top of page

The Business Value of ERGs

Presented by Teleskope, in partnership with Affirmity. Join Samantha Renovato, Director Global DEI at Ingredion, Adewale Soluade, VP DEI at Centene, Jennifer Gamboa-Copeland, Director DEI at McKesson, Angela Curley, Senior Manager DEI at Henkel, and moderator Maneet Sarai, Chief Product Officer at Teleskope, as they explore how Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) can deliver measurable business value.

Topics and Speakers

This webinar covers:

​

  • ERG program strategy and long-term planning

  • Driving business impact through ERG initiatives

  • Leveraging technology for ERG metrics and reporting

  • Managing stakeholders and ERG alignment during mergers & acquisitions

  • Best practices for ERG budgets, remote work, and organizational integration

 

Speakers:

​​

Synopsis

Four DEI leaders, from a global ingredients company, a consumer goods and industrial adhesives manufacturer, a healthcare distributor, and a Fortune 50 managed care organization, compare how they've turned Employee Resource Groups from grassroots communities into measurable drivers of business value.

​

Each panelist opens with the shape of their program: Ingredion's nine Business Resource Groups reach about 10% of its global workforce after launching in 2017; Henkel's 18 ERGs trace back roughly 20 to 25 years, refreshed and accelerated starting in 2017; McKesson's 11 ERGs include a military resource group dating to 2010 and roughly 7,400 unique members across 14,000 total memberships; Centene's five Employee Inclusion Groups, launched in November 2017, had just crossed 14,000 members in participation at the time of the panel. All four point to shared platform technology as the shift that let them move from scattered, manual tracking to real reporting.

​

The conversation goes well past membership counts. Ingredion's disability-focused BRG helped shape a customer-facing product story around a swallowing-assistance ingredient, directly connecting employee lived experience to product development. Centene built a full data pipeline, integrating its ERG platform with Workday and Power BI, to track how ERG participation correlates with internal promotion rates and engagement scores, while treating that reporting as a co-owned effort with HR, legal, and compliance, not something DEI produces alone. McKesson describes in detail how it extended ERG access to frontline, non-desk employees, distribution center staff, drivers, call center workers, through a mobile app, single sign-on, printed materials in multiple languages, and close coordination with workforce scheduling.

 

Mergers and acquisitions come up as an unexpected ERG strength: Centene uses its Employee Inclusion Groups as an early, informal integration point for new colleagues, well before formal systems integration is complete. The panel closes on what's next: expanding intersectional collaboration between groups, treating ERG leadership as genuine leadership development (with an eye toward eventual compensation for ERG leaders), adapting programming for hybrid and remote work, and formalizing transparent, size-based budgeting, an enterprise-level baseline topped up by local chapter contributions.

Key Takeaways

  • Tie ERG activity to concrete business outcomes (product development input, customer relationship building, supplier diversity) rather than treating ERGs as culture-only programs.

  • Pair ERG platform data with existing HR systems (HRIS, Workday, Power BI) to track how ERG participation correlates with retention, promotion, and engagement scores.

  • Build ERG reporting as a co-owned, cross-functional effort (HR, legal, compliance, business units), not something the DEI office produces and hands off.

  • Use ERGs as an early cultural integration point during mergers and acquisitions, well before full systems integration is complete.

  • Extend ERG access to frontline and non-desk employees deliberately, through mobile apps, single sign-on, printed materials, and coordination with workforce scheduling, not a platform rollout alone.

  • Fund ERGs with a transparent, size-based budget model (an enterprise-level baseline plus local chapter contributions), and treat ERG leadership as genuine leadership development, with an eye toward eventual recognition or compensation.

Moderator and Panelist Introductions with ERG Overviews

Laurie Stanford (Affirmity): Hello again! This is Laurie Stanford, and welcome to today's panel discussion on the Business Value of ERGs.

​

And now it's my pleasure to introduce our moderator for today, Maneet Sarai. Maneet serves as the Chief Product Officer for Teleskope, a key technology partner for Affirmity. Teleskope provides an all-in-one SaaS platform for managing DEI programs, and Maneet has extensive experience working with Fortune 500 organizations to digitally transform their ERG and other DE&I programs. Now, with logistics taken care of, I'll turn it over to Maneet to begin our discussion.

 

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Perfect. Alright, thanks a lot, Laurie, appreciate you doing the introduction there, and thanks a lot everyone for joining today. As Laurie said, my name is Maneet, and I'll be moderating the panel today. First thing we want to do is go through introductions for our panelists, so you have an understanding of who they are, the companies they represent, and some overviews of their BRG or ERG programs, just to help set context and set the stage. So first, I'd like to call on Sam Renovato, just to give a quick introduction, and then we'll go round robin across the panelists. Sam, go ahead.

 

Samantha Renovato (Ingredion): Thank you, Maneet. As Maneet mentioned, my name is Sam Renovato, I use she/her pronouns, and I'm so excited to be here. I'm the Director of Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion here at Ingredion. For those of you who don't know Ingredion, we're a global ingredient solutions company, we work with sweeteners, starches, texturizers, across the food and beverage industry, as well as pharmaceuticals.

 

As far as what our BRGs look like, we call them Business Resource Groups internally, which is what some other companies might call ERGs. We have nine of them globally, and the first ones officially launched in 2017, so we've been around for about five years. Since we've been using Affinities by Teleskope, we've been able to track our membership, and right now we have around 10% of our global population as members, which I think is pretty good, since we just launched in March and we're already seeing some really good uptake in our membership as well. Our BRGs really make an impact for us internally, we look at them kind of like the conscience of our organization, and they help us see what's important for our employees and their members, and they also really help support and execute our DE&I strategy.

