Building Meaningful Relationships Through Employee Resource Groups with Johann Shudlick

An intentional employee resource group (ERG) has the ability to not only build awareness, but to create systemic change in organizations, build allyship, improve belonging, engagement and psychological safety. And all of those things... decrease workplace stress!

This week on the podcast we're joined by Johann Shudlick from Golden, a volunteer software that helps organizations (and ERGs!) to grow their programs efficiently and effectively, to save costs so they can focus on the impactful work they are doing and to make compliance easy. 

In his time at Goldman Sachs, Johann took on a leadership role in the LGBTQ+ network and it was life-changing. In this episode he shares the one big thing that was a critical focus for their ERG. We also talk about:

• The career path that led him to employee resource groups (07:05)
• How ERGs boost your feeling of belonging (11:43) 
• Advice for ERGs shifting from awareness building to systemic org change (14:00) 
• How to achieve goals which operate in an intangible space (17:13) 
• Testing hypotheses and having an experimentation mindset (19:49)
• The impact that belonging can have within an organization (25:01)
• How your people surveys can indicate intersections between belonging and engagement (29:31)
• The culture of thoughtful disagreement (36:37)
• Getting in the reps when seeking to understand (42:04)
• How Johann ended up at Golden and what they’re up to (43:37)
• The value in intentional volunteerism for ERGs (48:47)
• Trends in volunteerism (51:06)

To check out Impactful Engagement's spring training go to impactfulengagement.com/training 

 

Resources

Golden https://www.goldenvolunteer.com/ 

Download the Golden App on Apple or Android

The Principles https://www.principles.com/