Terminology Primer: A Guide to Employee Groups from Affinity to Business
Copyright by Stephan Klaschka 2025
Beyond Terminology - how Employee Groups differ
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:
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
The company culture that determines the appreciation or resistance the group encounters within the organization
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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