual’s actions to fit in so they can belong, placing one hundred percent of the responsibility to fit into the organization on the individual. This distinction is where the separation of power occurs, highlighting a gap that has now been shown to be an underlying issue in enabling equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives. When this power differential is understood to impact the organizational objectives positively, the gap in understanding how the identities that individuals hold creates massive differences in how they are internally treated. The remarkable difference becomes evident when organizational culture shares the responsibility in a fifty-fifty reciprocated effort by demonstrating highperformance attainment and a culture where everyone belongs.

With all of these factors pointing to belonging in the workplace as a critical turning point for organizational culture and performance, three years ago, I set out to further understand how to create environments where everyone can belong, despite the intersections of identity for any given employee. First, let me clarify that individuals do not have only one identity. People are not just their gender, ethnicity, ableism, career level, age, height, weight, skill level, education level, immigration status, family status, or marital status (or any other elements described as superficial and deep-level diversity). Each individual is a combination of these diverse identities at all times. It should also be understood that one person cannot be more diverse than another person; the difference in diversity is dependent on what that community deems “normal” or a “fit” versus “abnormal” or “different.” How individuals are socialized within their upbringing shapes how they experience their version of “normal” or “fit.”

The same is true for organizational culture. The employee lifecycle is socialized based on the beliefs and values that leadership normalizes and how the employees follow normalized behaviour. Herein is where employee fit or community fit comes from. Depending on what has been normalized in any given organization or community is what contextually shifts who is considered diverse and who fits in. Perhaps even more fascinating though is that the research now shows that those organizations and teams that are more homogeneous - meaning they are the same, sharing the same appearance, beliefs, values, and normalized behaviours - make more frequent and consequential mistakes than teams who are heterogeneous and different. Fitting in is the action of becoming the “acceptable” values, beliefs, and behaviours that the organization normalizes. Belonging, on the other hand, is where the individual is accepted and valued for their intersections of identity, with the understanding that those differences will contribute to the overall flourishing of the organization.

When I first set out to understand belonging with Adler University (one of the top Universities in North America that focuses on Social Justice holistically), I was curious to understand what makes people recognize that they belong. Understanding the critical difference between fitting in and belonging was the initial acknowledgment. This difference sparked my curiosity about what qualities or indicators can be measured and structurally built into organizational development. The goal is that measurable belonging indicators and tactics systematically produce corporate results. With a mixed method, grounded theory research study, the results are exciting and compelling.

First, for employees to experience belonging, five indicators must be present: comfort, contribution, connection, psychological safety, and wellbeing. Comfort, in plain language, equates to being seen for the authentic and unique identities that one identifies as. Comfort indicates that the environment and workplace culture not only sees the individual but creates tactics that will enable that individual to flourish. An example of such is having clear job descriptions and job expectations for how work is actioned. Additionally, the job description matches the skills, abilities, and knowledge that the employee can deliver.

Connection means that the individual is known. This indicator is often where marginalized individuals receive the most bias and conflict because in organizations where homogeneity rules, these individuals are often the most ostracized and unknown - not because they are not incredibly valuable, but because the level of visible commonality differs from socialized norms. When something is unfamiliar or novel, the human tendency is to negate or overlook its importance. The act of connection within an organization implies that you as an individual matter and are significant enough that someone wants to know you further. That’s why names are so important. Names uncommon to a community are often mispronounced or not learned, a tendency that devalues a primary identifier of a person. In fact, ninety-six percent of participants in the study identified that when a leader cannot pronounce a person’s name or does not know a person’s name after years of being at the company, the individual knows that the leader does not care to “know them” and they only superficially value them. In conjunction with this trend, if a leader demonstrates this behaviour and devalues the act of connection, the followers in the company will normalize this behaviour as acceptable. Connecting employee values to company values is often misunderstood; even as simple as learning someone’s name promotes individual emotional needs being met and valued.

Contribution, the third indicator required for belonging to be perceived and leveraged, is the act of being valued. The action of an individual contributing demonstrates who in a community is valuable. Given this, inclusion changes considerably because it highlights the behaviour of who is invited to contribute perspectives and ideas. Traditionally, the ability to be invited to contribute or endorsed to contribute was based on how well-connected an employee was and how comfortable the organization and its decision-makers were with that individual. This is seen in hiring practices where individuals who are not necessarily the best candidate secure a job or promotion over others simply because they are more connected and have more homogenous elements. The same is valid for organizations hiring to fill marginalized quotas and therefore looking for a token employee to contribute to their quota data. In both cases, contributions will not be valued to the extent the organization and the individual need.

Participants noted that Psychological Safety is also a crucial indicator of belonging. While it is often talked about as its own section within the organizational climate, the research indicated that psychological safety should be included as a proponent of belonging. Psychological safety shows that someone is accepted. Within the belonging in the workplace dynamic, if one is not accepted for how they identify, they will never feel that they belong. Additionally, there is a higher predisposition to code-switching in environments where people have to “fit in” and pretend to value and be someone they are not. Codeswitching is a psychological term that defines people’s behavior, adjusting their speech, style, appearance, behaviour, and expression to match their environment. When people have to behave in this function, their ability to be productive drops by approximately forty percent, and their capacity to achieve is continually affected. Fitting in is a destructive, misunderstood socialized need that produces group thinking, decreases productivity, increases burnout, and drives exclusionary behaviours. To counter code-switching, the tactical elements to make psychological safety and the act of being accepted indicated the need for empathy, respect, and approachability.