 

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Excellent. Thanks a lot, Sam. Alright, next I'd like to turn it over to Angela. Angela, please give a quick introduction.

 

Angela Curley (Henkel): Hi! I'm Angela Curley, and I'm a Senior Manager of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Henkel North America. I've been with them for 24 years, and I've had the honor and privilege of launching ERGs here at Henkel, and also had the privilege of being a president and a liaison as well. We have some 18 Employee Resource Groups, that's what we call them here in North America. The genesis of them started about 20 to 25 years ago, but we had a refresh in 2017 to really take them and accelerate them to the next level. We partnered with Affirmity to launch the platform this year, to really help with the launch of those newer ERGs. We also see them as the voice of the employee, the voice of the consumer and customer, to really help us accelerate our business priorities for the company, and we're really excited to partner with Affirmity in helping us build that communication within our organization. So thank you for having me.

 

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Yep, thanks a lot, Angela. Alright, we'll go to Jennifer next. Jennifer Gamboa-Copeland (McKesson): Thank you, Maneet. Jennifer Gamboa-Copeland, she/her pronouns, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at McKesson, and my visual identifiers are Latina with black hair, maybe growing a little bit, turquoise top, and a checkered black and white screen in the background. McKesson is a medical pharmaceutical distributor company that's mostly known these days for the distribution of the COVID vaccine. I'm so excited to be here to share a little about what our Employee Resource Groups do. We have 11 of them, and the oldest originated about 12 years ago, in 2010, which was our military ERG. We have around 14,000 total members, which equates to about 7,400 unique members, since everyone can be part of multiple ERGs. We're global as well, US, Canada, and some in Europe.

 

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Excellent, thanks a lot, Jennifer, appreciate that. And alright, our final panelist, Wale.

Adewale Soluade (Centene): Yeah, thanks, Maneet. Good afternoon, everyone! My name is Wale Soluade, Vice President DEI at Centene Corporation. We're a Fortune 50 managed care organization, focusing on and delivering government-sponsored healthcare programs. We're the largest Medicaid managed care organization in the US, and we also have a bit of an international footprint. We're probably one of the largest companies you've actually never heard of, but we've been working to change that. We operate health plans in every single state in the United States, so really excited to be here.

 

We operate Employee Inclusion Groups, EIGs, is what we call our groups, and I'm pretty excited because we launched our first one in November 2017, and earlier this week we just crossed the 14,000-member mark in participation across the five EIGs we have here at Centene. So we're looking forward to that ongoing growth of participation and engagement with our workforce, and the Affinities platform, which we brought on board about two and a half, three years ago now, has been a vital part of our ability to accelerate the growth and maturity of our EIGs, which was a huge priority for me when I designed and launched them in 2017-2018. So happy to be here and looking forward to this conversation.

Overall Strategy of ERGs

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Perfect, thanks a lot, Wale, and thanks a lot to all the panelists for giving an introduction and giving some of that additional context of your organizations and various programs you're running internally. So now that we have introductions wrapped up, we actually want to go into the main questions of our panel today.

​

So first we're going to start with a high-level question, just around overall strategy. Angela, I'd love to call on you first, if you want to give some high-level anecdotes on how you look at ERG strategy. How do you look at that from a technology point of view, but then also how do you look at that for more adoption, as well as empowering your ERG leaders to be the best they can be in those various groups? If you can shed some light on what you're doing, both on that strategy, technology, as well as the overall empowering side, that'd be much appreciated, and it would create a really good construct for us to go into some of the deeper questions for today's panel. So Angela, please go ahead.

​

Angela Curley (Henkel): Yeah, thank you for that. First, I want to provide a little background about who Henkel is. We're both a consumer goods company, with some brands you may have heard of, Dial, Got2b, Purex, and also an organization with an industrial adhesive side, you may have heard of a product called Loctite, and we provide adhesives for different industries, including automotive, technology, electronics, and also general industries like furniture companies and appliances.

​

So I wanted to provide that context, we're 145 years old, we're based in Düsseldorf, Germany, and we have operations in many regions around the world, including North America, and they've done a number of acquisitions here in North America, and part of the strategy for Henkel was really wanting to do employee engagement, really getting them engaged in the success of our company, and also providing a platform for employees to be heard. ERGs are certainly one of those platforms, and our employees really take an active role in the ERGs, in terms of professional development, community outreach, as well as voice of consumer, voice of employee, and since 2020 there's been a real acceleration of our D&I programs, with ERGs being the linchpin of the success of the programs.

​

I'd like to emphasize that the people who run the ERGs are champions, doing this work on top of their daily work, who want to support the growth of our company's culture, to create a sense of belonging by providing that voice. The technology is great, Affirmity has been fantastic, and we really appreciate the support of folks like Maneet, and supplementing that with training and tools is just a dynamic next step. We offered the Affirmity ERG Master Class, we had a summit as a step in the process of supporting our ERGs, and it really provided a framework for the why, the what, and the how of ERGs, taking them to that BRG level, and they walked away with tools to create an 18-month plan of actions and activities to align with business priorities and impact society, fulfilling that right thing to do. We're also developing leadership skills, and leveraging the master class and additional training to really help them feel like they're part of the business by doing that. So we believe it's important to support and empower our ERGs, not just as an opportunity to have a group, but the training, tools, and the platform and resources really help them be successful.

