Belonging at Work: Part 1

The meaning crisis and why belonging matters more than ever

A google search for belonging at work will show an extraordinary rise of interest in the topic (four hundred and twenty one million pieces of content at the last count April 2022). A peek inside people and culture strategies of any organisation paying attention to employee engagement will see this small word with big impact throughout documentation outlining plans. We’ve woken up to the reality that belonging means so much more than inclusion or a sense of ‘feel good’ about where we work. Rather, it’s a fundamental to our human experience that has real, visceral impacts that determines the wellbeing, performance, and success of our people. Survey after survey conducted during the pandemic has shown that not only are people seeking a greater sense of belonging at work, but when it’s not there, it’s a significant motivator to vote with their feet or to decide how much of themselves and their energy they bring to their work and workplaces.

McKinsey’s 2021 global survey into the Great Attrition stands out as a powerful wake-up call, if ever one was needed. It showed that last year 36% of people quit without a job to go to. Of those that quit, with or without a job to go to, all evidence points towards issues of meaning and belonging underpinning their exit. 54% didn’t feel valued by their company, 52% not valued by their manager, 51% felt an absence of belonging, and 46% wanted to work somewhere where there was more trust and care amongst their colleagues.

So, whether the motivation to take belonging more seriously is coming from an EDI perspective, a talent management consideration, or a desire to become the kind of organisation that creates a more meaningful experience of work, we are all grappling with it. How our people feel has, finally, and thankfully, become a serious business issue.

But what does belonging mean in a world having an existential meaning crisis?

The idea of meaning seeking, or our awareness of a growing sense of disconnection in society, is not new. Modern life has, for some time now, encouraged the pursuit of individualism and separation over community and connection. A lack of meaning can leave us feeling misaligned with our current reality, left with a kind of emptiness, or a sense of something missing or a feeling of dissatisfaction with the status quo.

It’s not dramatic to say that right now in society, we are in a time of major transition. There are huge, challenging, and destabilising questions being asked about our dominant world view and our shared understanding of how things work. Values and principles are being questioned and we’re seeing greater dissonance between ourselves and others around us, whether it be people, organisations, or institutions in society that’s harder to live with.

Meaning comes from feeling connected to something bigger than us, so what happens when we’re asking fundamental questions about the places that want us to feel like we belong? We’ve got a belief problem with many are questioning what, and who, to believe in.

The Climate Crisis. Racism, White Supremacy and Colonialism. Growing Wealth and Health Inequalities. The Fall of Democracy. Loss of Trust in Leadership. The Dark Side of Capitalism. The Fight for Inclusion. Constant Reminder of Interconnected of Our Health. There’s not a day that goes by when one of these isn’t shaping our lived experience. These things are not new, but our awareness of them has developed, how we relate to them has changed, and their impact has grown.

We’re feeling it more

The cognitive scientist John Verveake describes us as becoming ‘strangers in our own world’, which feels very apt for now. With these huge existential issues facing us, no wonder we feel overwhelmed and exhausted.

For some, these things are literally keeping them awake at night, impacting on mental or physical health. I only need to sit in on a group of EDI professionals to see the rise of burnout or disconnection emerging from the stress of seeing slow or surface level change. The British Medical Journal highlights that eco-anxiety is on the rise in our youth, with research pointing directly to the stress caused by the feeling of betrayal and abandonment by institutions and adults. ‘Anxiety’ was our children’s word of the year for 2021. Policy making limiting citizen freedoms or reinforcing inequalities are literally making us ill. Whether it’s Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders or decisions that are pushing more working class people further into poverty, are all taking their toll in very real ways, leaving huge groups feeling unseen, undervalued, and excluded.

For others, it’s more of a subtle experience that perhaps they don’t always attribute to these big questions of our time. But in a low level, subconscious way, this climate of a society not fit for purpose is chipping away at our energy, resilience, sense of positivity and hope. Throw in a global pandemic and no wonder we are all so bloody exhausted. We are we entering another year of bringing the mental energy required to work in an in-limbo organisational life with cultures and structures that are out of sync with what is needed. Women especially are picking up more of the workplace emotional load in keeping colleagues and businesses going, as we are in a perpetual state of ‘wait and see’ or trying our hardest to carry on ‘business as usual’. A shocking 42% of working women self-describe themselves as burned out.

We’re putting up with it less

What’s changed recently, helped by the sharp focusing lens of a global pandemic, is the growth in numbers of people choosing not to belong. There is active decision-making around where to put one’s energy. We’re recognising that we don’t have to put up with things that are not working for us. In fact, we can create all kinds of exciting new possibilities for a future that is more aligned to our values and beliefs.  

Look at the growth of digital nomads. I’m just back from a break in Ko Pha-Ngan, which is a choice destination for people seeking out an alternative life-work reality. In the US alone, independent workers rose by 42% from 2020 to 2021, to more than 15 million. With women and Gen Zs driving the growth, they seek more autonomy and freedom and believe they are happier, healthier and actually more secure being on their own.

