CultureBelonging and the return of love.

Maybe it sounds like a blurry concept but, in essence, Belonging could be explained as a myriad of topics, as a meta word that contains other essential elements within it - commitment, engagement, motivation, etc. These are topics we should deeply care about if we want a performant team, higher profitability, and a fantastic workplace.

All at once? Is this possible? 🤔

Belonging is good for business.

We all, as humans, really want to be part of something. It’s deeply written in our DNA. It sits in the middle of the pyramid of human needs.

After physiological and safety needs have been fulfilled, the third level of human needs is social and involves feelings of belonging. Belonging refers to a human emotional need (apart from other concepts) for being part of a group.

You might ask, “.. belonging to what? a team? a company?”. I’ll be more specific!

The correct answer would be: “Belonging to something they value. Belonging to something that is cool to be a part of”.

Using the most basic logic, if they need to belong to something that they value, and they care about their organization, in essence, “something they value” here would be the organization itself.

Employees are at their best when they feel that they belong in the organization. However, if I’m failing to properly explain that belonging is something key and should be cultivated and taken care of every day, then let me reframe this. I’m pretty sure that I’ll explain it better if I turn it around. The opposite word of belonging is exclusion. And we really don’t want to empower behaviors that exclude people, don’t you think?

In this article from Harvard Business Review, one research discovered that feeling excluded causes people to put in less effort to a team.

Turning it around again, we can conclude that belonging is vital to performance, innovation, and retention. Belonging is good for business 🎉

Why?

There are some great business benefits related to fostering a sense of belonging in your organization.

1. Less Turnover
   The cost of employee turnover can be huge in money (recruitment tools), time (interviewing candidates), and productivity (landing of new recruitment). There is also a negative effect on company culture and team morale. A sense of belonging can reduce employee turnover rates by 50%.
   
2. Lower absenteeism
   There is a big impact on company costs related to absenteeism. According to the paper “Absenteeism: The Bottom-Line Killer”, by Circadian, unscheduled absenteeism costs roughly $2,650 each year for salaried employees. The more you invest in employee experience, the greater the sense of belonging.
   Workplace belonging can reduce employee absenteeism by 75%.
   
3. Employee Engagement
   When employees feel that they belong, they feel a stronger emotional and mental connection to their organization. They feel motivated to deliver their best. A sense of belonging in employees can optimize job performance by 56%.
   
4. Willingness to carry on additional responsibilities
   When they feel that they belong to the organization and that it values their contributions, they will enjoy thinking (and acting) beyond what is expected of them. Theory and practice are not always the same, but cultivating belonging could lead to some good-for-business behaviors and concern for the product, like wanting to be closer to the customer to understand their problems, bringing on proposals to solve customer pains, and finally challenging themselves. This won’t happen per se, because we are working with human beings, but surely we can create the context for it to happen.
   It's not just about having muscle in our organizations. It's about having brains too.

There is no magic recipe.

According to this research by Coqual, a nonprofit think tank, a sense of belonging at work is rooted in four elements:

1. Being seen at work. Meaning that you are recognized, rewarded, and respected by your colleagues.
2. Being connected to your coworkers. Having positive, authentic social interactions with peers, managers, and senior leaders.
3. Being supported in your daily work and career development. Those around you give you what you need to get your work done and fulfill your expectations.
4. Being proud of your organization’s values and purpose. Feeling aligned with its purpose, vision, and values.

The more leadership demonstrates a commitment to these issues and is willing to fight the good fight, the more employees feel supported, seen, and connected to their jobs. (And likely proud to work for your company!)

Belonging from the perspective of a manager

So one of our main challenges as managers is to help build (and maintain) this sense of belonging in the workplace. However, there is no recipe to achieve these objectives. We work with human beings, and humans are complex so, what works fantastic for one of us, could not work perfectly for another.

Although there is no perfect recipe, we can share some thoughts that can help you to surmount this big challenge.

