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Théa Watkins has over 27 years as a business leader and executive. She is passionate about inclusive leadership and helping organizations and individuals make sustainable changes through inclusive excellence, fostering cultures of support and belonging where every person thrives.
By Théa Watkins
Our rapidly evolving world continues to reshape the workplace. These changes include where and how we work, employee expectations about work, how employee value propositions have evolved to accommodate employee needs, the growing emphasis on corporate wellness and employee well-being, and the many competitive environmental factors that organizations face.
This blog will examine employee workplace belonging and engagement, what each means and how they interrelate, as well as the impact that employees can have on organizational performance and employee retention rates.
According to Gallup’s employee engagement meta-analysis of 183,806 business units and teams worldwide, U.S. workforce engagement in 2024 was at its lowest levels in a decade at only 31%, and even lower globally, at 23%.
Today, in the U.S., this translates to about 8 million fewer engaged full- or part-time employees in the workforce than there were in 2020. What a huge lost opportunity this represents! A massive number of people are not reaching their full potential or fully contributing to their organization’s potential.
What do We Mean by Employee Engagement?
Gallup defines employee engagement as the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace. Gallup measures engagement through a composite of 12 workplace experiences, including:
- role clarity
- resource availability
- recognition for good work
- development on the job
- opinions counting
- connection to a mission or purpose
- coworker relationships
- work progress
Gallup’s research shows a strong correlation between its 12 engagement elements and performance across business units. This relationship between team engagement and performance or employee retention is even stronger during challenging times, organizations with strong, highly engaged cultures are more resilient in tough times.
Having had the privilege of leading highly engaged teams, engagement for me meant the degree to which employees feel willing to go the extra mile for their leader, team, and organization, i.e., expending discretionary effort. When you are part of an engaged team, you can see and feel the team “vibe” from those around you and, if you are fortunate, the organization culture as a whole. It’s palpable, positive, and energizing.
Gallup estimates that organizations with highly engaged staff are 21% more profitable. There are many other benefits of an engaged workforce. Engaged employees will generally feel more inclined to collaborate, innovate, and work constructively together to achieve their goals.
Engaged employees will typically exhibit a strong work ethic, are usually willing to take on extra responsibilities, form strong relationships with others, and grow and develop more rapidly.
According to Boston Consulting Group, highly engaged colleagues are 55% less likely to look for another role. Thus, unsurprisingly, employee engagement is a powerful contributor to employee retention.
What Does Workplace Belonging Mean?
Similarly, belongingness is the feeling that results from being part of a genuinely inclusive workplace environment; it’s the feeling you get when you are valued for your contributions and the differing perspectives and ideas you have. Without an inclusive workplace, it’s unlikely that employees will experience workplace belonging.
The 2024 Gallup State of the Workplace report found that one in five employees worldwide feel lonely at work.
Leaders play an undeniable role in creating psychologically safe and inclusive team environments. Modeling inclusive behaviors is necessary to create inclusion and workplace belonging. Some inclusive behaviors are:
- respectful curiosity
- active listening
- encouraging open communication and two-way feedback
- showing empathy and vulnerability
- having the courage to challenge non-value-adding processes and non-inclusive behaviors
If you’ve studied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you will know that basic physiological human needs, like food and shelter, are the foundations of the hierarchy. To reach the top of the hierarchy, where ultimate self-actualization (or reaching one’s potential) occurs, people need to feel the prerequisites of safety, belonging, and self-esteem. Therefore, employees feeling like they belong to their workplace community is a significant factor that strengthens teams and overall organizational culture.
Isn’t it time for all leaders to focus on creating and deploying employee engagement strategies to enhance their employees’ experience? This would strengthen employee retention and reduce or avoid the very real cost of voluntary talent attrition that results from these very low levels of engagement.
