Читать книгу Employee Resource Group Excellence - Robert Rodriguez - Страница 18

One thing that has not changed much in the past 10–15 years is that middle managers at organizations still are mostly skeptical about the value of employee resource groups. These middle managers struggle to see the benefits that ERGs provide. Some are still convinced that ERGs are divisive as opposed to being entities that promote unity and inclusion.

I once spoke to a focus group consisting of managers at one company who saw a lack of engagement by middle management as a key obstacle for their employee resource groups. It was difficult to blame some middle managers for not being more supportive of ERGs because they simply didn't know what these groups were about. Some were not aware they even existed or lacked clarity as to what ERGs do. Given such lack of awareness about ERGs, it was easy to see why there were not more supported.

Other middle managers were more transparent and shared their concerns about employees spending too much time on ERG activities and not enough time on their regular job. These managers shared their reality of having too few resources to meet challenging goals and that they need their employees focused on their work. And still others conveyed the impracticality of allowing their employees to attend ERG meetings or events when it required their employees, who were mostly hourly, to be at their desks answering calls or on the production line putting out product.

Regardless of the reason, ERGs need more active engagement from middle management. They need managers to support employees who wish to participate in employee resource group activities. Better yet, ERGs need more middle managers themselves to join employee resource groups. But in order for this to happen, both employee resource groups and middle managers have to do their part.

Employee resource groups need to do a better job of defining their value proposition (including metrics‐that‐matter) to middle management. Employee resource groups must convey how and why their activities are relevant to middle managers. Conversely, middle management should be more proactive in finding out what ERGs are all about and why these groups are prevalent across corporate America and what employees get out of their involvement. However, until both stakeholder groups accomplish this, the lack of middle management support is a reality that ERGs must contend with for the foreseeable future. The strategies highlighted throughout this book will hopefully convince more middle managers of their importance in endorsing and advocating for ERGs. The lack of middle manager support will be analyzed further in Chapter 2.