10 Employee Resource Group Activities To Try Out At Your Organization
Employee resource group activities are key to engaging employees within and outside of your ERGs. By organizing various events, workshops, and discussions, employee resource groups offer personal and professional development platforms while promoting understanding and respect among different employee demographics.
Let’s take a look at employee resource group activities you can implement to foster a more inclusive workplace.
Contents
What is an employee resource group?
What is the goal of employee resource group activities?
Employee resource group activities
FAQ
What is an employee resource group?
An employee resource group is a workplace group of employees who share specific similarities like backgrounds, identities, and more.
While ERGs are employee-led, the difference between them and other types of workplace groups is that the organization formally supports these groups, as they aim to promote organizational goals. HR departments are frequently involved in creating and overseeing ERGs. Employees participate in ERGs on a voluntary basis.
Employee resource group activities serve as the primary means through which ERGs achieve their objectives of promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) in the workplace. They provide safe spaces for dialogue and learning, allowing members to share experiences, raise awareness about important issues, and advocate for change.
One of the first ERGs was the Xerox National Black Employees Caucus. Formed in 1970, the purpose of this group was to create a space for employees to talk about the racial tension in the workplace. Over 90% of Fortune 500 companies have ERGs.
There are many types of ERGs with different purposes for each. These include groups based on:
- Ethnicity and race
- Gender or sexual orientation
- Religious or spiritual affiliation
- Parental status
- Disability
- Age.
A great example of a company using ERGs is Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft currently has nine different ERGs. A couple of them are:
- Blacks at Microsoft: Focused on developing and strengthening Black leaders.
- Disability at Microsoft: Bringing awareness, support, and networking for individuals with disabilities and promoting accessibility and disability inclusion.
- Military at Microsoft: Bringing together current and former military, their families, and allies around the world.
What is the goal of employee resource group activities?
The goal of employee resource group activities is two-fold. First, they provide opportunities for networking and collaboration between members with similar interests or backgrounds. An ERG can be an excellent place for employees to feel safe to express concerns, challenges, or experiences, as well as share support and help bolster career development.
Done well, ERG activities and events help employees engage more deeply in the organization and feel represented and included. Research by McKinsey showed that employees who rated their ERGs as (very) effective were more likely to rate their workplace inclusion higher.
The simultaneous role of ERGs is to feed this information back to the organization to help it better understand its workforce and ensure policies and procedures meet all employee needs. This is why ERGs are supported by an organization and held accountable for their goals.
HR pro tip
HR professionals need to be sure ERGs are setting clear goals and checking in regularly to ensure the group is achieving its goals and members feel heard and seen. Leadership and HR should not be afraid to recalibrate or stop ineffective ERGs, always engaging members in the discussion and process when this happens.
Employee resource group activities
There are numerous activities an ERG can utilize to engage its members and accomplish its goals. While the following list is by no means exhaustive, it will hopefully help any HR professional as they either lead or provide guidance for an ERG.
1. Professional development workshops
Professional development means a wide variety of things, depending on the group’s interest. Always start by discovering what the group is interested in learning more about.
Two relevant ideas to any ERG would be a workshop on having difficult conversations or understanding implicit bias. Both types of workshops must have an expert to lead discussions, but workshops should be interactive, allowing group members to talk and learn more about each other.
Additionally, incorporating real-world scenarios and case studies can greatly enhance the learning experience, allowing participants to apply the concepts discussed in a practical, relatable context. That helps further solidify their understanding and skills of the subject matter.
2. Mentorship programs
Mentorship can happen one-on-one or in group settings and can be long- or short-term. Types of mentoring include:
One type of activity for a group mentorship program is having a session where everyone creates a goal-setting vision board. Before the session, leaders should task attendees with doing some pre-work and considering some of their goals.
During the session, everyone will talk in greater depth about their goals and then write or clip images to represent these goals on the poster board. Attendees will take the boards with them at the end of the session. Leaders should encourage attendees to display the boards somewhere they can see them often.
HR pro tip
Include successful examples of employee resource group activities in your ERG toolkit. It will provide your ERG leaders and members with practical ideas to engage, educate, and unite employees in meaningful initiatives that contribute to a more inclusive and positive workplace culture.
3. Guest speaker series and lunch and learns
Host a multi-session series on, for example, stress management techniques and bring in a guest speaker or speakers who are experts in the mental health field to speak on these topics.
Host the series during lunch and consider making them virtual to encourage remote employee participation.
4. Cultural awareness events
Cultural awareness events celebrate and educate employees about diverse cultures, fostering an environment of respect, understanding, and inclusivity among the workforce. These events are often connected to cultural days, weeks, and months, such as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Pride Month.
A casual way to celebrate employees’ cultures on an average day is through a potluck event. Food is a relaxed way to bring people together and celebrate their differences.
Encourage all group members to bring a dish that has a special place in their culture or background. Each member can then either include a placard about the dish and its significance or, at the start of the potluck, have everyone go around and introduce their dish and give a brief overview about it and why they made it.