Driving Business Value through ERGs

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Definitely. Yeah, thanks a lot for that, Angela, and I know Angela does have a hard stop on today's panel, she had a bit of a business priority there, so just wanted to make that acknowledgment, so folks understand you might be dropping off soon. But really appreciate that context, Angela, it really helped set the stage for our panel today, again around overall strategy, how you tie technology in with some of the more supplementary things you can do to empower your ERG leaders, as well as how Henkel really views BRGs from an overall business standpoint. I think that's a really good dovetail into my next question here, which is really how organizations are driving more concrete business value from BRGs.

 

BRGs are great from a community standpoint, bringing together culture and things like that, but they can also be really great enablers for business metrics and business value, whether that's inclusive product development, targeting specific populations, recruitment, and such. I'd like to call on Sam for this next question, to really talk about how you're leveraging your BRGs at Ingredion to drive some of those more concrete business values internally. Sam, would you like to shed some light on those specific programs you're doing within Ingredion?

​

Samantha Renovato (Ingredion): Yeah, absolutely! And just to add on to Angela's point earlier about technology helping, I think in a lot of companies, if not most of them, this is something BRG leaders do in addition to their job, so I think the technology takes away some of that administrative work they shouldn't have to do to begin with. That's been some of the feedback we've received, it's a lot easier for people to join and find information as well, so I think that's one of the benefits of the technology.

​

To answer your question, I have two examples I think are very exciting. For one, one of our nine BRGs is called Empowered, which is empowering employees with disabilities, and we just expanded into North America this year, and one of the things they did that was really cool was showcasing one of our solutions. One of the three things BRGs are supposed to be able to do throughout the year is close the gap on several areas, and one of them is business and product knowledge, because like many global companies, a lot of people don't know everything we do, so when you're able to showcase some of the communities it impacts or helps, it really brings to life the work our employees do. So our Empower BRG partnered with some of our business leaders, and they talked about one of the starches we use that's used in thick water, and for those who don't know, thick water is literally what it sounds like, it's water that's thick. When we add the starch to it, it becomes a bit more texturized, and it helps people with dysphagia, dysphagia being the medical term for people who have difficulty swallowing. That can come from different medical conditions, or as we age it's something that might happen. I think that's good to learn and know, if you don't know anyone who's been impacted, at least when you walk through, say, Walgreens, there's that back aisle where you have all those products, you'll notice thick water back there. So I think that's one of the ways the specific BRG was able to tie in the products we do to communities that are impacted, providing some of that disability transparency.

​

The other one I like to talk about is our Pride BRG and also our WIN. For LGBTQ+ we have Pride, and for a women's group we have Women in Ingredion. Both of those BRGs have been really good at establishing and deepening our relationships with our customers. Because we're not directly consumer-facing, we're more B2B, that does help us create better and deeper relationships with our customers, so there have been a couple of cross-company BRG events we've put together, and also one-off conversations, even sharing our D&I practices. So I think those are some good examples of how we're really bringing more value to the business and deepening our relationship with our customers.

​

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Yeah, that was really good insight there, Sam. And a follow-on question, that particular example on the product development side, how did that flow down the business? Did it come from the actual product engineers working on that, who realized there was a problem and saw the BRGs as a solution, or at least a sounding board to help develop it further? Can you talk about what that actual process looked like, because I think the audience would really appreciate understanding what that looks like in a day-to-day scenario.

​

Samantha Renovato (Ingredion): Yeah, so for this particular dysphagia solution, it's been around for over 100 years, so it's not something that was more recently created. But one of the things that did come out of it was looking at product innovation, we had people working on this particular ingredient looking at the history of it, and looking at the innovation side, we talked about what it could look like for people to have a good everyday experience. Right now there are a couple of options for thick water, you can have a product that's already made, or you can have the starch you add to your meal and stir it, and then have your dinner. So we talked about the experience, now we have powder, what would it look like if we packaged it a little differently? So we had a couple of ideas that came up as a result of that session, that were submitted to the business, and hopefully we'll hear more about which ones they've selected, but I think it's important to know how you provide someone with a condition a solution that's going to make their life better, so that when they go to a restaurant, they don't have to bring out this huge can, maybe it'll be a small cube or something different they can bring. So I think that's something really cool for everyone to keep in mind, just making sure everybody has a good experience.

Leveraging Technology for Key ERG Metrics

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Yeah, that's really good insight there, Sam, really appreciate you sharing those multiple examples with the audience. Alright, so now going off that question, we're trying to hone in on these conversations around ERGs providing business value, and I think that was a really good example of how the overall programs can provide business value around products and things like that, but then also internally, how can they provide value around key talent pillars. Wale, I'd love for you to chime in here, and when we're thinking about talent pillars, these can be things like performance, turnover, retention, promotion, grades and things like that. So Wale, I know you have a ton of experience leveraging technology to really get to some of these key ROI metrics that you can exemplify the power BRGs have

internally, but dovetailing off Sam's, where they're really focused on a product standpoint, I think it's also really important to indicate how they're helping internally improve processes or just improve talent pillars. So Wale, I want you to chime in and give some examples of how you're leveraging technology, whether it's the Teleskope platform or even other tools, like other HRIS or analytics tools internally, how you couple them together to really get to some of these key ROI metrics for your organization.

