After years of assisting companies implement their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and strategies, Andrea Carter began questioning whether her efforts were actually doing any good.

“I was really frustrated in the DEI space because there was a lack of measurement,” said Carter, an adjunct faculty member in Adler University’s Department of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. “There was a lack of metrics to actually demonstrate that what companies were doing was moving the dial.”

Many of the companies she worked with were too focused on gender diversity and getting more women into leadership roles.

“That’s how they were going to account for improving diversity, which of course excludes a massive amount of the population and really just reinforced oppressive behaviours and systemic oppression within organizations,” she said.

And when diverse people were hired, or women were promoted, Carter noticed they would experience higher rates of burnout and turnover. This resulted in low team morale and a lack of innovation and growth.

“Employees entering organizations hold 100% of the responsibility to fit in, to navigate the often-tumultuous politics, and figure out what the company wants and adapt solely to that,” Carter said. “So, if you differ from the organizational fit, you will never belong, and it’s 100% on you.”

This led Carter on a quest to find a better way to help organizations not only hire more diverse employees but also help workers feel welcomed and supported, along with a true sense of belonging. She enrolled in the Online Campus Master of Arts in Industrial and Organizational Psychology program to further her education and drive meaningful change.

While conducting her master’s degree program, Carter began testing work she had previously researched in neuroscience. With access to Toronto Stock Exchange Mining Companies through her Social Justice Practicum she began testing  — by creating a new workplace survey measuring belonging with five specific indicators  — and looked to set benchmarks on how to approach, measure, and implement crucial organizational practices, with a foundational focus on belonging.

“For employees to feel that they belong, the responsibilities have to be equally distributed,” she said. “So, it’s 50% of the employee’s responsibility to show up for the organization, and it’s 50% the organization’s responsibility to show up for the employee and recognize them in their full capacity. That was my jumping-off point in the work I’m doing now.”

Today, Carter’s work is gaining more and more recognition. In May, she received two significant awards from Women Changing the World, presented by Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, and Tererai Trent, Ph.D., at a distinguished ceremony held in Windsor, United Kingdom.

Carter received first place in the Micro Business of the Year category, recognizing her consulting company Belonging First, where she serves as founder and CEO. The company was the result of the combined work she did as graduate student at Adler and 18 years in the field with education in neuroscience. Her second-place recognition in the Innovation Award category highlights women with a creative, scalable, interesting, and innovative concept to change the world, stemming from her belonging research at Adler University.

Organizations and companies are already using the survey she has created to help measure belongingness in the workplace in eight different industries from 18 different countries.

Carter spoke with Adler News to discuss the importance of belonging in the workplace, the five indicators employees need to experience belongingness, how her time at Adler has influenced her work, and how she plans to continue expanding and refining her research.

Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, presents Andrea Carter, adjunct faculty, with two prestigious Women Changing the World awards.

In layman’s terms, what is “belonging” and why is it so important to have in the workplace?

In essence, it’s when employees feel comfortable and accepted being themselves in their professional environment. The employee is able to connect with others and can feel psychologically safe while contributing their skills and talent to an organization. The employee recognizes that the professional environment matches their accountability and responsibility, so that “fit” is a shared effort. When an employee experiences true workplace belonging, they succeed and become vibrant in their environment.

This concept of belonging is important because you can’t reach real equity and diversity without it. When organizations don’t create spaces of belonging, they can’t create the pipeline to ensure their underrepresented employees can also move forward. You can hire as many diverse people as you want, but if they don’t feel like they belong, they take on the emotional and energetic tax of doing their jobs while feeling misunderstood, unheard, and undervalued. And that can take a toll, cause burnout, and they will leave.

Measuring belonging is now one of the ways we can ensure that companies create environments that are welcoming and supportive. When they don’t have high rates of turnover, it means people are excited to be there, there’s engagement, and their employees are thriving.

How is belongingness measured in the workplace?

There are five indicators that employees must experience to feel that they belong: comfort, connection, contribution, psychological safety, and wellbeing.

For an employee, these indicators measure how much they feel seen, known, including knowing what’s expected of them, is their contribution valued, are they accepted, and does the professional environment care about them.

We survey organizations and each indicator receives a score, providing a total belonging score. Then we apply multiplicative statistical analysis to measure the gap between the most homogenous perceptions and the underrepresented perceptions. Then the hard work begins by helping these organizations strategically apply belonging tactics to first close the gap and then help increase belongingness in the workplace environment. Our work has unearthed how perceptions of belonging vary across intersectional identities — and our research and evidence-based workplace methodology empower transparency, governance, and strategy aligned with business goals and growth.

What sparked your interest in researching or finding ways to improve belongingness within the workplace?

Before enrolling at Adler, I was rfrustrated with what was happening in the DEI field. Most strategic HR management practices do not have equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice training. A massive gap impedes companies’ ability to really empower underrepresented people within the workplace and enable them to prosper.

At Adler, I did my practicum with Women in Mining Canada. While there, the research revealed two key findings: 1) that not all men feel they belong, and 2) that women in places of power can be as blind to the needs of the underrepresented, as men. These findings furthered my research, forcing me to dive into intersectional research methodology. I did a mixed methods grounded theory research study, and my thesis grew from there. My thesis initially spoke to the fact that the way we’re measuring surveys is actually enabling organizations to think they’re doing a good job when actually they’re not.

What does that look like when an organization improves its belonging score?

I think it’s really cool because you can feel it. Employees at these organizations are excited, engaged, and want to be there.

One of the things that stood out to me when I started doing this work was that exclusion, isolation, and ostracization can impact employees’ work mindset. This means that they’re unable to accomplish or achieve as much because they’re focusing on navigating a toxic environment. It’s essentially a tax organizations are paying for and often results in the company not achieving its objectives. There’s a reason people come home from work and literally can’t even make supper because they’re so drained.

When employees feel they belong, they can to give back to the organization. Their energy, emotional and psychological capabilities, and mental ability increase. I don’t think human capital has ever been measured in this way. When organizations can correlate belonging work with productivity and workplace engagement, you can see the shared accountability and responsibility at play. Our aim is to put employees’ human needs front and center to drive organizational performance.

How did your time at Adler influence your work on belonging?

When I look at my time as a student at Adler, I see that it allowed seedlings of my work to bloom and continue blooming. And I feel like we’re only in the beginning stages. There is so much more to come, and I’m really grateful and recognize the amount of privilege that I have had at Adler. I also understand at a much deeper level because of my time at Adler, how my privilege needs to be put into service.

When the faculty asked me to come back as an adjunct professor, it allowed me to continue working with students furthering the research and building a pipeline for change and opportunity. The students have taken the work on belonging and are taking it to incredible places. One student, Angela Richardson-Bryant, in her doctorate exams amplified the statistical analysis that investigates how organizations develop and promote high-talent employees for leadership positions. She used some of the same multiplicative approaches to interrupt the biases built in organizations’ methodologies. Together, Richardson-Bryant, Eric DaSilva, a graduate student in the I/O Psychology program, and James Halbert, Ph.D., program director of the M.A. in I/O Psychology, progressed the research with findings published in the CIM Journal in January.  Additionally, other graduates of the I/O Psychology program, Shobika Shanthakumar and Eric Da Silva, both consult for my company. It’s exciting because we’ve got more research in the pipeline and building momentum.

I think this is what Alfred Adler was saying back in his day. When we come together as a community, from a place of collaboration and shared responsibilities, we can achieve great things.