Developing an organizational culture where people perceive they can perform and have well-being is essential for organizations to attract and retain relevant talent. A central component of such a culture is social belonging. While the formula for success is known, a lack of neuroscience understanding often steers organizations in different directions, making the feeling of social belonging more challenging to maintain.
The human brain has not changed much over the past 40,000 years when being part of a group meant you had a greater chance of surviving the wild animals trying to kill you. This fundamental brain structure still impacts our behaviors, and the brain’s principle remains today: to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Social belonging triggers the brain’s reward system, and a sense of belonging is therefore associated with brain areas connected to pleasure and reward. When the feeling of social belonging is present, the brain releases neurotransmitters such as dopamine and oxytocin, impacting motivation, trust, commitment, performance, and creativity.
Sensing social belonging activates brain regions for cognitive performance. On the contrary, when we experience a lack of social belonging, brain regions for physical pain and emotional response increase, decreasing cognitive capacities, such as decision-making, focus, and collaboration. To simplify, the brain seeks to be part of the “in-group,” activating pleasure regions in the brain, but when feeling part of the “out-group,” it activates pain areas. To the brain, social pain is the same as physical pain.
Another significant social belonging trigger is the feeling of fairness. Even minor unfair treatments can impact a pain response and decrease the sense of social belonging.
“To the brain, social pain is the same as physical pain.”
Social belonging is such an essential part of a thriving culture that without it, people’s stress levels and negative emotions increase. Negative experiences relating to a lack of social belonging can cause people to leave their employer early, decrease productivity levels, and spread a negative reputation about the organization’s employer brand.
When centering work around teams, you can maximize employees’ feeling of social belonging. This is true for both remote and in-person settings. Organizations that work mainly in a hybrid model will especially benefit from a culture of social belonging to ensure each team member feels part of the in-group and strengthen team coherence. The manager plays an integral role, but how the team members treat each other is also important.
First and foremost, growing a culture of social belonging requires managers who demonstrate strong value-based behaviors fostering inclusion. Empathy and listening are essential leadership skills to achieve this type of culture, also recognized in the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2023 among the top ten core skills. Organizations striving for sustainable high performance must educate managers on how to lead with social belonging as a central concept to enable high performance, motivation, well-being, and engagement.
“Organizations striving for sustainable high performance must educate managers on how to lead with social belonging as a central concept to enable high performance, motivation, well-being, and engagement.
In addition to developing managers to foster social belonging and lead by example, a culture of social belonging must be rooted throughout the organization. To be successful, it is essential that everyone lives and breathes social belonging. Here are our recommended steps to develop a culture of social belonging.
Step 1 - Ensure social belonging is a central piece of your culture: Create a solid foundation focused on how your culture already leverages social belonging and give everyone the same types of words, slogans, and behaviors to follow. Using what already works well gives you a head start, and a greater chance of successfully implementing and ensuring people live the culture.
Look at how your people rate Inclusion in the trend report of your pulse survey. Dig into the details of teams and segments to understand what works well and areas of improvement. In the comment analytics, learn what your people say about feeling included. Then, look for their comments on your EVP pillars, specifically those explaining their sense of social belonging. Now, interview the teams that score high on eNPS to learn how they experience social belonging. With the collected information, work with your communications team to write or re-write your culture foundation, ensuring it centers around keeping social belonging high. You want to expand things that align with the organization’s ability to provide a heightened sense of social belonging.
Tip! The Populum pulse survey encourages employees to give constructive improvement suggestions. When you leverage their improvement suggestions, you gain a stronger buy-in for living the social belonging standards you set.
Step 2 – Educate your people about social belonging: Explain what living social belonging in your organization looks like. Ensure you educate your managers and ambassadors to recognize and show appreciation for the right behaviors of others.
Update your leadership profiles and ensure they include the critical moments that matter. For each moment, give examples of how a great leader or manager acts and what the mediocre do to clarify the distinction. To illustrate, a manager has the opportunity each morning to start the day off right by, before entering the office, taking a moment for a deep breath and getting in the right mindset (i.e., focusing on entering the office with a positive body language and greeting everyone) to ensure team members feel social belonging.
Step 3 – Measure and acknowledge the right behaviors: Continuously recognize others when they portray the right social belonging behaviors and recognize their contributions to the team and organization.
The manager should ask everyone to reflect on the team and their individual survey results before the meeting to discuss the team’s survey results. The manager prepares thoughts for the top and bottom two to three areas. The manager asks for the team’s reflections and comments at the meeting and explains who has contributed to the current positive results. The manager must talk about the right behaviors that enabled the contributions. No one should be blamed for the bottom results, but discuss how to improve them together.
Tip! The standard Populum pulse survey is based on neuroscience and suggests measuring nine main areas. The platform gives everyone in the organization access to the measurement results. With this approach, you gain constructive improvement suggestions, engagement, commitment, and increased motivation for people to work in alignment with the path you set.
A sustainable talent attraction and retention engine begins from within and must center around social belonging. This approach improves well-being and performance and fuels creativity and innovation in all work areas. Employees with a strong sense of social belonging can be ambassadors for the employer as a great workplace and often stay longer with the organization. Leveraging neuroscience—even when it means minor tweaks of existing approaches—can create significant gains for talent, managers, and the organization.