Workplace Inclusion: How to Foster Belonging in the Workplace

Have you ever attended a celebration but felt out of place? Perhaps you thought you didn’t belong, or had nothing in common with the rest of the crowd? 

Unfortunately, everyone goes through this. When the feeling is temporary, it doesn’t adversely affect your life, however, when you feel this way every day at work, it can be a huge demotivator. Belonging is essential for our well-being, and when we don’t feel included at work or don’t fit in, it can lead to a lot of work-related anxiety, and refreshing of your resume.

What is Workplace Belonging?

Belonging is not only a human need but an organizational asset. Belonging at work is feeling accepted and respected by your colleagues. It is the sense of being a valued member of a team or an organization and that you have common interests with other employees and align with their values. 

Sadly, more than 40% of the workforce feels isolated at work.

Understanding and working towards workplace inclusion is significant to your organization’s future. It will help you keep good talent and establish a competitive advantage through better organizational performance, creativity, and innovation.

Four factors that contribute to high levels of workplace inclusion are: 

  • Good management that supports diversity in the workplace and ensures everyone’s voice is heard during decision-making processes 
  • Effective communication between co-workers and employees who have different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives
  • An open culture of trust where people can be themselves without fear of being judged
  • A supportive organizational climate that values input from all members regardless of their position, background or perspective

A sense of belonging is highly correlated with high levels of motivation and work engagement, leading to higher job satisfaction and employee retention. When you feel you belong, you’re more productive, leading to more organizational performance. 

How to Foster Belonging in the Workplace?

Leaders and managers should learn how to cultivate belongingness in the workplace. Here are ways to do it.

Encourage Connections

Just like at school, you need to learn how to make new friends and connect with people. For some people, this comes naturally, but others don’t know how to make friends quickly.

Knowing how to make connections is an essential part of belonging. Take a few minutes at the top of a call to connect with your co-workers or plan connection exercises for larger team meetings.

Foster Open Communication

Your employees should know that they can share their perspectives freely without fear of being judged or ridiculed. If someone makes a mistake or has a bad day, they should know it’s part of everyday life and should be seen as a learning opportunity.

Build Relationships

Create connections with employees outside your circle and extend invitations so you can learn more about what matters to them and their perspectives on different organizational activities. This is also a great way to see where there could be alignment cross-functionally. 

Reward People's Efforts Towards Inclusion

If someone goes the extra mile to make sure everyone feels included, recognize them for their efforts.

Set the Example

As the leader of your organization, you must lead by example and encourage inclusion in all aspects of organizational life. When employees see leadership demonstrating how they can connect with others or show interest in what matters most to employees, it will inspire them to do the same.

A list of techniques to foster a sense of inclusion in your organization can help you achieve a high level of workplace inclusion. But, this is not enough because culture change usually does not happen overnight.

To make lasting change, it’s important to treat inclusive leadership as a skill that managers and leaders need to continuously work at, not just a one time event.

Why is Belonging in the Workplace Important?

When employees feel that they belong, are accepted, valued, and respected, they tend to be more motivated and engaged in their work. 

Benefits of belongingness in the workplace include:

  • Higher job satisfaction
  • Reduced anxiety and stress 
  • Better health outcomes
  • More outstanding commitment to organization goals
  • It reduces absenteeism and turnover rates
  • Higher customer service ratings
  • Increased creativity and innovation in the workplace
  • Better organizational culture
  • More engaged employees mean better corporate performance

It is easier to attract talent with inclusive company culture. There are greater chances of attracting and retaining the best people when the entire workforce feels included and valued for who they are. It is not an easy task to create a climate of belonging in your organization. But, with the right tools and techniques, it is achievable.

Subscribe to Our
Newsletter

Stay up to date with new releases, features, how-tos, leadership tips, and more. (Don’t worry, we won’t flood your inbox or share your address.)
REQUEST A DEMO

We Develop The World's Most Impactful Leaders

Sounding Board offers virtual and scalable enterprise learning solutions that are flexible enough to adapt to rapidly changing work environments. Powered by behavioral science and core leadership capabilities, our proven coaching methodology drives measurable business impact.

Niall MacGearailt

SVP of Finance
Niall MacGearailt leads Sounding Board’s finance division as the SVP of Finance and Operations. Niall earned a solid track record of improving P&L and operational expense management for leading companies such as Whirlpool, Logitech, Avaya and most recently Soraa, where he prepared the business for acquisition by leading hi-tech lighting company, Ecosense. In his role, he is responsible for building and leading the finance & relevant operations functions for the company.

Ron Buell

VP of Engineering
Ron Buell is the VP of Engineering at Sounding Board and an accomplished software professional with extensive experience in leadership, software engineering, project management, and product management. Ron has led the development of highly scalable systems and applications across a variety of technologies for companies including OpenFeint (acquired by GREE), Rdio (acquired by Pandora), Lyris Technologies, and Lotus/IBM Software Group. In his role at Sounding Board, Buell is responsible for all engineering efforts in developing, deploying, and maintaining the enterprise software platform and team for the company.

