Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of employee resource groups (ERGs) in a multi-national, for-profit corporation. The paper focuses on how ERGs facilitate learning.

A qualitative case study approach was used to examine six social identity based ERGs in one multi-national for-profit organization headquartered in the USA.

The study found that ERGs facilitate learning and development activities in order to support their membership. ERGs, operating as communities of practice, also engaged in informal learning opportunities that were designed to shift perspectives of non-members and executive-level leaders in the organization.

There is a growing body of literature on ERGs across organizations and higher education that examine how these groups engage in activism, advocacy, recruitment, retention and education. This study examines the processes by which these groups facilitate learning and development activities and the benefits perceived by the membership. The paper provides value to human resources professionals and others who are interested in how ERGs function as learning communities and outcomes the membership perceive as most important.

Organizational researchers studying well-being – as well as organizations themselves – often place much of the burden on employees to manage and preserve their own well-being. Missing from this discussion is how – from a human resources management (HRM) perspective – organizations and managers can directly and positively shape the well-being of their employees. The authors use this review to paint a picture of what organizations could be like if they valued people holistically and embraced the full experience of employees’ lives to promote well-being at work. In so doing, the authors tackle five challenges that managers may have to help their employees navigate, but to date have received more limited empirical and theoretical attention from an HRM perspective: (1) recovery at work; (2) women’s health; (3) concealable stigmas; (4) caregiving; and (5) coping with socio-environmental jolts. In each section, the authors highlight how past research has treated managerial or organizational support on these topics, and pave the way for where research needs to advance from an HRM perspective. The authors conclude with ideas for tackling these issues methodologically and analytically, highlighting ways to recruit and support more vulnerable samples that are encapsulated within these topics, as well as analytic approaches to study employee experiences more holistically. In sum, this review represents a call for organizations to now – more than ever – build thriving organizations.

Racially traumatic events – such as police violence and brutality toward Blacks – affect individuals in and outside of work. Black employees may “call in Black” to avoid interacting with coworkers in organizations that lack resources and perceived identity and psychological safety. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The paper integrates event system theory (EST), resourcing, and psychological safety frameworks to understand how external, racially traumatic events impact Black employees and organizations. As racially traumatic events are linked to experienced racial identity threat, the authors discuss the importance of both the availability and creation of resources to help employees to maintain effective workplace functioning, despite such difficult circumstances.

Organizational and social-identity resourcing may cultivate social, material, and cognitive resources for black employees to cope with threats to their racial identity after racially traumatic events occur. The integration of organizational and social-identity resourcing may foster identity and psychologically safe workplaces where black employees may feel valued and reduce feelings of racial identity threats.

Implications for both employees’ social-identity resourcing practice and organizational resource readiness and response options are discussed.

The authors present a novel perspective for managing diversity and inclusion through EST. Further, the authors identify the interaction of individual agency and organizational resources to support Black employees.

This article illustrates the experiences of employee resource group (ERG) members over a two-year period with the aim of understanding the benefits and risks of membership for sexual minority employees.

Qualitative interview data were collected from seven lesbian, gay or bisexual ERG members following an extreme case approach at two points in time separated by two years.

Three themes of outcomes related to ERG membership emerged from the data. Participants reported both benefits and risks associated with the social and career-related consequences of membership. The role that allies play in providing visibility, legitimacy and support to ERG members also emerged and shifted in importance over the two years between interviews, with ally involvement becoming more important to career outcomes over time.

This study illuminates potential consequences of supporting ERGs for minority employees, as well as insight into the role of allies in these groups.

This study contributes to the literature by revealing several individual outcomes of a growing form of diversity management practice: ERGs.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that employee resource groups (ERGs) are a valuable addition to organizations and should be an important focus of research, particularly given the diversity and inclusion challenges faced by many businesses and communities today.

The authors review the ERG literature, develop a theoretical framework using social identity theory (SIT) and suggest research directions.

ERGs represent a fairly unexplored area of research. Using SIT, a series of propositions is presented for research into ERG effects on individual, group and organizational outcomes.

ERGs have impact beyond the topics explored using SIT. As ERGs become more prominent, there is ample room to conduct empirical research to learn more about the underlying process by which ERGs are affecting identity and employee integration (or lack of) into groups and organizations.

Despite their prevalence in the business world, there has been a scarce amount of theorizing and research focused on ERGs. To help facilitate the development of this work, the authors introduce a theoretical framework using SIT, as well as propositions that can serve to spur additional research on a critical topic for today’s businesses.

This paper aims to explore the socially responsible human resource practices disclosed by the “World’s Best Multinational Workplaces,” with the aim of facilitating the benchmarking of these disclosed practices.

Using the “World’s Best Multinational Workplaces” list was a strategic decision in this study due to the rigorous methodology used in the preparation of the list as it concentrated largely on the employees’ feedback, thus ensuring that these listed companies are actually top workplaces. Both manifest and latent content analysis, are applied on 23 of the 25 listed Multinational Corporations’ websites and reports, and company reviews done on these companies by the Great Place to Work for to pinpoint the social responsible human resource practices.

