Companies mine employee networks for growth
The prevalence of employee resource groups such as women’s networks and LGBT+ groups has risen in recent years as workers convene in an effort to change company culture.
Yet beyond initial goals to address workplace inequality and provide a safe space for sharing ideas, the focus is shifting towards how these ERGs can be used to help businesses evolve.
Indeed, research published this month by Accenture, the consultancy, suggests that if all UK companies improved inclusivity by 10 per cent, the resulting innovation could increase GDP by up to 1.5 per cent each year.
Katja Ploner, corporate diversity and inclusion adviser at German manufacturer Siemens and co-founder of Grow2Glow, its employee group for women, notes a shift.
Grow2Glow was founded in 2016 by eight women — all experienced coaches — to offer every woman at Siemens three free coaching sessions. The network soon expanded globally, and men also joined as coaches.
“It’s simply wonderful to see how much can happen if people get the opportunity to act in a self-organised and purpose-driven manner,” Ms Ploner says.
Between September 2019 and August this year, Siemens — which places 350th on the FT-Statista Diversity Leaders ranking of 850 companies in Europe — ran a leadership programme with the aim of boosting gender diversity in senior management.
Two cohorts of 12 people were selected from various business functions across its European operations. The result was that a quarter of them were added to the succession pipeline in various parts of the business, according to a case study published in September by the European Round Table for Industry, a forum for leaders of multinational companies in Europe.
Now, Ms Ploner says, rather than the company simply asking what it can do to help minority groups, “the leading question is ‘what can minority networks do for Siemens?’.”
Standard Chartered, a global bank with 85,000 employees, and which ranks 190th on the FT-Statista list, says a more diverse workforce helps to attract talent, and stimulate fresh ideas and innovation.
The bank has a variety of employee networks and has made other commitments to diversity. It tracks inclusion through an index, which includes criteria such as access to tools to do work and feeling safe to express views. The score has increased from 77 per cent to 82 per cent since the index started in 2018, the company says.
Samantha Neath, sales account manager and ERG lead at BAE Systems, the defence company, agrees there has been significant change in the past 18 months.
She observes that, previously, the networks at BAE “were quite disparate”. But the company has developed a framework that provides each employee group with a senior-level sponsor who can help drive their agenda.
BAE aims to develop…
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