Tommy Perkins

SVP OF SALES, PARTNERSHIP & CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Tommy is at his best helping clients think through complex challenges in order to create a positive impact on their organizations. He thrives when interacting with others whether helping his team succeed or working with clients to build long-term partnerships. He has extensive experience consulting with organizations on driving their employee experience, guiding organizations through change, and working to ensure organizations are moving the needle when it comes to their results.

Most recently, Tommy was a Client Services Leader overseeing some of GP’s most prized accounts on a global level. His responsibilities included overall client growth strategy, retention, and satisfaction. He represented all of GP Strategies’ major business lines including leadership, coaching, and engagement, digital transformation, outsourced services, and technology implementation solutions.

Before GP Strategies, Tommy spent several years with TTEC Digital (formerly rogenSI) where he led the sales team,  eventually becoming the regional Learning & Performance practice leader for North America. While managing the P&L and sales team he also led the largest global relationship for the firm (Deloitte Globally). During his time at TTEC, he focused on delivering blended learning solutions that incorporate technology and hands-on training. Before TTEC Digital, he spent several years dedicated to strength-based leadership disrupting the business landscape regarding performance management and employee engagement with thought leader Marcus Buckingham at The Marcus Buckingham Company / TMBC (now ADP).

Tommy has had the privilege of working with some of the most well-known global brands in professional services, retail, technology, and healthcare including Deloitte, Facebook, Microsoft, Bank of America, Novartis, Gap Inc., lululemon, and Intel. Several projects he led for Deloitte were Global GNPS, New Partner Pivot, NextGen Partner Program Deloitte China, Present to Win, the RPM project on performance management, and Unconscious Bias.

Tommy holds a BS in Health Sciences from Texas A&M University, and an MBA from Universidad del CEMA.

Drive hiring, retention, engagement, and DEI initiatives with Sounding Board’s leadership coaching solution

Sounding Board is the first leadership development platform that combines technology to scale with world-class coaches – empowering companies to solve urgent people-problems and gain a long-term talent advantage.

Join our coaching team

Our expert coaches combine top notch coaching, business acumen and organizational savvy to truly become your leadership “Sounding Board”. Sounding Board coaches are all industry certified and strongly vetted going through a 3 step qualification process and receiving ongoing supervision and development.

Lori Mazan

Co-Founder & CCO Sounding Board, Inc.
Lori Mazan is the Co-Founder and Chief Coaching Officer of Sounding Board, the preeminent global leadership development enterprise platform changing the face of leadership development through innovative technology for leaders at all levels of an organization. Lori is a seasoned executive coach who has guided hundreds of corporate executives through 1:1 coaching focused on business outcomes and developing critical leadership skills. Client companies advanced by Lori’s expertise include Fortune titans such as Chevron and Sprint as well as high growth and public companies like Intellikine, and Tapjoy, plus 10XGenomics, which became a public company in 2019 while top executives worked with Lori and the Sounding Board team.
Lori has spent the last 25 years coaching C-Suite executives to leadership excellence. Many of those public and private company CEO’s expressed that they would have liked this caliber of coaching earlier in their careers. Inspired by these experiences, Lori joined with Christine to launch Sounding Board as a feedback-driven, cloud-based leadership coaching platform that could maintain best-in-class leadership coaching while lowering costs to make it affordable and scalable for leaders at every level of their careers.
Before founding Sounding Board, Lori received her Masters’ in Adult Educational Psychology/Counseling from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelors’ in Psychology from the University of Virginia. Lori is an educator and has spent over 10 years as a professor of social psychology and group dynamics while acting as the interim Dean of Students at Holy Names University, She is certified by the industry’s gold standard, the Coaches Training Institute, and is a founding member of the Genentech Preferred Network of Coaches. Sounding Board is one of <3% of sole female founded startups receiving venture funding. In 2019 Sounding Board was selected as 1 of 7 startups (out of 100+ applicants) as part of SAP’s HR tech cohort, a group that represents the rising stars of the next-gen HR ecosystem.

Christine Tao

Co-Founder & CEO Sounding Board, Inc.
Christine Tao is the co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board, a Silicon Valley startup redefining how organizations are developing their leaders. Her extraordinarily rapid career growth to executive management in the media, mobile and tech sectors of Silicon Valley became her inspiration for founding Sounding Board. As she began to manage larger teams and be responsible for growing revenues, it became clear that she needed a “sounding board” to coach her on the development of her leadership skills. That’s where her Sounding Board co-founder, Lori Mazan came on the scene. A seasoned executive coach focused on leadership development, Lori coached Christine on real-world leadership skills that had a direct impact on business outcomes. Based on her positive and impactful experience with leadership development, Christine was driven to make leadership development coaching accessible to people at all levels of the organization.
Christine advises several startups, is a budding angel investor and is also a Tory Burch Foundation Fellow, a foundation dedicated to investing in the success and sustainability of women entrepreneurs.
Prior to co-founding Sounding Board, Christine was a Senior Vice President of Developer Relations at Tapjoy, a venture-backed, leading mobile advertising & publishing network. She led the growth of Tapjoy’s publisher advertising business from 0 to over $100 million in revenues in less than 3 years. Prior to that she led e-commerce partnerships and strategy at YouTube. Christine holds an MBA in Marketing & Operations from Wharton and a BA in Business Administration from UC Berkeley.