When I was recently invited to speak at Seramount’s Global EmERGe event in London, UK, on the topic of evolving an ERG (Employee Resource Group) into a BRG (Business Resource Group) - it’s a hot topic! (Read this for a Terminology Primer: A Guide to Employee Groups from Affinity to Business.)

During my talk, I offered an outline of a roadmap, and received a lot of questions and valuable feedback from the highly engaged participants. So, if you are leading an ERG or want to build a BRG, I want to share the roadmap here with you, too. Note that this roadmap is not customized and remains generic, as each ERG and each organization is different. It takes more insight to map a path for a specific ERG or a group of ERGs within a specific organization - a multinational company, for example. (Contact me for a conversation and case studies on what the path for your ERG could look like.)

My Path to BRG: NxGen Case Study

As a matter of full disclosure, I did not start the Next Generation BRG (NxGen) at a global pharmaceutical company coming from an affinity angle. Six formal ERGs already existed, covering various diversity aspects with different levels of group maturity, and inclusion and engagement activity under the umbrella of the Diversity & Inclusion Office.

The NxGen BRG was set up differently from the beginning, and while it promoted the ‘next generation’ label, it was all-inclusive, open to all generations at the workplace, and thereby every employee wanting to join was welcome. It was the Millennials who embraced this opportunity most at the time: they were young, well educated, wanted to improve things, and, being at the beginning of their careers, were in no formal position of authority to bring about change.

At NxGen, we took a practical, business-focused, portfolio-oriented approach that proved very impactful for the company, successful for the BRG, and that became the blueprint for other ERGs to follow and evolve towards BRGs too.

How to Build a BRG

So, here are the six key aspects that outline the approach we took with the NxGen BRG and some advice on how to get started. Being a practitioner, I hope you will find this helpful for your purposes. Feel free to contact me for a deeper dive in case you have any questions or share your thoughts and ideas..

1. Strategy

Before you act, be very clear about purpose and intent and ready to communicate it. Develop a strategy as a starting point and a guiding star for your journey.

The starting point for NxGen was a business case that laid out why this new BRG was needed, why it was needed now, and how it would operate. The BRG will require an official mandate with cover and support from an organizational sponsor or function, such as a culture- or diversity-related office.

Get started by answering a few foundational questions, such as:

• Why is this BRG needed in your organization? Is it to support talent, innovation, market growth, or something else?

• What are its objectives, its goals? What measurable value will the BRG generate? Picture the results that the BRG will deliver and how you may approach quantifying them: In the end, you will need robust and convincing metrics for the BRG’s success.

Creating a BRG charter helps to clarify and communicate goals, values, and the mission to BRG members and attract future executive champions within the organization for active support, funding, and protection as needed by the BRG.

Once established, the NxGen Business Plan aligned BRG and company objectives to build a portfolio of cross-functional BRG projects with high business-impact potential, but that individual functions would not take on or just don’t consider themself responsible for.

Find more thoughts on how to start a BRG here: How to start building a business-focused ERG?)

2. People

First of all, a BRG needs a continuous inflow of members, the lifeblood of any BRG. So the question becomes, how do you attract and retain members? What intrinsic motivation can you tap into? Here are some ideas to consider:

• Affinity - Is there an underlying affinity network that aligns with the BRG or may have been the starting point for the BRG? How to keep it going in a BRG framework?

• Pressure to Change - Do BRG members feel a strong need to bring about change, or is there some pressure felt within the organization that warrants some form of change that could be harnessed?

• Personal Development - Can the BRG offer its members opportunities to: Build or improve skills? Gain experience beyond their immediate day job? Receive or supply mentoring opportunities? Provide some sort of ‘career springboard,’ such as giving members more visibility within the organization that may lead to career opportunities, recognition, awards, or promotion?