Closer to home, recent research shows that half of black employees in the UK have left a job due to lack of workplace diversity. People are willing to trade income for meaning at work yet only a small minority feel their current job offers the kind of meaning they seek. I’ve seen slow progress on anti-racism, leadership lacking credibility, workplaces that compromised personal values and unaddressed burnout cultures as drains on meaning and connection, leading to resignations or to people checking out and contributing less.

As Larry Finks’ 2022 letter to CEOs and investors boldly outlines ‘The old world is dead. It is not coming back’. The dynamic between employee and employer needs to fundamentally change if organisations are to be places that people choose to be part of and invest in.

Division is growing

World views play an essential role in giving us safety and stability. They give us a framework for how to see the world and determine the rules for how to act within it. When fundamentals are thrown up in the air, we’re all grappling to find anchors for support. And we’re at different stages in working out how to handle a world in transition, some ready to embrace new ways, some hanging on tighter to old ones. It’s part of what’s creating an ‘us’ and ‘them’. From this tribal standpoint, belonging feels very out of reach.

Vaxxers and Anti-Vaxxers on ideas of choice and responsibility; those fearing losing ‘our colonial history’ and those deeply needing partial truths to become full multi-cultural narratives; those ready to address white supremacy and those resisting; trans positive people ready to embrace and those cannot or will not conceptualise or rethink ideas on gender’; those preoccupied with over-consumption and sustainable new ways and those struggling to have enough with barely the headspace to think about the environment.

That in-transition state also applies to our workplaces, as they are still working out how to be in this new world of work. Those who never want to return to the office, those seeking the community of office life. Employers embracing new levels of freedom and autonomy, those keen to get back to business as usual. Organisations fully stepping up for for racial justice, those barely taking a first steps beyond a flaky BLM statement. Those making strides towards wellbeing with 9-day fortnights or 4-day weeks, others drowning in burnout cultures.

Everywhere we turn we are all seeking a firmer footing on shaky, new ground.

Approaches to creating belonging need an upgrade 

If we want to create belonging that’s more than lip-service, this is the context that needs to underpin any approaches to it. No doubt, it is a meaty challenge, with so much going on, and so many seeming competing agendas and needs. As a business community, we’re not used to navigating this wider social and societal context in our workplaces, yet it’s something we’ve got to develop our capacity to work with if we’re serious about it. The days of worrying about what’s ours to fix, that well used line of ‘we’re not a charity, but a business’ needs a rethink. It’s time for new enquiries into how we adapt to better support the needs of people in today’s world, both inside our businesses and in the external communities we work with and rely on. I’ll talk more about this in Part 2, but this is what modern capitalism is. It’s meeting the needs of all our stakeholders, and right now, there’s a lot more we need to do to get us there.

One of the main challenges is that we are approaching belonging with outdated solutions.

Perhaps we already use organisational listening tools, investing in hearing what our people want and need. But if we are not listening with all this context and a full understanding of how belonging works, we’re not going to detect the real issues to address. I’ve seen this happen – a survey showing high levels of belonging across the workforce, yet a skilled listening exercise in the same workplace reveals a plethora of issues consistently undermining belonging – loss belief or respect in leadership, dealing with everyday sexism, endemic fear of speaking out, burnout as the new normal, a lack of faith that ‘business for good’ comes from an authentic place. That doesn’t look and feel like belonging.

Things like organisational purpose and values are helpful, but so few businesses are really living these consistently. If we’re honest, we can all recognise times when they’ve been compromised for commercial needs, or we know that there’s selective application of them with not enough people showing up to them, which totally crushes their credibility. Sometimes, they are just too far away what matters to people or have lost relevance to the context of today’s world. Even within the most seemingly purposeful mission focused organisations, there are people choosing not to belong because they no longer belief in how that mission is being achieved, they’ve lost faith in the people delivering it or feel undervalued for what they bring. Brewdog anyone?

Solutions tend to be focused on symptoms of a lack of belonging which only offer short term fixes. Bring remote workers together, give people tools to manage workload and stress, offer better flexible/remote working opportunities, create personal growth plans, provide progression opportunities to those in marginalised groups, etc. I’m not minimising these things, which do all help, in incremental ways, but they are not enough.

Despite best intentions, not enough is being done quickly enough on the systemic issues that really matter to people. They are not feeling or seeing progress, urgency or enough action on those things that usually come with the ‘it takes time’ card. Things like diversity in leadership, prioritising wellbeing in ways that make a meaningful difference, embedding zero tolerance to racism and discrimination, to name a few. The bar is low on progress, we’re not really measuring impact, and the visionary workplaces people want to see in tackling the issues of our time are few and far between. There was a lot of truth in the film ‘don’t look up’ and the casual and arrogant belief that we don’t have to rush to get there. We do not have all the time in the world. Belonging needs credibility to function. This behaviour erodes it.

The real question we need to be asking ourselves, is ‘What is it that we are asking people to belong to?’ Organisations that can confidently answer this, in ways that feel connected to the key issues of our time, with evidence that they are walking their talk, will be the belonging winners. We need healing. We need vision. We need to believe together. We need bravery. We need more urgency. We’ve got to think bigger if we genuinely want to create workplaces people choose to belong to.