​

Adewale Soluade (Centene): Yeah, absolutely. So one of our core priorities when our DEI office was officially established was to create sort of the most robust system of reporting we possibly could, and to that effect we got to work with our partners in HR Information Systems to say we want to be able to look at the full spectrum of humanity within our workforce, by every dimension that technology would allow us to capture. We're a Workday company, and we pulled in what they had from a talent standpoint, but very quickly realized we needed to do some design work of our own, so we literally sat down and sketched out on a piece of paper here are all the things we want to see, here's the functionality we wanted. But then we started looking at, well, we also want to be able to look at trending in unique ways, we want to be able to forecast everything, hey, if we keep hiring a specific demographic at this rate, where do we land 5, 10, 15 years from now, we keep seeing this little turnover, where do we land? So we pulled Power BI into Tableau and started doing some really cool stuff, and even though they're not necessarily on this call, I do want to shout out our partners there, because it takes a tremendous amount of business intelligence to be applied to what we're trying to accomplish in DEI, and for us it very much speaks to the fact that DEI is seen as a business priority.

​

So in the same way we forecast sales or goals, we do the exact same thing as it ties to DEI. When we brought the Affinities platform on board, as you can imagine, it became important that we were able to plug the data coming out of the platform into our system, so we went ahead and did the Workday integration, that allows for a daily flow of insights from Affinities into Workday and the Power BI platform, which then allows us to basically create segmentation strategies within our EIGs. So we can tell you everything from race, ethnicity, gender, name the demographic, we can do a cut of it based on our EIG membership, and then we leverage that information, aggregate it with our EIGs as they go through their planning, so they're a lot more strategic in responding to the needs of the members that join our group. For example, a significant percentage of our employee network members are individual contributors, which means they have some very unique needs, so our groups can intentionally support that, and having access to that data allows them to be a lot more tactical in responding.

​

But simultaneously we also want to see the value our groups are adding to our organization, in terms of reducing turnover, supporting advancement. We're able to connect the dots using that same data to say, hey, if someone has been in an Employee Inclusion Group for a certain amount of time, here's the difference in their internal rates for that level versus lower. If someone actively participates, meaning they're attending programs, which we're able to track through the Affinities platform, this is what we see in terms of the difference in employee engagement scores. So we're able to really leverage those insights to show the organization, hey, we're helping to reduce turnover, we're helping to support talent attraction and development, because here's who's showing up, here's what they're doing, here's how they're contributing back to the organization. But being able to develop that really robust, real-time system of data, leveraging what we see with our Affinities platform, and plugging that into everything else we've built on the back end through our talent management systems, has been a real game changer for us as an organization.

ERG Reporting & Stakeholder Management

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Yeah, that's really insightful, Wale. And a supplementary question on that, what does this stakeholder engagement really look like when you're trying to get to that level of reporting? Obviously you have a DEI office responsible for the reporting, putting it back in, but I'm sure it's not just your office doing this all alone, right? There might be counterparts from HRIS applications, from your CHRO office, maybe from brand guidelines and things like that. How does that impact what you're doing in recruiting, outward-facing comms? Can you give some insight into what that real, full circle of stakeholder management looks like there? Because DEI can't just do everything on its own, right, you need other folks from other business teams and things like that, so can you shed some light on how that worked and what that process looked like?

​

Adewale Soluade (Centene): Yeah, so you raised a powerful point, and I'll tell you the way we're supposed to be within our organization is by being very explicit that DEI does not own DEI. We're here to consult and partner with the business, but everything we do basically boils down to this: we want a strategy and structure that's sustainable, which means it has to be embedded in and aligned with the business operations. For example, our dashboards were all created in partnership with HR Information Systems, HRIPR, Human Resource Business Partners, HR Compliance, Legal, we literally do everything possible in tandem, because it has to absolutely be owned by the business, as it were. DEI is there to provide subject matter expertise, but the way it becomes an organic part of what happens within the organization is that it's all co-created, so that ownership stake is there from day one. I remember I was at a conference where I came across Affinities, and I went back and the first person I called was our HR Information Systems Business Partner, and said, hey, I found this thing I think we want to bring onboard, tell me how hard it would be to implement, I want to see what's going on, I want data this and that, and they said it would take a bit of work, but we could do it, we just have to plan the work.

​

So there's an absolute consciousness that we are co-owners, co-creators of everything, and we'd absolutely hate it if someone popped in on us and said, hey, I want you to do X, Y, Z for me tomorrow, versus, hey, can we sit down and talk collaboratively about this idea we have, because we think it'll deliver a certain amount of value in this space. Everything we build is not just for our use, most of what we build is actually for the use of others, whether we're talking about human resources or dashboards. Yes, we leverage it as a DEI office to provide insight, but the actual day-to-day utilization is HR compliance, our Human Resource Business Partners, our executive leaders within our business units, these are all platforms and resources created to support their ability to deliver the highest-level talent management and business operations outcomes.

​

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Yeah, that's interesting, when you talk about who's the actual consumer of that particular data, it's not just you looking at a dashboard and feeling great about it, there are actual real consumers in the organization using that for actual insights. This is a really interesting question, and I'd love to open this up to other panelists, Jennifer or Sam, if you want to chime in on how you look at reporting. Who are the consumers in your organization around reporting, how do you liaison with them, what's the cadence of that? I think that would also be incredibly helpful for the audience to hear what Ingredion is doing, or what McKesson is doing, and who the consumers of that reporting are. So Jennifer or Sam, if you have anything to chime in there, feel free to add, I think the audience would get a real kick out of hearing how that works in your organizations.