Return of love (ROL) vs Return of interest (ROI)

If you are related to marketing strategies, probably it’s not the first time you have heard about ROI. In a few words, it’s a way to measure marketing campaign success.

Some time ago, when I was working in the music industry, that hits me hard. Music marketing values (as the big majority of marketing actions) the massive impact, and they measure them by ROI. But my former startup worked inside concerts. We wanted to impact people (from dozens to thousands) inside a venue, creating unforgettable actions, and giving them the opportunity to live something special thanks to a brand: Knowing their favorite band, having the opportunity to visit the backstage and live the concert in a new way... Creating an unbreakable connection between the brand and the user. Replacing ROI with ROL.

At a glance, Return of Love (ROL) is not about impact massively, it is related to making people desire your brand. And I think this applies directly to the matter of this publication: People, teams, and the sense of belonging.

Using this framework (ROL) as a basis, these will be some key points to take into account:

• Don't take anything for granted: Don't think that because someone has been a member of your team for years nothing will change. There will always be desirable options around and many of them are even in better shape than you.
• Show with facts and actions that you care: Appreciate and acknowledge him or her, but don’t do it without cause, as this could sound fake. Use facts. It’s not a matter of sounding real, it needs to be. Every part of your team is important. Let them know. Keeping the sense of belonging high requires daily effort.
• Be ready to listen. People change. Situations change. Context is never the same. Stay up to date on what they do and don't like. Do the same in reverse, they need to know what’s good and what’s not. Honest feedback is key, and people appreciate it if it is done in a constructive manner. 1:1 conversations are super relevant to understanding and discovering problems, but also to gather new ideas!
  Don’t forget to read between the lines. Sometimes silence tells you a lot. Understand it and act. Anticipation is seven times better than reaction.

One equals seven. Communication is key.

You need to understand who is receiving your message and be sure you find the best way to send it. You must first identify which language is the most appropriate and thus achieve greater assertiveness when communicating and relating to them.

Communication is key. That's why I always try to remember this rule. One equals seven.

Seven pieces of good news, seven motivational messages, and seven acts that feed this basic feeling of belonging are destroyed with just one bad word or one bad communication. Lack of honesty or sincerity, mismanaging pressure, or not managing expectations correctly are huge walls on this path. Life is built on a myriad of little things, and these, no matter how small they are, add up.

Belonging from the perspective of a company

Running a company is not an easy thing, and when it grows, keeping culture is not a matter of conversations between a manageable amount of people. Big companies suffer a lot when it comes to keeping their members aligned with their vision and mission. That’s why keeping a healthy culture is a matter of company decisions and managers ensuring them.

Cultivating a sense of belonging inside your team should be aligned with some company decisions that will reinforce it and make the path easier.

Some of them are:

• Demonstrate care through benefits. When you hire people, you can measure their hard skills (with, for example, a technical interview) and have a brief impression of them by having a couple of conversations. The same applies to the people being interviewed. Demonstrating caring from the beginning is sending a clear message: We worry about you, about developing your career, and about creating the best place to work. We will have fun together. It’s not a matter of perks only, but there is no doubt they can improve the context and help in our final objective.
• Create Conditions for growth and self-development. An employee who is working in the same position with the same salary for a long time gets bored and will gradually disengage. Your task is to develop self-development opportunities and show that they can evolve professionally if they put in some effort and desire.
• Create a positive workplace culture. Embrace transparency, develop a good learning culture… There are hundreds of articles regarding this topic that can explain it incredibly well. Finally don’t forget to revisit your culture from time to time. Your company changes organically. The culture should do the same.

Don’t miss the chance to engage in team-building activities, like we’ve done before. They’re great for boosting team morale, building trust, and improving overall dynamics.

Belonging is hard to understand, hard to implement, and difficult to measure but things that add a lot of value are almost never easy to implement. However, we must not give up our efforts.