The Replicable ERG Model: 10 Sessions, 10 ERGs, One Framework
Article 14 of 15 in the ERG Infrastructure Series | Infrastructure That Makes Belonging Systematic
The VP of People & Culture stood in front of her leadership team with a proposal that made them nervous:
“We’re going to run the same ten-session series across all ten ERGs. Asian, Black, Caregiver, Disability, Hispanic/Latiné, Intercultural, LGBTQIA+, Remote/Hybrid, Women, and Young Professionals. Same exercises. Same belonging indicators. Same facilitation structure.”
The COO pushed back immediately. “Won’t that erase the differences between these communities? The challenges Black employees face aren’t the same as what caregivers experience.”
“You’re right,” she said. “The challenges are different. But the infrastructure that reveals those challenges can be the same. That’s how we create comparable intelligence while honouring identity-specific experiences.”
She pulled up the framework. “Each ERG uses the same ten sessions focused on the five belonging indicators: Comfort, Connection, Contribution, Psychological Safety, and Wellbeing. But the examples, language, and discussion prompts are tailored to each identity group. The Black ERG explores code-switching and respectability politics. The Caregiver ERG explores boundary-setting and sustainable expectations. The structure is universal. The content is specific.”
Six months later, the organization had systematic intelligence from all ten ERGs revealing which challenges were systemic (affecting multiple groups) and which were identity-specific (requiring targeted intervention). Resource allocation became evidence-based. ERG leaders had the infrastructure to make their work sustainable. And leadership finally understood the value of ERGs.
Here’s the replicable model that made it possible.
The 10-Session Architecture
The Universal Facilitator Guide structures ERG learning across ten 90-minute sessions delivered monthly or biweekly. Each session builds on the previous one, creating depth without overwhelming participants.
The progression is intentional:
Sessions 1-3: Foundation (understanding identity, belonging indicators, workplace dynamics)
Sessions 4-6: Experience (examining specific belonging challenges in Contribution, Psychological Safety, Wellbeing)
Sessions 7-9: Agency (building capacity to create belonging for self and others)
Session 10: Action (translating intelligence into organizational recommendations)
Session 1: Mapping Identity Intersections
Belonging Indicator Focus: Foundation for all indicators
Purpose: Help members understand how multiple identity dimensions intersect to shape workplace experience. Establish that ERGs aren’t monolithic. Consider that the Asian ERG comprises South Asian, East Asian, and Southeast Asian members with diverse immigration histories, languages, and cultural contexts. The Women’s ERG includes women across race, age, disability, sexual orientation, and caregiving status.
Key Exercise: Identity Mapping
Participants visualize their identity intersections: race/ethnicity, gender identity, caregiving role, disability status, immigration background, socioeconomic context, job level, and work location. They reflect on which intersections feel most salient at work and which are rendered invisible.
Theme Capture: Document which identity intersections create unique belonging challenges that might not be captured by single-identity analysis alone.
Why This First: Establishes that the ERG holds space for complexity and intersectionality from the beginning. Prevents the dominant sub-group within an ERG from assuming their experience is universal.
Session 2: Belonging Indicators Self-Assessment
Belonging Indicator Focus: All five indicators introduced
Purpose: Give members a shared language for the belonging experience using the five scientifically-validated indicators: Comfort, Connection, Contribution, Psychological Safety, and Wellbeing.
Key Exercise: Personal Belonging Assessment
Participants rate their current experience across all five indicators and identify which feel strongest and which need organizational attention. This isn’t a survey for HR: it’s a self-reflection tool that creates shared understanding.
Theme Capture: Document which belonging indicators are lowest across ERG members. This reveals where organizational barriers are most significant for this population.
Why This Second: Provides the framework participants will use in all subsequent sessions to articulate their experiences and identify patterns.
Session 3: Navigating Workplace Norms
Belonging Indicator Focus: Comfort
Purpose: Examine how dominant workplace norms create invisible barriers for people navigating identity-based expectations. This session is where identity-specific content becomes most visible.