​

Jennifer Gamboa-Copeland (McKesson): Yeah, I'll jump in here, if you don't mind, Sam. So reporting is a component of how we measure the work we're doing, and when we think about the different pieces of the business we work with, the feed into Workday, as Wale mentioned, is critical. When you think about how you use Power BI to provide numbers and data, when we think about retention, when we think about promotion, as well as analysis on new hires, how quickly do they engage, how quickly do they join an ERG, where's our opportunity space there, because that really does create community, especially in the virtual environment we're still largely in. So I think those are things that help us drive our business and help create community for our employees.

​

The other piece I'll share, from an integration perspective, is through our Employee Opinion Survey, we connect that as well to that data, so we can understand the sentiment of employees inside ERGs compared to the general population of employees, areas of opportunity we can take action on, that really are based on what employees are telling us. So I think that's a really important piece too, we're connected in every form and fashion from the data piece, I think all of us lead with data first, because that's what our leaders and executives expect of us, and so it's very important how our systems all work together and feed to create that kind of reporting.

​

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Yeah, and I can attest personally that the McKesson team is always honing in on the numbers, on a daily basis. Sam, anything to add on the reporting piece, analytics? How you're leveraging that, I know you have a ton of experience even outside of Ingredion, so even if you want to go beyond that to some of your previous experiences, at Nielsen and things like that, feel free to chime in on those as well.

​

Samantha Renovato (Ingredion): Yeah, I was going to mention that for reporting specifically, it's kind of what helps drive accountability as well, for our leaders. I think that's very important, especially when companies make public commitments. At Ingredion, we do have public commitments we've made around gender and race and ethnicity as well. As far as the different partners involved in providing visibility to the numbers, I think it depends on the organization's maturity within people analytics. At one of my previous companies, they were very mature, and had their own people analytics department, and that really helped accelerate the visibility of all our managers having access to the data, all the HRBPs, and it was through visualization, so it wasn't reports they had to filter through and navigate, and I think that really helps level up a company's game within D&I, because then everybody can see exactly where they're at, and they know exactly where they're going.

​

I think if you're earlier on in that journey, you shouldn't be discouraged. Obviously partnering with your HRIS team and your HRBP is very important, having those conversations about understanding not only what happened with the numbers, but why it happened. Having that partnership with HR to understand what happened within the organization, do we have an acquisition, are we having a retention issue, did we put a new compensation plan in place? I've had organizations before where an incentive was put together, and they didn't see the positive impact right away, but it's because it took some time for the first payout to happen. So I think there are a lot of really cool things you can do with data, and the fact you're able to get that from Affinities and Teleskope, and get it by employee, really does help tie in the numbers and have more of those high-level insights within people analytics.

ERGs and Mergers & Acquisitions

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Yeah, definitely, and Sam, you made me think about a bit of an off-topic question here, but I'd love to pose it back to Wale and circle it around. Wale, your organization does a ton of acquisitions, and things like that, and probably all of your companies do, McKesson, Ingredion, things like that. Acquisitions are hard, especially when you're doing post-merger integration, these things can take two years, three years, but the people component of that can probably start a little earlier. So Wale, if you want to chime in, I know Centene, you're constantly probably in acquisition mode, how do you see your BRGs being that driver, saying, hey, we know the full PMI is going to take two to three years, but maybe we can start integrating some folks together, try to get at least the cultural mesh going, so the rest of the PMI can be a bit smoother. Wale, could you chime in on that, I think the audience would love to hear about your experiences, and how you handle that internally at Centene.

 

Adewale Soluade (Centene): Yeah, no, absolutely, I'd say it gives us an opportunity to actually hit the ground running from a culture standpoint, because we've got the champions who are able to say, this is who we are, these are the things you engage with one another, and it's not necessarily seen as a corporate thing, because our groups are employee-driven, employee-led. So you're getting to interact with your new colleagues, we're getting to build new relationships, and that's something we've tried to drive home, the point that this is about deepening interpersonal relationships, about how we work together better.

 

So if we had a recent acquisition, one of the first things we did was, hey, there's no DEI framework in this organization that's joining us, and we know it'll take a while before we get the full systems integration, but guess what, there's a strong appetite for what our team does, there's a strong appetite for employee networks. So how do we get that ball rolling, so our new colleagues can get insight into what already exists, they don't have to feel like they're starting from scratch or any of that. So it was probably the second, third, fourth one since I've been with the organization, but it's just always cool to see it start to kick in, and to start seeing that traction build with folks, as they start to be able to tap into the personal, professional development tools that our groups have, the mentoring programs that our groups run, and just the networking alone. I think it's just a really powerful way for organizations to show who they are as they flow through acquisitions, and to build consistency across that employee experience.

Frontline Employees and ERGs

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Definitely, really appreciate that, Wale. Alright, so now getting back on the overall agenda in terms of questions, I know one of the questions a lot of the audience probably wants to talk about is really how you start extending BRGs outside of the core corporate population.

​

Traditionally a lot of these groups were started internally with corporate exempt employees and things like that, basically folks who have email addresses, folks who are digitally connected, have digital identities, but many of the companies, I know all the panelists today, have sort of frontline workforces, non-exempt populations, whether that's Wale, with you at Centene, with your adjusters, your support individuals, McKesson, Jennifer, with you, a lot of your distribution and fulfillment centers, drivers, and you, Sam, in terms of manufacturing and things like that. This has been a really hot topic agenda item over the past couple of years, where it's like, hey, these groups should be more inclusive of the entire employee population. However, there are definitely technological challenges, as well as overall legal implications and things like that, that you have to address. A lot of those employees aren't digitally connected, they don't have laptops, they don't have corporate digital identities, single sign-on, and then also there's a different legal apparatus for how they're actually employed, non-exempt populations and things like that.

