What are ERGs?
Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are active communities within organizations that brings individuals together based on shared experiences, interests, or characteristics with the goal of supporting these employees by providing opportunities to network and create a more inclusive workplace. Implementing an ERG program can help organizations build a diverse and inclusive culture by:
- connecting employees with shared experiences to build communities with a sense of belonging
- giving each group a collective voice when sharing their priorities and concerns with management and senior executives
- providing decision makers with the feedback data and insights needed to improve employee engagement, mental health, as well as diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging
Here are some examples of communities that typically forms within organizations. Theses communities are usually made up of marginalized and underrepresented minorities.
- Shared culture, race or ethnicity
- Women
- Individuals with disabilities
- Religion or faith
- Gender identity minorities
- Sexual orientation minorities
- Age minorities
- Parents: working parents, single parents and caregivers
Software Solutions for ERGs
As an ERG leader you have an important responsibility within your organization to understand the experiences and address the priorities and concerns of the marginalized communities you represent. In order to deliver on your mandate you will need the right tools at your disposal. At the core of understanding experiences is the ability to safely work with personal data collected from your community (demographic data, feedback, emotion, media attachments etc.). Any ERG program that doesn’t prioritize user privacy is destined to fail because marginalized communities are usually hesitant to provide honest feedbacks if it can be linked back to them. Marginalized employees fear retaliation when reporting toxic experiences especially when it involves a direct manager or supervisor.
If you want to better understand employee experiences today there are many tools you can use to achieve that goal. There are tools that solely focus on diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging such as Diversio and Pulsely. There are tools that focuses on company culture and employee engagement such as CultureAmp and Glint. Other platforms focus on building employee communities such as EverySpace.
OOLoop is the only platform that provides tools specifically to understand and improve diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging as well as employee engagement and community building features. OOLoop is a complete solution for data ingestion, data analytics, data insights, data privacy and data monetization and it is the only platform on the market to provide robust privacy features as well as options to monetize data though OOTech’s data economy.
| Data Stage | OOLoop | Tools to Analyze Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging | Employee Engagement & Experience Software | Community Building Software | Online Surveys |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ingestion | 🔵 | 🔵 | 🔵 | 🔵 | 🔵 |
| Analytics | 🔵 | 🔵 | 🔵 | 🔵 | |
| Insights | 🔵 | 🔵 | 🔵 | ||
| Privacy | 🔵 | ||||
| Monetization | 🔵 |
Surveys
All OOLoop competitors deploy some type of web forms or surveys at the data ingestion stage. To capture feedback and understand experiences our competitors deploy web forms and survey that has been designed by scientists to understand diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Surveys are a great tool in that they are very effective at capturing certain data points (gender, race, work title, department, etc). When it comes to capturing employee’s emotional experiences (quantitative and qualitative data points), surveys fall short. When you send out a survey to the members of your ERG, you’re essentially asking them to recall a past experience, toxic or not, involving gender, race, sexuality, age, disability or abuse and fill out a survey form to explain that experience, how it made them feel, how it affected their mental health and Quality of Life (QoL). This can lead to inaccurate analytics and insights because of the imprecise recollection of the experience since memory can be unreliable.
There’s a better way to capture experience! Our proprietary feedback loop technology involves a combination of Private Journal Entries (Loops) & Insight Studies.
Journaling & Insight Studies
OOLoop provides Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) the tools to understand and improve experiences related to issues involving gender, race, sexuality, age, disability, and abuse. At the core of the OOLoop platform are insight studies that ERG leaders can create to capture experiences in real-time.
On OOLoop, the members of your ERG download our platform and enrols in your insight study. They then go about their day recording positive, neutral and negative journal entries called Loops. They record the Loops in real time so they don’t have to recall it later (ie. when filling out a survey) since we know that our memory isn’t always reliable. When the employees record the Loops they choose 1 of 27 emotions that covers the full spectrum of human emotions, then describe the experience in their own words, and can attach audio/video media as well as location data if they choose. They can tag all the people, brands, organizations, events, products, services, and policies involved in the experience to add more context. Every journal entry that tags your insight study will be included in the analytics & insight you receive for that study.
With OOLoop there are no forms or surveys to send out. Simply create an insight study, share the study’s link with the members of your ERG, and explore the quantitative and qualitative insights in real-time on your dashboard. Our competitors send out surveys once a quarter, but with OOLoop you get a real-time pulse into employee experiences throughout the duration of the study.
OOLoop for Builders
Builders: ERG leaders who want to understand employee experiences, priorities and concerns in order to improve diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the workplace.
OOLoop for Loopers
Loopers: ERG members who record their emotional experiences, priorities and concerns in the form of journal entries (Loops) in order to improve their mental health and Quality of Life, as well as company culture and workplace environment.
OOLoop’s competition focuses solely on the employer’s experience. Their entire platform is focused solely on providing tools for employers or ERG leaders without putting much thought into the employee experience. The employees are the ones providing the feedback needed to generate insights. If their experience on the platform isn’t amazing, that’s when you start seeing low adoption rate for surveys.
OOLoop delivers an amazing experience for both groups: the ERG leaders (Builders) as well as the employees (Loopers). The process of recording a journal entry is quick, intuitive and enjoyable. We provide a whole set of unique features just for the Loopers so that they can understand the sources impacting their mental health and Quality of Life, explore solution to improve those experiences and connect with other Loopers with similar experiences. In addition Loopers can participate in our data economy and earn money by enrolling in select insight studies.
Download OOLoop
Public releases are available for download at download.ooloop.me.
Private Alpha & Beta releases are available by request at request.ooloop.me.
OOLoop for Looper is available on Apple’s App Store by following the first link. OOLoop for Builders is current only available in beta testing and can be downloaded by following the second link. You can try OOLoop at no charge when downloading an alpha or beta release of the platform.