Most of the practices disclosed are oriented toward enhancing the employees’ work experiences whether that happened through improving their employment conditions or through having a diverse and inclusive workplace. Thus, the employee-oriented human resource management practices got the lion’s share of the disclosures, rather than the legal or the Corporate social responsibility–human resources facilitation components.

The practices that are already used at small and medium enterprises within national contexts were not covered in this study.

It is assumed that businesses can benefit from the practices of these MNCs which are considered as great places to work for, and as pioneers in their socially responsible human resource approaches.

This study is likely to fill an important gap in the corporate social responsibility literature, which gave pint-sized attention to the internal stakeholders, rendering the academic coverage of employee-related practices scarce if not absent

Amidst the backlash against gay rights in the U.S., a rapidly expanding number of companies are instituting inclusive policies. While in 1990 no major corporations provided health insurance for the partners of lesbian and gay employees, by early 2004, over 200 companies on the Fortune 500 list (approximately 40%) had adopted domestic partner benefits. This study of Fortune 1000 corporations reveals that the majority of adopters instituted the policy change only after facing pressure from groups of lesbian, gay, and bisexual employees. Despite such remarkable success, scholars have yet to study the workplace movement, as it is typically called by activists. Combining social movement theory and new institutional approaches to organizational analysis, I provide an “institutional opportunity” framework to explain the rise and trajectory of the movement over the past 25 years. I discuss the patterned emergence and diffusion of gay employee networks among Fortune 1000 companies in relation to shifting opportunities and constraints in four main areas: the wider sociopolitical context, the broader gay and lesbian movement, the media, and the workplace. Next, using the same wide-angle lens, I explain the apparent decline in corporate organizing since 1995. My multimethod approach utilizes surveys of 94 companies with and without gay networks, intensive interviews with 69 networks and 10 corporate executives, 3 case studies, field data, and print and virtual media on gay-related workplace topics. By focusing on not simply political but also broader institutional opportunities, I provide a framework for understanding the emergence and development of movements that target institutions beyond the state.

In this chapter, we explore the role of disability-based employee resource groups (ERG) in implementing large organizations' disability inclusion strategies and how pandemic responses shaped the workplace treatment and inclusion of disabled employees.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with disability-based ERG members and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) professionals in large corporate settings. Then, we analyzed how pandemic-induced changes in the workplace impacted disability inclusion efforts and experiences of disabled employees.

Results from our study revealed that workplace disability inclusion responsibilities shifted to disability-based ERGs during the onset of the pandemic. Participants detailed how organizational disability inclusion practices and policies expanded through increased awareness among some employee bases and were de-prioritized to the point of erasure in other situations. Within the context of the pandemic, members of disability-based ERGs played an integral part in both enhancing visibility of disability and responding to instances of ableism in their respective organizations.

Findings provide context as to how shifting organizational contexts, such as pandemic related workplace policies, becomes disabling, and in turn illustrate the fluid nature of disability. By framing disability as an evolving (fluid) identity category and prioritizing the awareness of disabled perspectives, organizations can better support disabled employees in their future, overarching DEI strategies and approaches to workplace inclusion post-pandemic.

Loneliness is known to adversely impact employee health, performance and affective commitment. This study involves a quantitative cross-sectional analysis of online survey data reported by adults employed in the United States (n = 5,927) to explore how loneliness and other related factors may influence avoidable absenteeism and turnover intention.

Worker loneliness was assessed using the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3). Composite variables were constructed as proxy measures of worker job and personal resources. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine independent variable effects on dependent outcomes of (a) work days missed in the last month due to stress (stress-related absenteeism) and (b) likelihood to quit within the next year (turnover intention).

The job resources of social companionship, work-life balance and satisfaction with communication had significant negative relationships to loneliness in the SEM, as did the personal resources of resilience and less perceived alienation. Results further show lonely workers have significantly greater stress-related absenteeism (p = 0.000) and higher turnover intention ratings (p = 0.000) compared to workers who are not lonely. Respondent demographics (age, race and gender) and other occupational characteristics also produced significant outcomes.

Study findings underscore the importance of proactively addressing loneliness among workers and facilitating job and personal resource development as an employee engagement and retention strategy.

Loneliness substantially contributes to worker job withdrawal and has negative implications for organizational effectiveness and costs.

Over the past decade, the rapid evolution of social media has impacted the field of human resource management in numerous ways. In response, scholars and practitioners have sought to begin an investigation of the myriad of ways that social media impacts organizations. To date, research evidence on a range of HR-related topics are just beginning to emerge, but are scattered across a range of diverse literatures. The principal aim of this chapter is to review the current literature on the study of social media in HRM and to integrate these disparate emerging literatures. During our review, we discuss the existent research, describe the theoretical foundations of such work, and summarize key research findings and themes into a coherent social media framework relevant to HRM. Finally, we offer recommendations for future work that can enhance knowledge of social media’s impact in organizations.