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Employee Resource Groups are one of the most underused assets in most companies. Mija Lieberman, Diversity and Inclusion Analyst at Unity, brings a practitioner's lens to the topic on Reimagining Company Culture. Her background in psychology shapes how she thinks about ERGs: not as community spaces only, but as feedback systems that surface what no formal channel can.
The argument is sharper than the usual ERG conversation. ERGs work when they are funded, structured, and connected to real decisions. They fail when they are treated as volunteer affairs that absorb DEI work the company should be doing structurally.
Why ERGs Punch Above Their Weight in Inclusion Work
ERGs reach into pockets of the company that no HR program touches. They surface concerns that would not survive the trip to a formal HR meeting. They build leadership pipelines from groups that have been historically excluded. McKinsey research on inclusion consistently shows that representation alone does not produce outcomes; the inclusion structure that supports the representation does.
Mija's psychology background highlights the why. People raise concerns when they trust the listener and believe the system will respond. ERG leaders often earn that trust faster than HR can. The work then is to connect ERG listening to formal HR action without breaking the trust that produced the listening.
The Psychology of How People Decide to Speak Up
Most companies underestimate how much energy it takes to raise a concern. The cost-benefit calculation includes social cost, career cost, time cost, and the probability that anything will change. ERGs lower the social and career cost by providing a community that has already absorbed similar concerns. Formal channels lower the system-response cost by guaranteeing that something will happen with the report.
EEOC data on workplace sexual harassment found that 90% of people who experience workplace harassment never file a formal complaint. The cost-benefit math is what produces that number. ERGs and anonymous channels exist to reset the math.
What Does a Well-Functioning ERG Actually Do?
It runs programming for community-building. It surfaces concerns to HR through a defined feedback loop. It provides a leadership pipeline for under-represented talent. It partners with recruiting on candidate sourcing. The high-functioning ERG is a multi-purpose machine; the low-functioning one is a panel series.
How Do You Avoid Burning Out ERG Leaders?
Pay them. Count the work toward formal performance. Cap the scope of what the ERG is responsible for. Provide an executive sponsor who unblocks. The companies that do all four sustain ERG leadership over time. The companies that do none lose their leaders inside two years.
Connecting ERG Listening to Formal HR Action
The most useful question for HR teams is what gets done with what the ERG hears. The ERG listens informally. The formal HR machinery responds. The connection between the two is what produces real change. A DEI hotline is one bridge between informal listening and formal action.
The discipline is in the handoff. When the ERG hears something that needs formal investigation, the path to HR case management needs to be clear and trusted. ERGs that have to scramble to figure out the handoff lose credibility on both sides.
What Actually Works for ERG Programs
Fund Leadership Stipends
Companies that fund stipends produce sustained programs. Companies that rely on volunteer-only models lose their leaders.
Build a Real Reporting Backstop
ERGs hear what HR cannot. Anonymous reporting creates a path for the issues that ERGs surface but should not have to handle themselves.
Connect ERG Goals to Business Outcomes
ERGs that operate without business outcome goals get cut first in tough quarters. ERGs that drive recruiting, retention, or engagement outcomes have a defensible operating case.
Where Employee Relations Fits
ER is the formal layer that handles cases that arise from inclusion failures. A real ER function partners with ERGs on the listening signal and handles the cases that need formal investigation. The partnership has to be explicit; otherwise the boundary blurs and both sides lose effectiveness.
How AI Helps Without Replacing Human Judgment
Vera, the AllVoices AI co-pilot, drafts case responses, summarizes long histories, and surfaces patterns. The judgment stays with the ER specialist. The drudge work moves to the AI.
Frequently Asked Questions About ERG Programs
What is the difference between an ERG and a DEI council?
ERGs are community-based, organized around an affinity. DEI councils are cross-functional governance bodies. Both can exist at the same time and serve different purposes.
Should ERG meetings happen during work hours?
Yes. Treating ERG work as outside work hours signals that it is volunteer time, which contradicts the case for paying leaders for the work.
How do you measure ERG impact?
Membership retention, leadership pipeline outcomes, internal mobility, and qualitative survey data on belonging. Headcount at events is a vanity metric.
Can ERGs operate inside small companies?
Yes, with adjustments. At smaller scales, an ERG might be a working group rather than a full chapter structure. The function matters more than the form.
What do ERG leaders need from HR?
Funding, executive sponsorship, formal recognition, and a clear handoff path for issues that need formal HR action. Without those four, ERG leadership becomes unsustainable.
How ERG Listening Becomes Strategic Intelligence
The most underused asset in most companies is the listening signal that ERGs already collect. Hundreds of conversations a year about what is and is not working. Most of that intelligence dies in the ERG meeting because there is no formal handoff. The companies that have built the handoff produce a different kind of strategic intelligence than companies that rely on engagement surveys alone.
The handoff is operational. Quarterly syncs between ERG chairs and the people lead. Aggregated, anonymized themes documented in a format the executive committee will read. Specific asks for structural change tied to specific themes. The ERG that produces an annual report with action items has more strategic weight than the ERG that produces an annual heritage panel. Both have a role; the strategic version is the one HR teams underinvest in.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Mija's psychology-informed view of ERGs is a useful counterweight to the usual ERG conversation. People speak up when the math works for them. ERGs change the math by lowering the social and career cost of surfacing a concern. The HR job is to make sure the formal response cost is also low: fast investigations, predictable closeouts, clear protections.
Gallup's State of the Global Workplace report continues to show that engagement is highly variable across organizations and even more variable across teams within an organization. ERGs are one of the few mechanisms that operate across both layers, which is why the high-functioning ones are disproportionately valuable.
The companies that have built strategic ERG functions tend to produce a different kind of internal-mobility curve. Under-represented talent advances at rates closer to the workforce average rather than well below it. Engagement scores in affinity groups remain stable through tough quarters. The ER signal stays balanced across business units rather than concentrated in pockets that the macro narrative was hiding. None of those outcomes is accidental; each is the byproduct of a discipline of listening that connects to formal action.
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