Virtual Workforce Employee Resource Groups.

Support For Hybrid Organizations.

Teach Teams. Create Inclusion. Influence the C-Suite.

90%
of Fortune 500 companies have ERGs. Qualtrics
But hardly any are prepared with innovations to handle virtual work, causing inclusion and business results to suffer.

Two major factors affect organizations more than ever – diversity and inclusion are crucial. Many companies leverage Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to help. ERGs are simply volunteer-led teams that are responsible for supporting colleagues and driving business goals. Usually they are formed around common interests, backgrounds or demographics (examples include gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation). With the workplace completely shifting and companies becoming highly geographically distributed, it opened up a need for a new type of ERG.

An Innovation in ERGs to Unify Everyone.

The new Virtual Employee Resource Group uses the same volunteer methods, but is distinctly designed to improve collaboration, inclusion and business results between distributed employees. It focuses on helping employees engage across distance to improve operations, culture—and with the support of DEI —fully integrate the company’s HR, IT, Real Estate and Business strategies.

Our Founder, Sacha Connor, pioneered the first and most successful Virtual Workforce ERG in the country while working at the Fortune 500 company, Clorox. And more companies are finding it to be an important step forward to winning in today’s world of work.

The Insider Approach: Implement a Self-Sustaining Virtual Workforce ERG. Future Proof Your Organization.

Choose The Hands-On ERG Plan That’s Right for You

The Basics

Analyze your specific situation through stakeholder interviews
Lead a workshop with key stakeholders to review findings, teach the ERG basics and outline a high-level plan

Co-Development

The Basics, Plus:

Personalized coaching to get the ERG up and running
Help recruit senior leaders as sponsors and advisors
Data analysis through HR, or a custom survey to create data unique to your organization
Lead development of mission, objective, strategies and tactics, leadership structure — and outline responsibilities

Full Development and Leadership

The Basics and Co-Development, Plus:

Leading the ERG throughout its start-up
Help recruit for ERG committee positions
Develop 18-month tactical plan with ERG leadership team

Why Do You Need a Virtual Workforce ERG? Every Business Area Is A Reason.

Improve Business Results and Culture. Influence the C-Suite.

Global and national employee communities can support each other in driving business through virtual work
Employees are always connected and united, regardless of location
The ERG partners with HR, Real Estate, and IT for flawlessly integrated workforce and workplace strategies
The group guides the C-Suite in how to adapt for the future of work

Retention and Recruitment Lever

Top employees can be retained if needing to move for personal reasons
New talent can be attracted by flexibility, especially in competitive markets
The ERG can partner with HR to develop a hybrid or remote work policy, highlighting employee input

IT Strategies Enhance and Evolve Rapidly

The ERG acts as a learning lab for IT to test tools before they are implemented
The ERG becomes a distribution channel for IT to communicate with employees, and train them on new tools

So ask yourself. Are you prepared with the tools, skill sets and virtual workforce mindsets to create 100% inclusion?

Connect With Us

Our Founder Developed the Very First Virtual Workforce ERG.

Opportunity:
Further support and connect the company’s distributed workforce

Solution:
Create a Virtual Workforce ERG that works in partnership with HR, IT and the C-Suite

Over 750 global members, across 21 countries and 55 locations
Only 15% fully remote, 85% work in Clorox office sites

Click to view larger:

Graph showing virtual work employee resource group statistics

Clorox Company Case Study

ORBIT is the Clorox company’s virtual workforce Employee Resource Group (ERG). It is an innovative ERG that was born out of personal need and passion.

In 2010, two of the company’s marketing leaders, Sacha Connor and Kyra Zeroll, were looking to relocate outside of Clorox’s Oakland, California headquarters, but working virtually in the marketing function was unheard of at that time. However, the two had such high performance and tenure at the company that they were given the go to pilot the first fully remote work policy for the marketing function.

Sacha and Kyra quickly became a success and catalyst within the company, connecting in one-on-one meetings, sharing tips on how to lead and manage when fully remote, and in 2013 formalized ORBIT with the support of the company’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion, and Executive Sponsors in the C-suite. News of the group spread and employees from all different Clorox functions and office locations in the US and internationally were interested in what ORBIT had to offer.

Accordingly in 2015, ORBIT’s mission was officially reframed to represent what leadership now saw as its real target audience: the 95% of Clorox employees that worked with people not in the same office or location, enabling the entire employee force to thrive wherever they worked or lived.

Strong relationships with HR and IT drove ORBIT’s impact. The ERG leveraged this connection to influence new technology choices, pilot new platforms before company-wide rollout and assist with training employees on using new tools. The collaboration platforms even became a key resource to enable virtual corporate training, and overall, employees became more connected and included.

ORBIT has become a tool to aid in difficult tasks like consolidating three countries into one geographically dispersed business unit, and it’s even been used to create tactics to mitigate how unconscious distance bias — our brain’s natural tendency to put more value on people and things that are closer to us than further away — can negatively impact decision making.

ORBIT is now one of nine resource groups at Clorox, including groups that represent the interests of Asian, black, Latino, LGBTQIA, women’s and veterans. But today it remains the largest, growing group at the company.

Read the full case study…