We all grew up alongside one of the greatest women's groups of all time, whether through books or television.
This particular women’s committee created a safe space for young, entrepreneurial women to pave the formative road to their careers. The women’s club I am talking about, of course, is The Baby-Sitter’s Club.
I’m not even joking. The Baby-Sitter’s Club, a book series written by Ann M. Martin between the years of 1986 and 2000, sold over 176 million books. These books were made into television shows and movies, inspiring several generations of young girls to lean in before they even knew what leaning in was. The Baby-Sitters left such an impact that Netflix revived the entrepreneurial tales of Dawn, Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, and Claudia.
Table of Contents
- The Risks of Starting an Affinity Group at Work
- Why Are Workplace Groups Important?
- How to Start a Women's Club or Other Affinity Group at Work
- What Do These Committees Actually Get Done?
- Starting a Remote Women's Club
- What To Do When Affinity Groups are Banned at Your Workplace
Fast forward about a decade—or two...Nowadays, many of the top career fields are still dominated by men. Though not always intentional, these boys' club atmospheres can regularly alienate women in the workplace. If you're a woman of color, the intersectionality problem is even worse.
What to do? Do what Kristy, Mary Ann, Claudia, Dawn, and Stacey did back in 1986. Start your own group. Create a place to discuss specific topic, share valuable resources, and work towards real equity.
The Risks of Starting an Affinity Group at Work
Before we get into it, *sigh*, we have to address the elephant in the room. With every attempt to elevate and diversify comes pushback, which is why everyone needs to take care when structuring affinity groups.
These groups are also commonly called ERGs or employer-recognized groups. When starting an ERG or any other type of group, everyone involved needs to address the possibility of discrimination concerns. While your idea of a women's empowerment group or LGBTQIA+ group comes from a pure place, prepare for others to feel differently.
It's widely recognized that the benefits of ERGs are well worth the effort. Some of the benefits include attracting a more diverse pool of candidates, better retention, and increased employee morale.
If you're looking to start the first affinity group at work, you'll work closely with leadership, following some of these protective guidelines:
- Leadership needs a unified position on affinity groups. If one is permissible, others should be, too.
- Every affinity group should have a manager-level representative who oversees goals and initiatives.
- Organizations with affinity groups should also provide anti-discrimination and implicit bias training to all employees.
- Each ERG should have a dedicated application process and mission statement to clarify the work they intend to do.
Why Are Workplace Groups Important?
Women’s clubs, affinity groups, and ERGs are hugely important for many reasons. They help groups of people work together through issues and pain points that uniquely affect them.
For women, these include questions like:
- Want to start a family and continue your track to CEO?
- Do you feel spoken over in most meetings?
- Do you fear resistance and even the dreaded b-word when you take the chance to assert yourself?
Like it or not, these are still hot-button issues in virtually every workplace. Couple with that with the fact that industries, like technology, are still overrun with men, you can immediately see a need for a women’s committee at every workplace.
Everyone needs (and deserves!) a space—not to gripe about these issues—but to resolve them together.
In addition, a women’s network is a great place to foster an environment of learning and mentorship across disciplines. For example, if you are a social media manager looking to learn from the project marketing manager, the women’s club may be the perfect place to connect with her.
How to Start a Women's Club or Other Affinity Group at Work
When starting an affinity group or club at work, take these steps to get the ball rolling while keeping everything as inclusive as possible every step of the way. If you're looking to start an official group with funding, there will be more formalities to starting your group, including inviting one or more folks in leadership positions to oversee the group.
1. Test the Waters
Before going full-on with your women’s committee, get feedback from your team. Is there an interest in forming a women’s club? Will the women on your team actually show up? Caitlin Reyda, a mechanical engineer at Formlabs, noticed the existing women’s club at her company had become a little...inactive.
Recognizing the need to engage the few female engineers on her team, Caitlin restarted a weekly "women in tech" lunch. This gave the women across different engineering teams a safe space to talk about professional growth, development, and ongoing projects. These weekly lunches yielded many positive results, including a "women in leadership speaker" series. Beyond that, invaluable bonds were formed and strengthened.