Key Exercise (Identity-Specific Examples):
Women’s ERG: Assertiveness vs. likability, boundaries vs. availability, advocacy vs. deference, authenticity vs. acceptance
Black ERG: Code-switching, respectability politics, the “twice as good” expectation, microaggression navigation
LGBTQIA+ ERG: Disclosure decisions, pronoun navigation, heteronormative assumptions in workplace culture
Caregiver ERG: Hidden caregiving responsibilities, meeting schedule conflicts, boundary-setting around “always available” norms
Theme Capture: Document specific workplace norms that create Comfort barriers. Capture behavioural specificity: not just “I feel uncomfortable” but “When X happens, Y behavior results in Z impact on my ability to succeed.”
Why This Third: Grounds the belonging framework in concrete workplace dynamics that participants navigate daily.
Session 4: Contribution Recognition Patterns
Belonging Indicator Focus: Contribution
Purpose: Examine how contribution gets recognized, attributed, and valued, and where systemic patterns create recognition gaps based on identity.
Key Exercise: Contribution Audit
Participants reflect on: When have your contributions been recognized vs. overlooked? What patterns do you notice in whose ideas get explored vs. dismissed? How does language in performance reviews reflect or undermine your strategic value?
Theme Capture: Document contribution recognition patterns with behavioural evidence. This is where the comparable data described in Article 12 becomes essential: multiple ERGs may document the same meeting dynamics or performance-review language, creating contribution gaps.
Why This Fourth: Contribution gaps are often where belonging breakdowns become visible to organizational measurement (promotion velocity, engagement scores, turnover).
Session 5: Psychological Safety and Voice
Belonging Indicator Focus: Psychological Safety
Purpose: Examine when it feels safe to speak up, when silence feels safer, and what organizational dynamics create that calculus.
Key Exercise: Safety Mapping
Participants identify: Which topics feel safe to raise at work vs. which require careful navigation? With which leaders do you feel safe being candid vs. where do you self-censor? What organizational consequences have you witnessed when people spoke up?
Theme Capture: Document psychological safety patterns: not just “people don’t feel safe speaking up” but “when employees raise concerns about X, leadership responds with Y, which creates Z chilling effect on future candor.”
Why This Fifth: Psychological safety is foundational to whether ERG intelligence can even surface in the first place. Without it, members stay silent, and organizations never learn what’s actually breaking.
Session 6: Wellbeing and Sustainable Performance
Belonging Indicator Focus: Wellbeing
Purpose: Examine whether workplace expectations and support systems make sustained performance possible without sacrificing health, relationships, or personal wellbeing.
Key Exercise: Wellbeing Audit
Participants assess whether workload expectations are sustainable. Do you have flexibility when life demands it? Does your organization treat wellbeing as individual resilience or systemic design? What structural changes would make your work sustainable long-term?
Theme Capture: Document wellbeing challenges with specificity about what makes work unsustainable: not “people are burned out” but “meeting expectations require 10pm responses; lack of backup during personal emergencies; no structural accommodation for caregiving responsibilities.”
Why This Sixth: Wellbeing gaps often drive turnover but get attributed to “individual burnout” rather than structural design failures.
Session 7: Leadership and Advancement Pathways
Belonging Indicator Focus: Connection and Contribution (intersecting)
Purpose: Examine whether advancement pathways are clear, accessible, and equitable, or whether invisible barriers prevent certain populations from progressing despite performance.
Key Exercise: Advancement Audit
Participants analyze: What does it take to get promoted here (officially vs. unofficially)? What relationships or visibility do advancement-track employees tend to have? Where do you see yourself in 3-5 years, and what barriers exist between here and there?
Theme Capture: Document advancement barriers with evidence: promotion velocity data by demographic, performance review language patterns, access to strategic projects, sponsorship availability, and criteria transparency.
Why This Seventh: Advancement is where many belonging interventions either prove effective or reveal themselves as insufficient.
Session 8: Building Belonging for Others
Belonging Indicator Focus: All five indicators (applied outward)
Purpose: Shift from “What do I need to belong?” to “How do I create belonging for others?” This builds agency and positions ERG members as active builders of belonging, not just recipients.
Key Exercise: Belonging Action Planning
Participants identify: What’s one action you can take this week to improve Comfort, Connection, Contribution, Psychological Safety, or Wellbeing for a colleague? How do you respond when someone shows up differently than expected? What does allyship look like in practice?