​

So, Jennifer, I know you have a ton of experience doing this on the McKesson side, rolling out ERGs to a much broader population, so I'd love to tee you up for this question, if you want to give your experience with what that really looked like, there's definitely a technology component of it, I'd love for you to chime in on that, but then also, what did you really have to do, how did you get the sign-off to do that, what were the legal parameters you had to work within, to be able to extend these programs to these different populations? So Jennifer, if you can chime in on that, I know the audience probably represents similar companies with those types of footprints, and they'd really get a kick out of hearing your experience rolling these programs out to those populations.

​

Jennifer Gamboa-Copeland (McKesson): Sure thing, Maneet. As you mentioned, the population we came to realize we needed to address more was our distribution centers, our drivers, our call centers, and how do we engage when they don't have either access to or time to participate and engage in the ERG communities. I'll share the first thing we felt was really important, that connection piece, through our ERG mobile app, it connects directly to the Affirmity platform, and that's how we were able to gain that access. From a technical perspective, we do still have a single sign-on in front of it, so it is a protected space, but employees can download it on their personal devices, and have access to the same, or similar, information to what sits on the Affirmity platform. It allows them the opportunity to join, to see announcements, events, attend events, RSVP for events, and most importantly, the calendar, because, as you all probably know, calendaring numerous ERGs is always an issue, so the ability for our frontline employees to have access to see when events are happening has been very important.

​

The second piece I'll say is the mentoring platform, the ability to connect our corporate employees, those wired employees who have access to computers on a regular basis, we were going through a pilot process of connecting with those who are not wired, distribution centers, call centers, and how we can create more of that connectivity between the two, because, as we found out through our Employee Opinion Survey scores, there's opportunity there, and there's a desire from both perspectives to learn more about what the others are doing. So the mentoring platform, in this application, has really helped us.

​

The third component was internal, how we made this successful with regard to our partnership with our Corporate Communications team. We did table tents at all distribution centers, in multiple languages, set up a microsite on our internal website for distribution center leaders and frontline leaders to be able to access the information, download it themselves, and print and share it out. Also, the creation of videos, one-pagers, QR codes, all of those things that make it really simple and easy, our Corporate Communications team has really jumped in to help us facilitate and share in a unified manner, which is always important to all of our employees. Specifically, things like highlighting Heritage months, that's a great opportunity for frontline employees to get engaged and enjoy the community opportunities that are becoming available, since we're getting out a little more.

​

I know you had one question about the legal perspective, a technical perspective of how we were able to do some of this, and that's obviously through the protection of our single sign-on, that's helped us get a lot of this work done, but that continues to be a challenge we work on, in regards to people remembering their passwords, and things like that, that actually have to be reset by the distribution center manager. So how do we continue to educate, that's on us, as an ERG operations team, to help facilitate that.

​

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Definitely, I really appreciate that insight, Jennifer, and I think that really helped our audience understand, it's like, hey, everyone wants to roll these things out, but you can't just kind of do it yourself, right, there needs to be marketing teams involved, comms teams involved, there needs to be basic assets and materials that can be distributed to individuals, so they understand how they can participate in the groups, how they can access it and things like that. Because just rolling out a platform on its own isn't going to do much good, one email to a distribution center leader isn't going to make it to where it needs to be, but if you really have that tight coordination between your teams, as well as your other stakeholders, your marketing, brand, comms, legal folks, it really does take that village to be able to start extending these programs out.

​

And I know our other panelists here, Wale as well as Sam, you have a similar makeup in terms of your organization, with corporate employees as well as frontline populations. So if either of you want to chime in as well, on how you're looking at that from your organization, what are the real drivers behind that, when did you start on that particular side of the journey? I think the audience would love to hear that as well. So either Wale or Sam, if either of you want to go first, feel free to go ahead.

​

Samantha Renovato (Ingredion): Yeah, I think outside of the technology, although this is in the technology as well, we have what we call our Inclusion Leads for some of our sites. This is a journey we just started this year, so it's still in progress, but we're looking for plans to have Inclusion Leads for each of our BRGs, and even for those where we don't have an Inclusion Lead, like Jennifer was mentioning, for Affinity month we do make sure to ship some swag, to at least start the conversation, because a lot of times these employees don't have this ability to reach BRGs, so by bringing some swag, they start to ask questions, like, oh, what's this about, how can we get more information, how can we get one started here.

 

So I think trying to be a little proactive, and just bring more visibility to what we have, and having the Inclusion Leads, who we also look to for feedback, because from our side, for example, it makes total sense to have a lunch and learn, but for some people in our plants or manufacturing facilities, it doesn't make sense, because it might be a better time, like 2pm, when they're doing a shift change. So there's a lot of things to consider that you can learn when you talk to the people and get their feedback on what would work best for their site as well. So still on that journey, Maneet, but I'm excited to have some mental notes from what Jennifer shared as well.

​

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Yeah, definitely. Wale, anything to add on that, on how you look at your frontline populations? I know you have adjusters, call center folks, and things like that, that need to manage plants. Wale, anything to add there from your end?