By adopting more of the mindset that positive employee experience drives customer and shareholder value, something that Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group, for example, has long believed was the secret to customer satisfaction on Virgin Atlantic, leaders can ensure their employees are engaged and motivated, and that they contribute directly to the bottom line of the entire organization…
According to research, the behaviors of highly engaged business units result in a 23% difference in profitability.
The relationship between employee engagement and workplace belonging.
In 2020, Qualtrics XM’s Employee Experience Report showed that workplace belonging was the top employee experience driver linked to engagement and well-being. The correlation between these experiences remains significant today.
Feeling that you belong at a company often correlates with being engaged. Employee engagement scores for those who feel like they belong are far higher than those of employees who don’t. Qualtrix XM says only about 20% of employees who feel they don’t belong are engaged versus 91% of those who do.
Many of us will have experienced what it feels like not to belong. Perhaps we made a game error in school as part of a highly competitive and unforgiving sports team, or maybe we attended a social event where we believed we had nothing in common with others present. Those situations may have made us feel uncomfortable, insecure, and keen to remove ourselves from that environment.
In contrast, I hope that we will all have experienced what it feels like to belong to or fit in with a group. When we experience belonging somewhere, we feel we can more easily be and express ourselves, and we often feel cared about and cared for. We also feel psychologically safe enough to share our ideas without fearing judgment, retaliation, or rejection by the group.
After the physical separation experienced by so many caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, people frequently want more now to feel that they belong to their community and workplace team and to be a part of something bigger.
Employee Engagement Strategies and Fostering Workplace Belonging
So, how do leaders foster a set of belonging in their teams? One that positively influences employee engagement and retention, and contributes to both individual and organizational success?
Here are some tried and tested employee engagement strategies – steps that leaders can take that will serve to boost employee engagement and support fostering workplace belonging.
Create a Psychologically Safe Environment
For people to feel that they belong, they must feel that their voices can be heard and that their perspectives are valued without fear of judgment, criticism, or repercussions. Psychological safety is a prerequisite to belongingness.
Ensure that Individuals Build Meaningful Relationships with Their Colleagues
In any team, members need clarity on their roles and how they align. An important component in this is their relationships with others, on both a professional and personal level. Encouraging people to build relationships by getting to know each other in a meaningful way is an essential part of this process. This “humanizes” the workplace, and leaders should role model authentic relationship building within their teams and the organization at large to ensure that people genuinely feel part of something bigger.
A 2023 Society of Human Resources (SHRM) study showed that U.S. employees who confirmed that they have close friends at work (80%) were significantly more likely to say they felt a strong sense of belonging to their organization than those without close friends at work (63%).
The same study showed that U.S. workers who had close friends at work (86%) were significantly more likely to say they were satisfied with their jobs than those without close friends at work (74%).
Leaders who encourage the development of more meaningful relationships and belonging are likely to contribute to increased retention rates. This SHRM study also showed that 76% of U.S. workers with close friends at work said it made them more likely to remain with their employer.
Check Your Biases Regularly and Avoid any Favoritism
In other words, leaders must ensure everyone is treated similarly, with respect and equity, and that people are valued for their uniqueness. People can feel alienated quickly if they perceive others in the team who may not look like them or share similar identities as being “favored” with opportunities not offered. Leaders should also encourage their team members to be aware of their own biases and check in with them regularly.
Prioritize Effective Communication
Being a clear and transparent communicator within your team can significantly impact feelings of belongingness and employee engagement. Having a cadence to communication as part of an employee engagement program is also powerful, improving clarity on expectations such as weekly meetings for information sharing, regular team brainstorming sessions, and regular one-on-ones are all important communication opportunities that leaders should build into their calendars.
Involve the Team Members in Decision-Making
This subject is a favorite question of mine in job satisfaction surveys, the degree to which individuals feel involved in decisions that affect them or their teams. The beauty of team members being involved in and sharing diverse perspectives in coming up with the best decisions is a real benefit of diverse, inclusive cultures. Leaders should strive to involve the team in decisions that impact them. Of course, I acknowledge that this is not always possible; however, ensuring people have a say in their future is essential in fostering workplace belonging.