Theme Capture: Document what belonging-building behaviours participants commit to and what structural support they need to follow through.
Why This Eighth: Shifts mindset from “the organization needs to fix this” to shared responsibility, while still acknowledging that organizational infrastructure must exist for individual actions to compound.
Session 9: Strategic Recommendations Development
Belonging Indicator Focus: Translating themes into business language
Purpose: Take the themes captured across Sessions 1-8 and translate them into strategic recommendations with business cases.
Key Exercise: ERG Intelligence to Action
Using the translation protocol from Article 12, participants work together to: identify the top 3-5 patterns from their sessions, specify behavioural evidence and business impact, and develop concrete recommendations with resource requirements and projected ROI.
Theme Capture: This session produces the ERG Intelligence Report, which goes to executive sponsors and HR; it is comparable across all ERGs because they all use the same framework.
Why This Ninth: Ensures ERG participation leads to documented intelligence that drives action, not just cathartic discussion.
Session 10: Action Planning and Commitment
Belonging Indicator Focus: Accountability for change
Purpose: Establish clear accountability for who will do what with the intelligence generated. This session involves executive sponsors.
Key Exercise: Accountability Mapping
ERG leaders present recommendations to executive sponsors. Together, they identify which recommendations the sponsor will elevate immediately. Which require further analysis? What timeline and success metrics apply? How will progress be communicated back to members?
Theme Capture: Document sponsor commitments with specific deadlines and accountability measures (Article 9). This closes the loop so members see their participation driving outcomes.
Why This Last: Ensures the series ends with action, not just awareness. Members leave knowing their intelligence will drive change.
Why 10 Sessions Create Depth Without Overwhelm
Organizations often ask: “Why ten sessions? That seems like a lot.”
Fewer than 10: Doesn’t create enough depth to move beyond surface-level sharing into systematic pattern identification and strategic recommendation development.
More than 10: Creates participation barriers. ERG members have full-time jobs. Ten 90-minute sessions over 5-6 months are manageable. Fifteen sessions become unsustainable.
Ten sessions hit the balance: Deep enough for strategic intelligence. Bounded enough for sustained participation.
How Identity-Specific Workbooks Work with Universal Facilitation
Each ERG receives an identity-specific workbook (e.g., “Women at the Intersections,” “The Black Experience,” “The Caregiver Experience”) that provides:
Examples relevant to their identity context
Discussion prompts that honour specific cultural dynamics
Language that reflects how that identity navigates workplace systems
Intersectional considerations within that identity group
But the structure remains consistent: the same ten sessions, the same belonging indicators, the same theme-capture methods, and the same translation protocols.
This is how universal infrastructure honours identity-specific experiences while creating comparable intelligence.
Implementation Timeline
Month 1: Train facilitators from all ERGs on the Universal Facilitator Guide
Month 2-7: Run 10 sessions across all ERGs (monthly or biweekly, depending on preference)
Month 8: Compile comparable intelligence reports from all ERGs
Month 9: Present findings to the executive team with strategic recommendations
Month 10: Begin implementing priority recommendations with accountability tracking
Year 2: Repeat cycle with new members, measuring change in belonging indicators compared to Year 1 baseline
The Question Organizations Should Ask
Not “Is this too structured?” but “Can we generate strategic intelligence without structure?”
Not “Will this work for our ERGs?” but “What would we gain by having comparable intelligence across all identity groups?”
Not “Do we have capacity for this?” but “Can we afford NOT to have systematic ERG infrastructure when our current approach isn’t working?”
The replicable model isn’t theoretical. Its infrastructure is being used across industries, creating comparable intelligence that finally makes ERG ROI demonstrable.
About the Belonging First Methodology™
The 10-session framework described in this article is the Universal Facilitator Guide used across ten identity-based ERGs with tailored workbooks for each group. Organizations that implement this framework move from inconsistent ERG programming to systematic intelligence generation that drives measurable improvement in retention, engagement, and performance.
Ready to implement the replicable ERG model?
Contact: info@belongingfirst.com for organizational licensing information.
Tomorrow in this series: The finale. Article 15 gives you the 90-day transformation plan. Concrete steps to move from awareness to action, from volunteer groups to intelligence generators, from burnout to sustainability.
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