 

Adewale Soluade (Centene): Yeah, it would actually be building on what Sam mentioned, around the workforce management component of it, because, for example, at our claim centers, a lot of that work is very time-specific. So we actually bring in, we've engaged our workforce management people, the folks who actually take their schedule and say, hey, here's what's coming, here's where we might be looking for us to create space for people to participate in things. You recognize not everyone is going to be able to take an hour away from the phone or a computer, or what have you, but is there a way we can schedule, and create either a first-come-first-served or some sort of approach that allows people to sign up, and they're scheduled accordingly. So we've been exploring that, we've been having conversations with people leaders, around their role as well, and again facilitating the opportunity, the ability for employees to engage in what's happening, so we're able to minimize, where possible, the idea of, I don't have time, I'm not able to, I don't have the resources. So kind of taking everything Sam and Jennifer mentioned, the micro-learning, the more intentional communications pieces, and then actually creating the space for people to consume what's being built, and making sure their people leaders understand this is as much a priority for the organization as them doing X, within our company.

Long-term Strategy of ERG Programs: Remote Work & ERGs

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Yeah, and I think one of the powerful things about extending ERGs and BRGs out to those populations is it gives those individual employees a deeper sense of connection to the overall organization. When I was younger, I used to work in retail for a bunch of different large retailers and things like that, and when you're in those roles, you're very focused on the day-to-day task, whatever your core role is, you're just trying to do that, and you don't really have this tie back to the overall brand, the overall corporation and things like that. But BRGs are a really good way to mend that, allow them to bring their whole selves to work, and then also build more meaningful connections, meaningful connections with colleagues from different office locations, different business units, on the corporate side of things, and that can allow them to have that deeper sense of purpose with the overall organization. So we're doing incredibly well on time here.

 

I do want to tee up one last question for the panelists, which is just about how you're looking at long-term strategies. In terms of sustainability of your programs, the long-term adoption of the programs, do you plan on growing overall ERGs, or just growing the ones you have? How are you looking at more sponsorship of the overall program? I'd love for the panelists to shed some light on what the next 12 months, all the way out to 36 months, really looks like, both near-term as well as long-term strategies of how you're seeing your programs evolve, how you're looking to keep them sustainable in the organization, and things like that. So, Sam, I'd love to go to you first, and then we can go round to Jennifer and Wale accordingly. So Sam, if you want to give some insights to the audience about the long-term strategy of your program, that'd be much appreciated.

​

Samantha Renovato (Ingredion): Yeah, so one of the things you mentioned in your question was sponsorship, so I want to call out that for our overall structure, and I think for a lot of companies, having sponsorship is very important. We have members that are direct reports to our CEO, we call them our ELT, and each of them is a sponsor to one of our BRGs, that's kind of part of what's expected from our leadership. It's also part of what keeps them connected to our employees, making sure they know the day-to-day employee experience, and what some of their concerns are. We also have what we call impact teams, they help sponsor some of the local activities, and when I say sponsor, I mean money, because ultimately a lot of these BRGs do need some sort of budget to help put together some of these events and engagements, but they also help champion initiatives and remove barriers.

​

So as far as what I'm thinking for the long term, next year or so, for BRGs, there are a couple of things. Definitely looking to expand the current BRGs we have, I think activating on the intersectionalities our BRGs have with each other is something the BRGs have been doing a really great job of since I've been here, in other companies that's something that needs a bit of coaching, but I think they've been doing really good here. I think also looking at the BRG leaders themselves, positioning our BRG leaders as sort of a leadership development program, for the business to see these are people willing to go the extra mile to create a more inclusive culture, and are also really great leaders, building on all these other skill sets required to run a successful team. So we're going through that journey right now, on what are some of the different coaching opportunities we can give them, training, networking, leadership visibility. We did have our second BRG Forum a couple weeks ago, where we brought in, similar to how you'd have it with your team, when you're trying to plan your strategy for next year, you don't want to be distracted, so that's kind of the purpose of our BRG Forum, we bring all our BRG leaders together, and have two days of uninterrupted time, to learn, to develop as a leader, and to plan your strategy for the year ahead. So I think that's something we'll continue to do, and hopefully once we have more of that historical information in Teleskope.

​

I know at other organizations I've compared the promotion rates for BRG leaders compared to the everyday population, and we did see a difference at my other organization, and the same thing with engagement, I know Jennifer, you were talking about your engagement survey, and looking at the difference in those as well. So that's kind of where we're going.

 

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Perfect, thanks a lot, Sam, really appreciate that. Jennifer, do you want to chime in on your long-term strategy, where you're looking for McKesson to go with your BRG program? Again, either near-term or long-term.

 

Jennifer Gamboa-Copeland (McKesson): Yeah, I think we have a few near-term and long-term activations we're working through. Obviously engaging more members, not only getting more members but engaging them, and how do we measure that, through RSVPs and attendance and things like that. Also, as we pivot to more members, and we're trying to come back to the office a little more frequently, how do we make that work? I think that's something all ERGs are trying to work through, and we'll continue to see that happen, especially as the current workforce stays as is, most people are wanting to stay and work from home, if their jobs permit that. So how do we keep people engaged in this virtual space, where everyone's a square box, and how do we continue to do that, I think, is really important.

