Employee Resource Group Excellence

10ERG Metrics‐That‐Matter: Measuring ERG Impact and Excellence

An employee resource group cannot strive toward excellence if it does not have a means of determining if it is making progress. Nor can an ERG determine the impact and value it provides to an organization without some sort of measurement strategy. Yet in my experience, most employee resource groups simply capture metrics related to their activity. They are quick to share how many members they have, the number of events they held, or the size of the audience at their meetings.

While this may be a nice start, it is far from a comprehensive measurement strategy. Of course, ERGs need to capture their activity and share it with their stakeholders. It allows them to highlight what the group has been up to and gives them a quantitative measure of their endeavors for a specific period of time. But the journey toward ERG excellence requires more than just measuring activity. Employee resource groups have to find ways to capture the impact of those activities and the effect their initiatives have on their membership, the organization, and on the broader community. Without the ability to articulate ERG impact, it is more difficult to counter critics who still see the groups as only social entities.

Along with measuring impact, ERG metrics help a group determine their progress. To do this, an ERG must have a metric or measurement that allows it to establish a baseline or starting point. Once the baseline is established, the ...