Introduction

ERGs Summits are becoming a mainstay of ERG (Employee Resource Group) groups around the world. Often, these summits aim to bring together the leaders of all of ERGs to network, share goals and challenges, uncover new opportunities between groups, be appreciated for their work and receive professional development. ERG Leads are often doing their ERG work on top of their daily jobs and responsibilities, so providing them with a moment of connection and learning is critical to company success, employee engagement and organizational alignement.

Who wrote this?

I'm Anisha Nandi, the CEO & co-founder of Verbate, a company all about giving ERGs the community, skills and tools they need to thrive. We work with hundreds of ERG Leaders from all different types of companies around the world, and we’re incredibly passionate about building community between these leaders. You can check out our ERG Leadership Community which connects leaders across the space, trains & certifies them, and gives them year-round resources. We also have helped plan and facilitate ERG Summits for companies like DoorDash, Strava, Intel, Match Group, FanDuel and many more, and we host our own ERG-Land Conference in NYC.

If you want to set up some time to learn about our Summit Planning & Facilitating services, book some time with me personally here.

Finally, you can also sign up for our free monthly meet up built specifically for ERG Program Managers. We also host free, invite-only chats on specific topics (including ERG Summits) - reach out to us if you want to learn more.

Now let's get to those Best Practices!

Best Practices for ERG Summits

An ERG Summit is no easy feat to pull off. So you want to make sure you're making the most of the time and effort to pull this together. Here are some of the best practices we've seen from best-in-class ERG Summits around the world.

Set Clear Goals

Setting clear goals that align with your organization can help creative buy-in for the effort, and make the case for increased resources for future summits, retreats or onsites.

Some examples of goals of an ERG Summit could be:

• Building senior leadership partnership and mentorship
• Deepening Professional Development ERG Leaders
• Fostering Intersectionality & Cross-Collaboration across groups
• Defining year’s objectives (timing dependent)
• Rewarding & Recognizing ERG Leaders
• Raising Awareness of ERG efforts & challenges
• Focus on strategizing and connecting work to fiscal year goals

Utilize Shared Space

If you have company space, utilize this for an onsite rather than an offsite. Executive teams are looking for reasons to utilize corporate real estate and boost in-person bonding. This is a great moment to show how ERGs can help achieve this goal. It also presents a great brand moment for your city/ community if you incorporate them into your agenda (eg. a “thank you” happy hour, meals from local businesses, etc.) 

Involve Hybrid Team Members

Virtual engagement is tough, but if done creatively it expands the reach of your ERGs beyond HQ and the loyal member base. Think creatively to get them involved.

Some ways to get international or remote audiences involved:

• Create options for global audiences (e.g., recorded keynotes, virtual viewing sessions)
• Cater food or provide other perks for audiences who can't be there for the in-person component
• Rotate your summit's in-person location yearly
• Tie your summit to company-wide times or locations for maximum convenience

Work with Cross-Functional Teams

Reach across your organization to plan the effort in a way that's

• People managers
• IT teams (for survey and data management)
• HR data teams
• Facilities teams
• Global HR teams
• Compliance and legal teams

Include Executive Champions

These folks have limited time to engage with ERGs. Having a unified show of all the groups working together will impress them, plus is a key moment to show them how & why they should be involved in the program. Give them a flexible out time in case they can only spare 20-30 minutes. 

Some Ways to Involve Executive Sponsors:

• Panels & Keynotes
• Lunch with Executives
• Executive sponsor bonding
• Working lunch to review roadmaps and provide input
• Involving leaders in strengths assessments

Set A Clear Agenda

Set clear agendas for the day or two. Think about how the different sectors of your audience can still take away value regardless of their location or bandwidth when building activities and connectivity options

Plan Intersectional Programming

Plan sessions so ERG leads can share ideas cross-group and foster intersectionality. Collaboration and intersectionality around ERGs will help reach wider audiences and make the most of resources (time, budget and bandwidth).

More Tactical Tips & Programming Ideas

• Think Local: tapping into local partners is a great way to connect to the local community & foster a great sense of belonging
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  • Idea: Volunteering activity around food-boxing for local community  

• Appreciation Moments: ERG Roundtable, virtual resources sent to participants, nationwide celebration that flies people in, walk & talks to keep people active
  

• Moments for recognition: Building in moments to recognize ERG leaders, members, and even executive champions can be powerful
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  • Ideas: Nominate certain members to join if the audience is primarily leaders (also a great way to identify & incentivize future ERG Leads), utilize company swag that features ERG logos
    
    
• ERG Goal Setting: You can also use the time with ERG leads to set goals, expectations around events & efforts and capacity-building in an environment that’s highly focused and collaborative. 
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• ‍Bandwidth considerations: Be thoughtful around one vs. two days. If you have a workforce that will struggle to get time off, two days might be tough. But if you want more breathing room, it might earn you more engagement and less fatigue.
  

Tips on What Not to Do

• Don’t go it alone: Involve workplace ops / HR / facility teams. ‍
• Give yourself enough time: Helps avoid forgetting the basics.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel: Some events problems have been solved.
• Don’t forget to set goals: What are you hoping this achieves? 
• Capture learnings: Record the good, bad & ugly - they’re all wins.

Takeaways

• Consider your workforce's needs and company goals
• Foster collaboration and intersectionality to make the most of resources
• Record your learnings to compound growth year-over-year

If you want to learn more about how Verbate can help plan & facilitate your summit, email me directly at anisha@verbate.io and we can set up some time to dive deeper!