Wellbeing, the final indicator that must be present for belonging to be perceived, was also normalized as an imperative condition for feeling that someone belongs. To normalize that someone is seen, known, valued, and accepted, they must also be cared about. Participants indicated that caring for someone in the workplace translates into understanding someone’s strengths and accommodating or prioritizing how those strengths can be leveraged and utilized to their potential. Additionally, providing permission to employees to ask questions, reorganize priorities, and ask for help or tools to support achievement were all noted as elements of an organization and its people showing they care for an employee.

While foundationally Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging are becoming instrumental strategies for reaching business objectives, the gap organizations still need to fill is what that actually looks like and means systemically. The initial research shared here validated, produced, and tactically demonstrated these five indicators as belonging methodology that impacts the workplace successfully. As organizations look to understand the emotional needs of their human capital to produce high-performing results, these belonging indicators will become more applicable to reaching targets and creating workplaces where employees are engaged, motivated, and inspired.

About Andrea

In addition to being a Neuroscience-based Senior Consultant and Strategist for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, Andrea D. Carter (she/her) holds a Master of Industrial & Organizational Psychology and is the senior research leader for Belonging in the Workplace for Adler University.

Andrea’s main area of focus is to help organizations empower their people to create high performing workplace culture through inclusion and belonging. Andrea’s 2021 ground breaking research in Belonging in the Workplace incorporates mapping the effects, measurement, and tactical behaviours of belonging within organizational structures, bridging the gap between equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives and organizational performance.

After developing the only validated organizational belongingness instrument to impact corporate culture and governance, Andrea’s research and consulting is sought after across multiple industries and countries.

Her work has been adopted by thousands of employees and her results continue to spark positive change, despite high-pressure and tough working conditions.

Discover Andrea’s Publications Here:

1,6 Gallup (2022). State of the global workplace: 2022 report. Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/stateof-the-global-workplace-2022-report.aspx

2 Gravett, K., & Ajjawi, R. (2022). Belonging as situated practice. Studies in Higher Education, 47(7), 1386-1396.

3 Grammer, J., & Zelikowsky, M. (2022). Neuroscience: The sting of social isolation. Current Biology, 32(12), R572-R574. 4,15,16,17,18,22, Carter, A. (2022). Belonging Within the Workplace: Mixed Methods Constructivist Grounded Theory Study for Instrument Validation and Behavioural Indicators for Performance & Governance. (Publication No. 29393403). [Adler University]. ProQuest. https://www.proquest.com/ openview/df3bede74f97b31ba91c846f316515e6/1.pdf?pq-orig site=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

5 Inspirus (2023). Q1 Report. 2023 Employee Engagement Trends & Forecasts. Inspirus. https://www.inspirus. com/2023-employee-engagement-trends-q1

7,9 Clifton, J. (2023) Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It. Gallup.

8 Abrams, D., Lalot, F., & Hogg, M.A. (2021). Intergroup and intragroup dimensions of COVID-19: A social identity perspective on social fragmentation and unity. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 24(2), 201-209.https://doi. org/.101.71177/71/3163688443300220983440

10Allen, K., Kern, M. L., Rozek, C. S., McInerney, D. M., & Slavich, G. M. (2021). Belonging: A review of conceptual issues, an integrative framework, and directions for future research. Australian Journal of Psychology, 73(1), 87–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049530.2021.1883409

11 Sandbu, M. (2022). The economics of belonging. In The Economics of Belonging. Princeton University Press.

12 Vithayaporn, S., Katekaew, R., Vorapanya, C., & Sanpetpanich, S. (2022). Antecedents and Consequences of Organizational Learning Climates: A Meta-Analysis Using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory. ABAC ODI JOURNAL Vision. Action. Outcome, 9(2), 38-58.

14 Mangelsdorf, M. E. (2018). The trouble with homogeneous teams. MIT Sloan Management Review, 59(2), 43-47

19 Sylvain, M. M., Knochel, A. E., Gingles, D., & Catagnus, R. M. (2022). ABA while Black: The impact of racism and performative Allyship on Black behaviorists in the workplace and on social media. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 15(4), 1126-1133.

20 Keyes, C. L. M. (2002). The mental health continuum: From languishing to flourishing in life. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 43, 207–222. https://doi. org/10.2307/3090197

21 Hales, A. H., McIntyre, M. M., Rudert, S. C., Williams, K. D., & Thomas, H. (2021). Ostracized and observed: The presence of an audience affects the experience of being excluded. Self and Identity, 20(1), 94-115. https://doi.org/10.1 080/15298868.2020.1807403

By Andrea Carter https://adleruniversity. academia.edu/AndreaCarter

Photo credit Jordan Stothers