Be Transparent and Share Information
Like involvement in decision-making, the power of senior leaders sharing information with their teams when appropriate and possible cannot be underestimated. As a leader, I would always share what I could, trusting my employees to be judicious with specific information as required and, in turn, building trust with them. This transparency in information flow is a powerful way to show belonging; withholding information and not sharing when possible is an exclusionary behavior.
Support Employee Well-Being Through Empathy and Compassion
Genuine care and concern for the well-being of every team member, combined with being willing to show that you are human and can be vulnerable, promote employee engagement initiatives and a sense of real belonging, thus leading to a workplace where employees feel valued.
In a high-trust team environment where the leader role-models this type of support and truly values it, belonging and engagement will be significantly enhanced.
Acting on Employee Feedback Builds Trust
Many organizations conduct regular employee engagement or experience surveys and shorter “pulse” surveys to sense check sentiment. It is vital that employers then ensure that action is taken based on the feedback given and, very importantly, on any employee comments that are shared in the “free text” areas of the survey. Requesting feedback and then failing to acknowledge it, or worse still, doing nothing about it, is damaging and demoralizing to employees.
Ensuring that there is timely, transparent, and open communication back to employees following their participation in the survey, thanking them for sharing their feedback, stating what can and will be done, as well as what cannot be actioned in response to their valuable feedback (an equally important step), is crucial to building trust, to show you have listened to and genuinely care about what your employees think and feel and for leadership credibility.
Implement Formal Mentoring Programs
Mentoring and sponsorship programs are powerful ways of increasing belonging across gender, hierarchical, and culturally diverse dimensions. Those groups who have been historically marginalized and have often felt like they have been the “only” woman, LGBTQIA+, or person of color present, for example, can benefit from positive cross-dimension mentoring. Sponsorship relationships are a robust career development and progression accelerator for all workplace talent.
Role Model Allyship
Leaders play a very important role in making individuals feel included and that they belong; this has a powerful impact and demonstrates the benefits of employee engagement. Ensuring that the loudest voices don’t dominate conversations by encouraging those who are quiet in a meeting to speak up, asking for their input, and commending them for their contributions, for example, can make a huge difference to the feeling of belonging that those individuals feel and overall create motivated employees.
Drive Engagement and Belonging by Empowering Your Team
Once you have that all-important trust in your team, empower them! By this, I mean encouraging them to share ideas, enabling them to make decisions, and taking actual ownership of their projects and work output. As their competence levels rise, giving them greater autonomy further builds trust between you and your team members. As a leader, this will also help you delegate responsibilities (an essential part of effective leadership), increasing the extent to which team members feel valued and recognized within your team. This delegation, in turn, supports and enables the realization of individual and organizational potential when you do intentionally delegate to your team.
Remember to Revisit These Strategies Regularly
Keep reviewing and asking your team for feedback on a regular basis. With the rapidly evolving work environment, strategies and actions may require adaptations to better suit the current climate. Provided you have built that psychologically safe environment, you, as the leader, can more easily gather and act upon this feedback to realize everyone’s potential through higher engagement and belonging.
Why Belonging and Engagement Matter More Than Ever
There is ample data illustrating the strong correlation between high employee engagement levels, the sense of belonging employees feel, and enhanced workforce retention rates.
Fostering workplace belonging and higher employee engagement is undoubtedly good for business on many levels. By providing a more positive employee experience, the significant cost of voluntary attrition of top talent can be mitigated considerably.
If you are a leader who isn’t already deploying these and/or other employee engagement strategies and fostering workplace belonging, I strongly urge you to start today. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the positive impact that taking a few small, intentional, and authentic steps can have on you, your team, and your organization.
Learn more about fostering workplace belonging with insights from WORKWELL Labs.
