Research a few years ago from Ohio State University highlighted the benefits of having friendships at work. The study revealed that when teams were mostly composed of friends, they performed a lot better than when team members were strangers. This was particularly pronounced when teams grew in size.

“Working with friends is not just something that makes us feel good – it can actually produce better results,” the authors say.

It’s perhaps no surprise, therefore, that research from EY found that 34% of us feel the greatest sense of belonging when we’re at work. What’s more, this sense of belonging was even more important during the Covid pandemic, where physical isolation was forced upon us to slow the spread of the virus.

The need to belong

This isn’t something that all of us feel, however, as 40% also say that they feel isolated at work, which typically results in the kind of drop in organizational commitment and engagement that has come to typify the “quiet quitting” phenomenon we’re seeing today.

The need to belong was identified as one of the key trends seen in the modern workplace in O.C. Tanner’s latest Global Culture Report. The report, which is now in its fifth year, gathers data from around 36,000 employees to understand the latest workplace issues. It found that a desire for belonging was increasingly important to the modern worker.

“Regardless of their place on the org chart, people have begun to seek more opportunities to connect with each other, and they are looking to their employers for help,” the authors write. “Among the most common sentiments is a longing for community— the feeling of belonging to a group with a purpose that invites and inspires the person to contribute meaningful work.”

Don’t leave it to chance

The authors explain that too often this sense of connectivity, purpose, and belonging is left to chance, but they urge managers today to be far more deliberate in creating opportunities for people to connect with one another in a meaningful way.

“Organizations should be deliberate in creating opportunities for employees to feel fulfilled in their work,” they continue. “Not only do they do better work, but we found that highly fulfilled employees want to stay at their organization for an extra three years.”

The pandemic forced a rupture in the connections we have to our colleagues and to our work, and the report outlines how many of us are still healing from this disconnect. That sense of community is more important now than it’s ever been though, especially as more employers are promoting a return to the office.

Poor progress

Unfortunately, the report outlines the poor progress many organizations have made in providing such community and belonging to date. There are successful outliers, however, who have managed to successfully reconnect with their workforce and developed a more community-driven mindset to help employees feel meaning and a sense of belonging at work.

As in so many ways, the Covid pandemic drove this transition from “employee experience” that focused primarily on people only while they were at work, to “people experience”, which takes into account the whole lives of people and considers both how employees’ wider lives impact work, and how work impacts their wider life.

“There’s no such thing as ‘work-life balance’ – it’s just ‘life balance.’,” the authors explain “With that, a meaningful focus on employees’ holistic wellbeing is crucial for organizations to retain and attract talent in today’s environment.”

Building belonging

Hopefully, the benefits of greater belonging are evident, whether it’s in terms of retention, engagement, or productivity, but how can you actually go about doing so if you’re one of the many organizations that have been left behind by this?

1. Improve inclusivity – The first step is to create an inclusive culture. While there has been a degree of progress on DEI, it’s still common for people to feel like they don’t belong, which in turn prompts them to suppress that part of themselves that makes them stand out. It’s important that organizations try to develop a culture where our individuality is noticed and valued.
2. Communicate a lot – Recent research from Stanford highlights how difficult it is for managers to “over-communicate”, yet managers often think that less is more. This is certainly the case when fostering a sense of belonging at work, as people need to feel like achieving DEI goals is everyone’s responsibility and that genuinely being there for one’s colleagues is what is expected. If we can give people a meaningful role in developing a more inclusive workplace then that’s a good place to be.
3. Codify the changes – Culture can often feel like an ephemeral thing that you feel rather than see tangibly. If a culture of belonging is to endure, however, then it can be included in benefits and initiatives. These can help to signal to employees that you really care about their needs, not just while they’re at work but also outside of work. Indeed, Gartner research found that using benefits and initiatives in this way can boost inclusion by nearly 40%.

Given the intense competition for talent at the moment, it’s beholden on employers to listen to what employees want and do their best to deliver it. Right now, a sense of belonging seems to be near the top of that list. Now is the time to provide it.