5. Charity fundraisers
Charity fundraisers involve organizing events or campaigns to raise funds for a chosen cause. This helps create a sense of community and social responsibility among employees while supporting meaningful charitable initiatives.
A group could utilize a penny drive as one way to raise funds. Divide the ERG into two or three groups depending on the number of group members. Each group is assigned a bucket to collect the change. Set a timeframe for how long the drive will last and schedule periodic point check-ins so groups know where each other stands.
The group with the most points at the end of the drive wins – however, the real winner will be the charity you’ve chosen to support.
6. Book clubs
Book clubs are an excellent way to engage both in-person and remote employees, as these gatherings can happen virtually.
This type of employee resource group event can help spark diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice discussions in the workplace. The book club leader could choose a book such as Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, or another similar book.
Leaders who don’t want to create their own discussion questions can look for books with prompt questions. Clubs can focus on a book or a chapter at a time, meeting regularly, like once a month.
Club members should read the book or chapter prior to the discussion time but be given time at the beginning of the group session to scan the chapter to re-familiarize themselves with the content.
The commercial electrical contractor CarolinaPower and its holding company PPC Partners have an Employee Resource Group (ERG) supporting women in the workplace, with over 60 members across five states.
One of the book choices for their book club was “The Confidence Code” by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman to encourage confidence-building for women at work.
The ERG, unique in the construction industry, offers various benefits like professional development, mentorship, and community involvement, aiming to create an inclusive environment for women’s empowerment.
7. Scholarships
If your ERG provides scholarship opportunities for students, your group can go the extra mile to engage scholarship winners by hosting a dinner banquet for them and their families. It’s important for young people to see others who look like them or have similar backgrounds or interests, especially in the workplace.
This was true for one scholarship winner of PG&E’s Samahan Employee Resource Group scholarship. The student appreciated that the scholarship was Filipino-based as well as the opportunity to meet Filipino-American employees from various career paths at the company. Eventually, her path led her back to working at the organization upon graduating from college.
8. Volunteering
ERGs have immense volunteer power. AT&T reported that in one year, its 26 ERGs collectively had over 144,000 volunteer hours.
An ERG focused on women in the workplace could consider volunteering at a local Dress for Success office. The group can hold drives to collect everything from professional attire to handbags or volunteer their time to help at a local office or special event.
Offices can utilize professional women’s expertise in helping other women prepare for job interviews through coaching, mock interviews, and resume building.
American media company Nielsen has one of its seven ERGs, Women in Nielsen (WIN), that has done work like this in the past. They held a handbag drive around International Women’s Day and even utilized remote volunteer opportunities to engage group members.
9. Collaborating with HR and DEI teams
Employee resource group activities can go beyond organizing events. ERGs often work with HR and DEI teams to advise on company policies and processes, ensuring that they are inclusive and effectively address the diverse needs of the workforce.
An example of collaborating with an ERG on DEI strategies would be to engage an ERG representing the LGBTQ+ community in creating an inclusive language guide.
Group members can help brainstorm and create terms to use and ones to stay away from. It’s important for an HR team or professional to understand how the group generates this list. Therefore, they should consider creating a joint brainstorming session and facilitating the discussion.
10. Consulting on product development
It’s not just a good idea to involve employee ERGs at the table for product development; many companies are learning it’s imperative.
For example, you can engage your company’s ERG, representing persons with disabilities, to give feedback on website design. One such example is accessibility. Can people with vision impairments easily use the website and access all necessary documents or platforms to get information or complete their work?
One example of a company that has utilized such an ERG in product design is Splunk Technology. They have engaged their Disabled=True ERG to give feedback on the accessibility of a product design.
Over to you
While it’s critical to create employee resource groups at your organization, it is of equal importance to ensure they are actively engaging members and collaborating with groups to use their feedback to inform the organization better.
Whether you’re part of an ERG or creating one as an HR professional, having a handful of employee resource group activity ideas will keep the ERG from stagnating or members feeling disengaged.
ERGs can turn sideways and result in employees feeling more disconnected or underrepresented. A timely and engaging activity or event can work wonders for any ERG.
FAQ
ERGs create a sense of community and support for employees of any interest, background, or culture. They engage workers through employee resource group activities that promote diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging and, by extension, enhance overall workplace morale and productivity.
The Massachusetts-based company, Curriculum Associates, was named among the best companies for diversity by Comparably. Curriculum Associates has several different ERGs, but across all of them, it supports a Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) mentorship program with over 50 mentors and mentees who meet once a month for leadership training and a book club.
A few examples of ERG events include:
• Conferences specifically for an ERG with workshops on topic interests, a keynote speaker, and time for networking.
• Lunch and learn series on mental health stress reduction techniques hosted virtually to encourage remote employee participation.
• Professional development workshops on implicit bias or having difficult conversations in the workplace.
Weekly update
Stay up-to-date with the latest news, trends, and resources in HR
Learn more
Related articles
Are you ready for the future of HR?
Learn modern and relevant HR skills, online
