The importance of belonging and inclusion at work
From our extensive data from thousands of BetterUp Members, we know that belonging and inclusion is the secret sauce behind employee happiness, job satisfaction, performance, innovation, retention, and so many more areas that directly influence organizational success. When employees feel like they belong and are included, they bring their whole selves to work, they feel more comfortable sharing ideas and feedback, taking risks, and pushing themselves, and they build valuable social connections with their colleagues.
They contribute more to the organization and they achieve more for themselves professionally.
We also know that frontline managers can promote this type of inclusion in the workplace more than any other group. Managers have influence, authority, and a great capacity to affect change — they help deliver employee experiences day-to-day and have the most significant impact on whether any individual employee feels included. An inclusive manager sets the tone and models the behaviors for their team to create an environment where each person feels seen, valued, and respected.
To create inclusive workplaces, organizations have invested heavily into DEIB solutions over the past decade, yet they're failing to see these initiatives reach their full potential. A quarter of all employees say they still don't feel a sense of belonging at their organization (that's across companies, industries, and demographics. Imagine what it is for underrepresented employees), and only 31% say their leaders are inclusive.
It's worse when it comes to tracking the efficacy and impact of DEIB programs: according to a recent analysis by Josh Bersin, "roughly 80% of companies are just going through the motions and not holding themselves accountable." In fact, just 2% of HR managers think they are achieving their diversity and inclusion goals — perhaps because many programs and investments don’t provide leaders with the insights that help them address their peoples’ needs.
The clear business case for DEIB people analytics
When evaluating their training and development programs, most organizations start — and stop — with only usage and satisfaction. And while those are important metrics to measure, as we've pointed out above, they're not enough.
Through our rigorously validated measurement and data approach, BetterUp goes beyond just usage and satisfaction metrics. The People Analytics Dashboard allows you to track the actual growth of your people in critical mindsets, behaviors, and outcomes, such as productivity, engagement, and well-being.
These robust analytics provided by BetterUp are targeted at helping you take action – for the first time, you can diagnose and understand what is happening and the root causes, and get insights you need into what to do about it.
Track belonging and its impact
On the Impact tab, you'll find the BetterUp Belonging Index, which is your pulse on how well your employees feel that they belong at your organization. This metric measures the degree to which employees feel valued, heard, and connected in their team and organization — key drivers that influence everything from job satisfaction to intent to stay and performance.
With BetterUp's proprietary Belonging Index, you can learn more about the 4 key business outcomes BetterUp influences related to belonging:
- Engagement
- Productivity
- Employer NPS
- Job Satisfaction
For each of these outcomes, you can see and track the change over time and compare against benchmarks from an extensive dataset of more than 17,000 working professionals across a wide range of industries, functions, levels, and demographics.
Measure how inclusive your leaders are
We know that inclusive leaders are the difference makers for helping employees feel belonging and contribute their best work. However, traditionally it's been challenging to understand which specific behaviors and mindsets your frontline managers must cultivate to lead inclusively, let alone measure them. Until now.
Within the Behaviors tab, you can view the six individual behaviors that our research shows to be critical in demonstrating foundational well-being and individual leadership, which you can now measure and compare against benchmarks. In addition, the four team behaviors displayed in this view help you understand how members collectively view the tendencies of the groups within which they work.
Understand key metrics and business outcomes at a glance
BetterUp's PAD is structured in a way to help you tell a clear value story of coaching, starting with the impact on your business and then drilling down into the drivers of behavior, learning, and satisfaction.
Your dashboard will help you better understand key metrics on behavior, learning, and satisfaction to assess the organization's health and easily share with other stakeholders.
See what's trending and forecast the future
On the Learning tab, you can learn about the top 5 coaching topics your members are talking about each month and see the sub-topics within each topic to get a real-time pulse on the most important and relevant areas to your people.
BetterUp Coaches tag every session with a topic tag at the end of the session to capture what the member wanted to discuss. This data is aggregated and anonymized in this view and ultimately shows what topics are coming up most often for your people.
The ongoing look into session topic trends gives you early insight into what people are working on and helps you plan more proactively to support them further.
Monitor employee satisfaction and engagement
Lastly, you can now monitor success that you can celebrate in the Satisfaction tab. Here, you can view feedback, testimonials, and gratitudes shared by employees about their breakthroughs, setbacks, and everything in between. See what you employees are saying about their experiences over the past 30 days to get a pulse for the current health of your coaching programs across:
- Session ratings, ranging from life-changing to poor
- Satisfaction metrics – like how often members gained valuable insight from their sessions
- Progress towards goals
- Select member testimonials
In addition, you can manage your BetterUp programs in a self-serve way through built-in administrative functions, see member activation, utilization, and engagement on the platform.
With BetterUp and the PAD, you can now get the data and insights you need to build a strong culture of inclusion.
