Compassion, collaboration, and advocacy have come full circle at CWB. With the organization's growing Employee Represented Groups (ERGs), employees are more connected than ever to each other and the communities where they live and work.
“Our focus on diversity and inclusion goes beyond checking boxes. All our ERGs are diversity centric and play an important role in bringing diverse perspectives together – and then turning them into initiatives and positive impact,” says Uppi Doshi, Senior Manager, Inclusion and Diversity. “People First and Inclusion has Power are values that guide us each day at CWB. They shine strongly in our ERG and community investment programs, creating the opportunity for a natural and powerful alignment between the two.”
ERGs are grassroots, employee-led groups formed around shared interests, characteristics or backgrounds. At CWB, ERGs actively work to build community and culture in the workplace by providing their members with support and resources. They also offer a variety of leadership, educational, and professional development opportunities – like CWB NOBLE’s mentorship program and Black History Month flagship events.
Currently about 900 employees are involved across CWB’s 11 ERGs. Doshi says most groups were founded during the pandemic.
“Our first ERG – CWB Women – began in 2016, but it wasn’t until COVID that we really saw exponential growth in the number of these groups. This wasn’t surprising because we know how challenging and isolating it was through the height of the pandemic, and we saw the early and instrumental impact of CWB Women. ERGs really drive belonging within the organization and enable team members to bring their full selves to work,” she says, adding that today about 1 in 3 employees is involved in at least one ERG.
Most often, ERGs begin with someone who comes forward with passion for a topic or cause. CWB then helps raise awareness to see if other employees are looking to come together – either as a part of a group or as an ally. Forming the ERG then includes developing a mission, goals, and mandate, and this often leads to defining activities for advocacy.
As Inclusion and Diversity Specialist Malvika Kathpal shares, ERGs have an impact both inside and outside the organization. “The passion our ERG members show in bringing forth important topics and doing good within CWB spills over into the community as well,” she says.
She explains the groups leverage modest budgets to support local charities – like CWB Pride helping to send queer and trans youth to Camp fYrefly or CWB ASPIRE donating to Food Banks Canada as part of Ramadan and Sikh Heritage Month celebrations. They also regularly connect with CWB’s community investment efforts to provide input, get involved, and help direct funds to causes and organizations that are near and dear to the ERG’s heart. For example, CWB Women participated in a Canadian Women’s Foundation focus group and also supports Edmonton Women in Finance. And CWB Sharing Circle for Indigenous Peoples and Allies is engaged with the organization’s truth and reconciliation efforts, including supporting the Indigenous Peoples Experience at Fort Edmonton Park.
“Candidates often mention CWB’s culture, people first value and strong diversity and inclusion strategy as reasons why they want to work here – and the ERGs are a great example of this in action,” says Kathpal. “I’ve also heard from recruitment agencies that the robust work of our ERGs is hard to find elsewhere. This really makes me proud to work here and have a role in that.”
Interested in setting up an ERG at your business or organization?
3 tips based on learnings from CWB’s ERG program:
- Try not to “over science” it. If there’s a passionate champion for a cause and a group of people aligned to it, then create an ERG.
- Create a way for passionate people to find each other. CWB’s ERGs started with somebody coming forward saying they were personally interested in starting a group and then articulating the reasons why. They were then invited to write a blog article for the organization’s intranet to reach others who share this passion.
- Provide support and structure, but give the ERGs lots of space to develop. Encourage and enable people to connect, provide opportunities for them to extend their work to support others – both within the organization and in the community – then let them grow and shape organically.