​

As well as what Sam mentioned about amplifying the career and leadership skills developed inside an ERG, and how you can capitalize on that as a business unit leader, and how that can help not only in the succession planning of a business unit, but also in the succession planning of an ERG, which is really important. One of the areas we'll continue to focus on is succession planning for our Employee Resource Groups, because what we're finding is that most people have been in their positions for a long time, and that's causing burnout and less engagement, and that filters down. So how do we help with some of that too, from a DEI organization standpoint.

​

And then, when we think about driving business value, that's an area we're continuously focused on, as well as what we, as ERG leaders or the ERG operations team, can bring to our supplier diversity chain, how do we get involved in different places that can really be impactful for the business. So that's another area we're looking to amplify over the next couple of years.

​

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Definitely. Alright, Wale, over to you. So long-term strategy, either 12 months out, 36 months, what are you all at Centene really looking at, and what's on your roadmap there?

​

Adewale Soluade (Centene): Yeah, so I think for us it's this evolution to a fit-for-purpose approach, that captures some of what Sam and Jennifer talked about. We're looking at this idea of increasingly distributed work environments, shrinking relational ecosystems, and this idea of greater responsibility for the employee experience within the organization. So how can we leverage our groups to support that, as we transition and move through this new environment.

​

We've gone from an organization where it was sort of, you work from work, and the pandemic hit, and we flipped to hybrid, and then we had the conversation, well, we'll bring everybody back, but the reality was that wasn't something that would continue to keep workers engaged. So we're now a majority hybrid-remote environment, which means our ERG members are working in these distributed work models, and we're asking them to do more, but they've also gone through this sort of exhausting period of change. So what we're now looking at is how they deliver value, how they continue to meet the needs of their members, and we recognize it can't just be, we're doing Zoom, or we're doing in-person, so what does a synchronous option look like, to capture a broader population?

​

And then where else can we leverage technology, in driving impact? We think a lot about the mentoring programs our groups run, we've kept that whole matching process manual to a certain extent, not losing the human touch, but I also know there are absolutely ways to streamline the way that works. So we're looking at what technology can do for us, but then really doubling down on this idea of focusing our programming, how can we listen better, how can we analyze better, how can we really commit better to what our members are looking for, in terms of why they've joined the groups. So we're going through a process where we want to better equip our ERG leaders, similar to the broader conversation here, where we create a system of priorities, we determine our consistent priorities, our predictable priorities, and which things are cyclical priorities. What are the things, Heritage History Month programming, that's like a cyclical priority, you're always going to do that on a set cadence. So how do we plan in advance, and align it with business priorities, because our organization, unfortunately, in the society in which we exist, we provide services to the underserved and unserved in our society, which unfortunately tend to be women, people of color, children, people with disabilities. So we have very clear opportunities to align what our groups do with our business priorities as an organization.

​

So for us it's really about how we ultimately leverage our groups in making better decisions. We're not necessarily planning on creating a bunch of new groups, we're always taking feedback in, and giving some thought to what we might actually need in the environment we're in now, but it truly has to be an overwhelming need or desire from the workforce, based on the input they've provided us. We want to take the groups we have, what we're doing, and just crush it, do it even better, continue to deliver value in a way that's so undeniable from our employee standpoint that we can be even more intentional and authentic about what we're putting forward. So getting to the point where we recognize the folks who are doing the work, not just recognize them, but reward them, that's one of the things I'd say is on our roadmap for the future. We know this will always be something people do in addition to their day job, but that doesn't mean we can't compensate them for doing that. So that's something we're really digging into, trying to figure out how to make that work.

So it's really, for us, I think the thread to all of this is tightening the alignment of not just our employee networks, but DEI as a whole, to the business, to the priorities, creating that sort of inseparable bond, where, if for some reason DEI doesn't apply to a business or talent management process, anyone within the organization will raise their hand and say, hey, we're missing something here.

​

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Yeah, definitely, appreciate that, Wale. Alright, so I think we had a great conversation here, covered all the main topics we wanted to. Laurie, I'd love to turn it back to you, just for any closing remarks, polling questions, or any questions from the audience.​​​​​

ERG Budgets

Laurie Stanford (Affirmity): Okay, great! Thank you! It's been a really packed hour of great information, and one of the questions I've seen keep popping up from some of our attendees is around budget. If we could just quickly go into how you determine an ERG budget, what mechanisms you use for formulating the budget, do you provide a blanket budget per ERG, or are you dedicating dollars per employee or per group, how does that work? Do you think maybe we could cover that in the last couple of minutes we have here?

​

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Yeah, definitely. Any of our panelists want to address that particular question?

Adewale Soluade (Centene): Yeah, I can share some quick thoughts. For us, we fund our EIGs directly out of our Enterprise DEI budget, we fund our groups at the Enterprise level, and their budget is allocated based on their size. Then our local chapters, the business unit they sit in, so our local health plans, are actually responsible for funding their local chapters as well, and we set what those minimum thresholds are based on size. So we've got a grid that says, if you've got this many members, here's what the minimum expectation is, and the leadership at that business has to agree to that before we actually place the chapter there.

​

Maneet Sarai (Teleskope): Gotcha, yeah, that's great insight there, Wale. Alright, Laurie, I know we're at the top of the hour here, so just want to thank all our panelists for joining, and Laurie, if there are any closing remarks from your end, feel free to go ahead.

​

Laurie Stanford (Affirmity): Okay, great. Thank you to all of our panel members, and thank you, Maneet, for moderating today's discussion. Thanks, everybody, for your time, and thank you to all of our panelists and our moderator. Thanks, everyone, have a great day.

​

Back to top | Back to all webinars

​

bottom of page