Sense of Belonging - the path to greater results

Do your employees feel a sense of belonging at work?

Do you think this is important?

Only if you care about your business results.

Social belonging is a fundamental human need, hardwired into our DNA. And yet 40% of people say that they feel isolated at work and don’t feel a sense of belonging to their company or team. This results in lower organisational commitment and engagement and if the employee doesn’t care, their performance is not as good. This means that the KPIs aren’t met or the results aren’t as good as they could be.

Belonging is good for business

If workers feel like they belong, companies reap substantial bottom-line benefits. In research published in HBR, high belonging was linked to:

· 56% increase in job performance,

· 50% drop in employee turnover risk,

· 75% reduction in sick days.

For a 10,000-person company, this would result in annual savings of more than $52M.

Creating a sense of belonging starts with psychosocial safety in the workplace. As a leader, it is important to create an environment of trust and openness.

Where it is safe :-

• To speak out when something doesn’t seem right.

• To report incidents and near misses when they occur and ensure that everyone learns from the experience.

• To suggest new, innovative ways of working without the fear of ridicule or being ignored.

• Where your leader respects everyone in the team and values their input.

With this comes greater teamwork, and colleagues look after the safety of themselves and their teammates. Where they respect the differences that each individual brings to the team and the value that this adds to the team.

When a team is truly connected and feels a sense of belonging, they are proud to work for the organisation When someone leaves, they recommend the role to their personal friends. These friends know it’s a great place to work as they speak about it regularly in a positive way.

The leadership skills that engender this team connection and sense of belonging starts with a focus on the people rather than the tasks to be completed. A leader who takes time to understand and listen to their team members and recognises their individual strengths. A leader who helps develop their team members in ways to overcome their weaknesses.

Developing an empathetic mindset in a leader can mean this attitude spread into the workforce and the team will enjoy being in the workplace and be more productive as a consequence.

These leadership skills have often been termed as soft skills but they are the ones that will reap hard business results.

More than ever before the soft skills have become more important than the traditional leadership skills of task focused management.

Contact InteChange to learn more about this and other factors that will help you reap KPI results and business performance improvements through a people focused approach to leadership.