Culture Amp is a global platform leader for employee experience, serving over 25 million employees across 6,600+ companies across the world. Culture Amp empowers companies of all sizes and industries to transform employee engagement, develop high-performing teams, and retain talent via cutting-edge research, powerful technology, and the largest employee dataset in the world.

The challenge

As an organization, Culture Amp has always been committed to pushing the envelope on what it means to be an intentionally diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. With over 900 employees distributed across the globe, we recognized the critical role that employee resource groups (ERGs) play in fostering belonging and inclusion – especially for employees from historically underrepresented backgrounds.

In 2016, Culture Amp’s first ERGs were formed as a result of grassroots efforts by employees. However, ERG groups at that time were entirely volunteer-run and employee-driven, meaning they lacked organizational support and executive buy-in, which dampened much of their potential impact.

Like ERG members at many other companies, participants poured hours into recruiting members, hosting meetings, designing programming, and more – all for free and often without recognition. Moreover, they did all this while balancing ERG responsibilities with their day-to-day job demands.

Our Equitable Design & Impact (EDI) team recognized the irony of this situation. ERGs were designed to benefit members of historically marginalized groups, yet the way many organizations (including Culture Amp) traditionally designed ERGs burdens members with unpaid additional work.

In order for Culture Amp to genuinely deliver on its DEI commitment, our EDI team realized that our ERG strategy needed to compensate ERG leaders for their labor. The EDI team began the process of formalizing ERGs, including an ERG compensation program, in March 2021.

The actions taken

We found that while grassroots organization helped harness the passion many employees felt, many leaders hadn’t yet had formal leadership experience and struggled to understand their role and responsibilities, or how to drive impact for their communities.

We began by creating a formal structure for our ERG program. This included:

• Defining a leadership structure for each ERG: 1 chair and 4 board members
  • Adding additional roles (1 Executive Sponsor at the VP level, other Advisors at the Director level)
  • Setting up an ERG Council made up of Chairs, Exec Sponsor, and the EDI Lead who oversees the program
• Creating a job description for each role
• Developing a recruiting and selection process for each role

Once we were clear on what structure should be put in place, we were able to determine not only the specific value of this ERG structure to Culture Amp but also the value that taking an ERG leadership role could hold for employees.

We also recognized that because there are many ways that ERG leaders provide value, we wanted to recognize that within our compensation model. We were also conscious that often, ERG leadership comes with implicit and explicit “career penalties.” Employees are either seen as distracted from their core role or burn themselves out with their ERG responsibilities.

In order to address these concerns, our EDI team built out a three-pillar compensation structure for ERG leaders, designed around:

1. Access - ERG leaders have increased access to opportunities to work with senior leaders as a part of their role.
2. Professional development - ERG leaders have accelerated access to global and ERG leader-specific training and stretch assignments during their tenure
3. Allowance - We provide an allowance in the form of financial compensation to recognize the work of ERG leaders and how they go above and beyond their core role to amplify DEI at Culture Amp

Once we’d defined what compensation should look like, the EDI team spent months answering the operational questions required to put the compensation model into practice. There’s a lot of financial and legal red tape involved and not much precedent to follow.

Some of the questions we had to consider included:

• What should compensation consist of?
•  As a global company, which currencies should employees be paid in?
• How will compensation be delivered?
• Do contracts need to be updated to reflect this new role?
• What is the process for notifying the EDI team if the employee is underperforming
• How does ERG work fit into the larger performance process?

Culture Amp now provides $3,000 in compensation for up to 4 leads per ERG and $6,000 for 1 Chair per group over a 1-year period.

-> Learn more about how Culture Amp went through the process of implementing an ERG compensation program.

The impact

 As a result of this initiative, Culture Amp can more effectively and meaningfully deliver on its commitment to enabling an inclusive culture that drives equal pay and equitable conditions. Specifically, we observed the following benefits:

• Stronger alignment with our values and ethics - Members of marginalized groups are no longer asked to advocate for their communities on a volunteer/unpaid basis.
• Greater visibility - Involving leadership means ERGs are more visible across the organization, and their value is better understood.
• More opportunities for equitable development - In addition to general development pathways, employees from marginalized backgrounds are able to access a unique opportunity to gain leadership skills. As a result, we have seen many of our ERG Leads promoted to management positions.
• Improved ERG experience: The quality and number of ERG events and initiatives have increased. ERG members are more engaged and more likely to participate in the community.

 “Rebuilding our ERG program to be one that was designed to contribute to equitable systemic outcomes wasn’t easy, but it was necessary in order to achieve our company’s mission and to live the commitments to anti-racism that we made in 2020.”

“We recognize that not all companies take this intentional approach, but are grateful to be able to share what we’ve learned in building an ERG program that actually brings the values of equity & inclusion to life so that the pathway is a bit clearer for our customers, partners, and the broader business community.” - Audrey Blanche, Senior Director of People Operations and Strategic Programs, Culture Amp