My approach is to awaken, release, and harness the intrapreneurial passion of BRG members while opening up opportunities, but also making members ambassadors for the BRG, if not active executors of BRG projects. (Here is more on motivators for BRG members: What’s in it for me? (WIIFM)

3. Process

Running a BRG requires building a forum for members to meet, connect, and celebrate rituals, as well as establishing some ground rules and procedures for BRG governance. Ownership for a project or initiative must come with accountability. Overall, it is important to create a safe space for members to engage and build trust.

Meetings should follow a predictable cadence and be transparent to the members. The forum is a place to discuss, strategize, decide, resolve conflicts, and track progress and success. It is also a place to have fun and celebrate the BRG’s successes and acknowledge the achievements of individual members.

At NxGen, for example, we used to explore how to attract and retain executive champions to support and sponsor our projects: after all, alignment with business interests is assured when the business is willing to pay for a project. (Read more on How to attract an executive sponsor? and Job description for an Executive Sponsor.)

Also, consider establishing a fair and transparent process on how to select leaders that is open to anyone, but also for replacing leaders to avoid their burnout over time.

4. Metrics

Solid metrics are a topic of great importance to demonstrate the BRG’s progress and success. While many things can be measured, however, it is important to identify the metrics that are meaningful and focus on metrics that are needed to make decisions, and not just to provide ‘information’ of sorts - less is more.

While the return on investment (ROI) is powerful, there can also be other aspects of high importance for the company, such as employee retention or attrition, for example. (There are some interesting correlations between these parameters and employee groups from some research we did at NxGen - let me know if you are interested in having a chat about this aspect.)
Here is more on How to approach 'metrics'?

5. Communication

“Do good and talk about it” captures the need to communicate about the BRG and its achievements. Make it easy for interested future members to find the BRG, get information about it, and engage with the BRG.

At NxGen, beyond having a presence in the internal company media, we entertained a chat channel to share our goals, projects, and success metrics, as well as celebrating our members and their achievements.

A crucial aspect of your communication is paying attention to the Innovation Killers: The Corporate Immune System Strikes Back! This includes to anticipate and proactively addressing potential areas of organizational resistance. Identifying pitfalls and working around resistance aims to build support for the BRG and to avoid unnecessary conflicts. It may include informing and engaging stakeholders throughout the organization while managing their expectations and addressing their concerns. This is a very tricky area that requires constant attention and recalibration - contact me if you would like to take a deeper dive.

6. Sustainability

Building and running a BRG is not a temporary or one-off endeavor; think of it as a marathon rather than a sprint. A BRG is an innovation ecosystem that self-sustains and keeps running perpetually. It requires enveloping and managing all aspects as laid out above to achieve sustainability.

For repeatable success, build a strong alliance with stakeholders and executive champions that may sponsor or support your BRG in other ways; this may include helping to navigate company politics, for example.

You will also need to cultivate a pipeline of fresh ideas to fuel future projects and initiatives of the BRG. It is not enough to produce new ideas. You also need to provide a safe space for BRG members to raise and discuss ideas, but also to present them to potential executive champions and sponsors in ways that protect the people presenting the ideas, as they may be exposed and vulnerable in ways that could impact their careers.

We used our experiences from the NxGen BRG to build an entire innovation ecosystem that opened up to employees across the entire company. The BRG was just a starting point on that journey, but this is another story, so contact me if you are interested in taking a deeper dive.

Summary

In contrast to a more affinity-rooted ERG, the BRG starts with developing a strategy that is rooted in employee needs and interests and aligns them with business needs in a complementary and holistic way by considering aspects including people, process, metrics, and communication to come to a sustainable and successful BRG.

What is your BRG experience? Please share your thoughts, and let’s have a conversation to learn from each other.

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Recently, I was invited to speak at the Seramount Global EmERGe event in London, UK. What became apparent is that there is a spectrum of words in use to label and differentiate employee groups, with terms varying across countries and organizations.

To get us all on the same page, let’s briefly look at terminology for employee groups that vary between countries and organizations. Since different words are being used in this context, here is how I distinguish groups: less by their label but by their basic characteristics and aspirations.

