Employee resource group

This is actually probably the thing that I'm most proud of in my career at Hulu and Disney was founding this ERG.

So in the Hulu days, they called them ERGs.

In the Disney days, they called them BRGs, which is Business Employee Resource Groups.

And so when I was in the New York office, in the Hulu New York office, we did not have any ERGs.

The only ERGs at Hulu at the time, because remember it was a small startup company and this was, you know, over 10 years ago, were in headquarters.

And so, and headquarters was Santa Monica office at the time.

And so we didn't have any employee resource groups.

And so we just felt like we really wanted something for ourselves at that time.

I think a lot of organizations just think, oh, who do I go ask for money? Or who do I go to say, could you sponsor my, my gala event or whatever? Talk to us a little bit about, you know, some of the outcomes throughout your career or your consulting that you've been able to achieve by being more strategic and looking at it across the entire spectrum of relationships versus just honing in on, say, a corporate grant or a cause marketing campaign or something like that.

Well, I think one strategic area that I love and I really stress with my clients is if a company has employee resource groups, better known as ERGs, that is a key area for nonprofits to engage because those are people that can be your advocates.

And I will just share, when I was with the American Cancer Society and I was in charge of the corporate initiatives for the North Texas area, which included Dallas and Fort Worth, we had been given a sort of directive from the corporate office, our cancer society in Atlanta.

They wanted to start what they call a CEOs Against Cancer chapter.

And this was for a nationwide campaign.

AT&T headquartered in Dallas.

We ended up engaging the ERG area of AT&T, ended up engaging 30 plus ERGs that are within AT&T.

And they became, the company became our champion for that 80% by 20 campaign.

So thank you, Gina.

And you talked there about the impact of your employee networks.

And what I just wanted to say was, you know, it's normal to you, but it's not to everybody listening.

You know, the size of SAP, over 100,000 colleagues.

And actually, we saw that women two years ago were leaving at a faster clip than men.

And we leaned in, and that's one of the reasons we leaned into ERGs and funded them and moved to help women at Mabel to really find a place and a community.

And that's one of our largest ERGs with over 20 women who get together quarterly.

And we have a book club and all kinds of wonderful things.

Yeah.

That is so fun.

What other ERGs do you guys have?

Yeah, we have veterans.

All right.

So, uh, your, your research focused on employee resource groups, you know, or, uh, ERGs.

Uh, many companies treat, uh, ERGs as a nice-to-have social clubs, you know.

Uh, uh, uh, what's the biggest misconceptions leaders have about ERGs, and how do you help them see, uh, that...

How do you help them see ERGs as actual business assets?

Yeah.

Thank you for that question because that, that's, um, that's what my day-to-day is like as a consultant is-

... um, starting with that, even helping them see that they have, uh, a little bit, they need a little bit of help in how their groups are structured.

They need to know how to respond when someone asks for help.

Women's ERGs, the employee resource groups, they have a huge opportunity with this because this is an area where there's enormous impact.

Not because they should be responsible for fixing menopause, but because they can help change the conversation around it.

ERGs can bring in credible education.

They can host conversations.

They can create peer support.

And if, if nothing else, they can connect women with existing resources.

But think about this, too.

It's strange, isn't it? Uh, yeah.

So I think, you know, the, it really does in- it depend on the environment and, um, I am a huge advocate, as you know, of, um, colleague networks, ERGs, whatever you wanna call them, because, um, they're normally the ones that are visible within an organization.

Um, and they're the ones that you can gravitate towards, 'cause, uh, again, some of my role models have come from ERGs that, um-

um-You know, where they've spent the ti- invested time in me, been a mentor, supported me.

Even now, even, you know, after leaving my last organization, uh, I still have, um, Kieran, I'm gonna do a name shout, uh, who is, you know, still in touch with me all the time.

And I'm a part of that group because I want to learn more and support.

So we have these ERGs that are so helpful across our company.

We're actually creating different groups at locations.

So it's not necessarily an employee group, it's a location group that it will be able to serve their employees.

Right

... of these different things, and it would be a challenge for them to attend a monthly Teams meeting.

So how can we reach them? And that's part, and one of the things that I appreciate the most at Pride is being able to partner, um, with our teams and our ERGs.

We have an inclusive, um, council that I partner with to ensure my plan represents everything that we need and, and is nothing's left out, nothing's forgotten.