Once you have established that there is an interest in a women’s group (in Caitlin’s case, a male engineer respectfully requested to join a meeting to gain insight) you can choose to receive company funding. Funding can be great, opening your group and its attendees to opportunities. You can book meeting space, attend special events, expense meals for group meetings, and benefit from your workplace's resources.
However, funding usually also requires a dedicated agenda for each meeting, ground rules, and other company-directed guidelines.
When starting and expanding your club, you may remain independent from company funding to keep it free of a targeted agenda. We'll explore this direction later in the article.
2. Approach HR or C-Level With Your Ideas
Once you have an interested group of committee members, you will want to carve out core values, clear goals, and objectives for your club. Write a detailed mission statement outlining your group’s purpose and take it to the next level.
Present your ideas and goals to HR or C-level executives. They will be crucial in empowering your women's committee to get funding and other resources to thrive. As mentioned, you can choose to remain unfunded and “unofficial.” However, seeking funding will help your club access more resources, including women-centric events and advanced educational opportunities.
In addition to getting initial approval from HR or C-level executives, you might ask a senior-level executive to chair the committee. Having an executive involved at a high level can help your committee align with the entire company's overall goals. In addition, this is an opportunity to foster mentorships within the committee itself. Take advantage.
What Do These Committees Actually Get Done?
Surprisingly enough, sometimes the most resistant people to starting a women’s committee are… women. There can be a negative perception that women’s committees are an excuse to get together and gripe about work. Umm, wrong.
Rebecca Spitzer of Ellevate sees the benefits of these women-centric communities every day. Providing a space to share is just the beginning. Workplace women’s committees often empower huge human resources and company-wide change. In addition, women are twice as likely as men to start these “non-promotable” committees or events. That’s a lot of females stepping up to learn more and empower their future!
In speaking with several women’s committee leaders and members, I have learned that they have had huge contributions to their companies. Among the many contributions:
- Parental leave policies
- Pay-parity for men and women
- Career advancement
- Unconscious bias training
- Continuing education sponsorship
- Mentorship programs
- Financial advice sessions
- Career pivot resources
- Inter-departmental skill-shares
- Program partnerships with Girl Scouts, Girls Who Code, etc.
Of course, your women’s committee doesn’t have to be all business, all the time.
Kaye Yoon, the founder of Women’s Circle at her company, sources ideas for monthly tutorials from all members. Each month, by vote, one member will showcase a particular skill set to share with the women’s group, which is funded by the company.
These skill sets could either have a quick effect on improving current projects or pique interest for future individual growth. These have included Microsoft Excel tutorials, intro to SQL training, and an amazing slide deck on skincare (if you want that slide deck, you’d have to join the club or email Kaye).
Starting a Remote Women's Club
If you're thinking, "Yeah, sounds great, but our company is remote," well, that's even more of a reason to start a women's club at your organization.
Forming committees or clubs is a great way to forge human connections and share personal experiences with your colleagues—especially when you're working remotely. It gives you touchpoints with your coworkers that you wouldn't have otherwise. If you're skeptical about a women's committee (or any committee) "working" at your company, we have a three-pronged argument:
- Argument One: Your meetings will be from the comfort of your own home
- Argument Two: You can make connections with women from other departments or those who you might not regularly interface with
- Argument Three: You can attend the meetings in sweatpants
As remote work becomes increasingly prominent, we are all making adjustments to take the IRL elements of work into a digital atmosphere. Go for it!
What To Do When Affinity Groups are Banned at Your Workplace
Some workplaces do not allow affinity groups. Do those same organizations have a company softball league or bowling team? No comment.
Lean in a little closer, and we'll tell you something.
If ERGs are banned, you can still start one. However, all of your meetings, goals, and messaging will need to be done outside of work hours and without workplace resources. This can include your laptop, office internet, office spaces, and other resources provided by your job.
You can still do the work to uplift and support your colleagues and coworkers. You will simply need to do it off the clock to avoid trouble. Finally, if your company seems to uplift some affinity groups while discouraging others, it might not be the place for you to learn, grow, and uplift others.
In the wise words of Ann M. Martin in Baby-Sitter’s Club #14, “A positive attitude makes a powerful mind.”