Affinity Groups (AG)

An ERG often originates from an earlier Affinity Group. AGs are the most informal networks, where employees connect on a personal level for different reasons and socially come together as ‘birds of a feather’.

Like-minded colleagues crystallize around a shared social interest as an AG in a self-governed way. The AG forms a social network for its members and may or may not be linked to the host organization through a formal governance channel, such as a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) office or comparable company culture-related oversight body that, typically, is part of the Human Resources (HR) function.

An obstacle an Affinity Group can face from outsiders beyond indifference is skepticism and questioning why the host organization should support the employee AG. The group and its purpose could be seen as somewhat unrelated and detached from the organization, unaligned with business goals, and, especially to outsiders, may not even appear relevant to the larger organization.

Employee Resource Group (ERG)

As an Affinity Group matures and becomes more formalized and structured, it can turn into an ERG. ERGs are more explicitly aligned with and overseen by the organization’s DEI initiatives, and in return often receive formal organizational support and resources. The members and leaders of the employee-led group are volunteers. In contrast to an AG, the ERG typically aims to influence company goals or policy at least indirectly. ERG goals often aim at softer targets, such as improving employee retention, increasing employee engagement in some way, or requesting reasonable accommodations of sorts for their constituency, for example.

More recently, the open-minded, engaging, and inclusive efforts of cultivating and leveraging diversity within organizations have increasingly come under direct political attack and hostility (at least in the United States). This leads to broad crippling, divesting, and even shutting down diversity-related initiatives and forums, including employee groups, in many organizations. The business impact of this political countermovement is likely to affect employee engagement, customer relations, and revenues across the various marketplaces that may take some time to play out. It is to be seen what the true price will be for organizations, their employees, the economy, and the larger society for bowing to this ideologically motivated political pressure and overreach into business decisions of organizations.

Business Resource Group (BRG)

In contrast to an ERG, a BRG takes a more business-focused approach while remaining connected to its members’ core social affiliation. A BRG defines and aligns its own goals and capabilities with the business needs or acts in support of the business objectives of its host organization. In general, a BRG tends to be more structured and more formal than AGs or ERGs, as it measures its impact and outcomes in business-relevant terms and establishes strong connections with executive sponsors.
(Read more on why companies need a BRG and how to start a BRG.)

The more direct integration into business processes and decision-making of the organization, underlaid with transparent and business-relevant success metrics, provides impactful business relevance for the organization. This positioning moves the BRG somewhat beyond ‘just DEI’ into a business space with measurable outcomes that justify the BRG goals and activities in a larger business context and can, to some degree, help insulate the BRG from the relentless ideological and political onslaught.

Maturing Employee Groups

Several frameworks exist that categorize groups by various criteria and show a maturity curve for employee groups. This can be helpful to identify, classify, or compare groups, but it may also give the impression that all groups should mature and progress on this arc towards maximum maturity. Instead, each group forms and operates in a quite unique environment that is defined by three factors:

1. The motivation, interests, and drive of the group’s members; for BRGs, for example, it is the intrapreneurial passion that is the driving force of the group

2. The company culture that determines the appreciation or resistance the group encounters within the organization

3. The degree of alignment of the employee group’s goals with the company strategy and objectives.

Since these factors differ for each group and each organization, and they define the organization-specific operational landscape, a group may not necessarily want or need to seek the highest level of ‘maturity’ (however it may be defined) to be highly relevant for its members and possibly impactful for the larger organization. (Read more on building a BRG mindset.)

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From my work as a founder and leader of two successful Business Resource Groups (BRGs) in a large, global enterprise, I learned that building a trusting mindset for BRG members is a key success criterion. (See also Part 3 of 3: Starting a BRG as a strategic innovation engine! for some background and motivation.)
What makes up a membership mindset, and how can you build it as a BRG leader?

While in these BRGs, we planned and built out the structures and our culture as a team, I became aware only afterward that we intuitively aligned well with a great book that I came along much later and that I can highly recommend to anyone who wants to lead: Patrick Lencioni’s “5 Dysfunctions of a Team”. Borrowing the author’s terminology and approach for our purpose at hand, here are the five key elements to build a mindset for a high-performing BRG:

1. Trust

First and foremost, members of any BRG (as well as an Affinity Group or another kind of Employee Network Group) need a safe space to meet, share, and respectfully discuss with other members. Feeling secure and comfortable to open up and share your inner thoughts with others requires not only courage but even more so trust as a prerequisite!

Our BRGs established ground rules, an etiquette, or a code for social hygiene, if you like, to set clear expectations for the behavior expected of all members. Besides leveling the playing field, granting equal opportunities to all members, we also disregarded job title or formal organizational authority that a member may hold outside the BRG. All members were held to always communicate and behave respectfully and constructively towards other members.

This provided a haven and refuge for many outside the busy business of their day job, where they could flourish in new ways.

2. Constructive Conflict

Meaningful change comes with conflict. If there is no conflict and everyone agrees easily, then the change is obvious and not truly meaningful. Meaningful change and the conflict that comes with it require discussion to address and to clarify, and to resolve and align positions, opinions, and derived plans of action.

Arguments can get heated and out of hand, so it remains of great importance to maintain collaboration and keep critique constructive. Collegiate harmony should be paramount. Agreeing to disagree can be a viable outcome to a highly controversial topic. Focus on building a highly effective team where its members support each other and challenge ideas just to make them better, but not attack or undercut each other - the results will be rewarding for all members and the BRG overall.

3. Commitment

Getting a ‘yes’ from someone to do something is one thing, but getting their commitment can be a very different and much more valuable thing. Commitment is one of three parts, with Ownership and Accountability completing the trio. Let’s look at commitment first:

Commitment requires an investment by the agreeing party that should not be made lightly or taken for granted. When you commit, in general, you should expect to be held accountable for your actions or inactions as well as to claim the accomplishments and honors coming with the outcomes.

As a word of advice to the BRG leadership: make it easy for members to commit by avoiding establishing standing committees tasked with repeatedly organizing events of sorts for a prolonged time, for example, as this can quickly drain energy and fuel burnout. Instead, allow volunteers to sign up to organize one event at a time, in this example, like stepping in and out of the obligation once the task has been completed. This way, motivation and energy stay high, and the team remains committed to delivering quality results.

4. Ownership

It is important that BRG members (including leaders) are serious about their participation in the BRG and truly take ownership of their chosen or assigned tasks. Otherwise, they are the wrong person in a position that is meant to drive the BRG and its objectives forward.

Ownership goes hand in hand with deep commitment and the feeling of responsibility for a task and to bring this task to completion in the best possible way. Members who do not assume this same sense of ownership are not a good fit and should swiftly be replaced.

5. Accountability

There are people who volunteer easily to take charge but then struggle to get started or show perseverance and tenacity, or -perhaps- skills and experience to deliver on their commitment. It is important for the BRG, however, to hold members accountable for their actions and inactions; not to be malignant but to ensure the BRG’s committed goals are being pursued and achieved.

If a member falls behind on their commitment, it is only fair to track progress and raise concerns when there are gaps opening. Tracking progress periodically and correcting the course as needed is very basic good project management practice. So, if a member bit off a bite too large for them to swallow, the team can offer help as needed to support the member in their effort. Help can come in many forms and include resources, mentoring, skill-building, hands-on support, and so forth.

Conclusion

In summary, building a respectful culture of support, accountability, and offering opportunities for personal growth and development within the BRG is the most rewarding path for its members and the growth and impact of the BRG overall. Cultivating this mindset retains existing members and attracts new ones alike. It builds trust and confidence in the BRG as an organization that is taken seriously within the host company and is valued and continuously supported by leadership and executives.