Workplace Belonging: Essential Strategies Every Leader Should Implement

High-impact strategies for fostering belonging can reduce turnover and burnout across industries. Key approaches include cultivating psychological safety, offering equitable pay, and embedding inclusive practices. Building a culture of belonging enhances job satisfaction, creativity, and productivity, creating a supportive environment where employees feel valued, engaged, and authentically included.

A recent report from the Charles Butt Foundation clearly indicates that many experienced and novice educators are leaving the profession due to a myriad of factors. For instance, today’s educators face strict scrutiny about what they teach, how they teach it and what materials they assign, especially in light of record-breaking book bans. Faculty and staff shoulder similar pressures in higher education where work life tends to be student-centered, team-oriented and results-driven, requiring employees to labor long hours, wear multiple hats, juggle competing priorities and go above the call of duty.

As if that’s not enough, reports show that approximately two-thirds of education professionals feel undervalued, unappreciated and underpaid, which compromises their sense of belonging at work (hereafter, workplace belonging) and leads to burnout. Consequently, they silently resign, stay with little motivation or leave the profession altogether.

In this article, we offer a perspective on workplace belonging, explain how it is linked to key outcomes in all business sectors and present several actionable steps or promising practices for recruiting and retaining diverse professionals, while also fostering belonging and success as leaders. This is particularly relevant for those who lead education at the K-12 and higher education levels, but may also prove useful to corporate leaders and entrepreneurs in business, government, medicine and technology, to name a few.

Workplace belonging

Workplace belonging refers to the sense of connection and acceptance employees feel within a work environment. It involves feeling valued, respected and included while also being able to fully participate and contribute to the organization, according to sources. Belonging is one of five essential workplace qualities that ensure workers’ psychological health and well-being, according to APA’s 2023 Work in America Survey.

Whether at home, school or work, a sense of belonging is a basic need, a human right. It’s a universal motive sufficient to drive behaviors — that is, people do something to satisfy their urgent need to belong. They may join a club (e.g., employee resource groups), go back to school, seek new employment or dye their hair blue. The weight of empirical evidence shows that belonging is context-dependent, meaning that its value and significance rely, in part, on the background or situation in which it is used for proper interpretation.

When employees experience a sense of belonging in the workplace, it creates a positive work environment that fosters collaboration, innovation and productivity. Feeling valued and accepted allows individuals to bring their authentic selves to work, leading to increased engagement, cooperation, help-seeking (and giving) and commitment to their tasks and employing organization.

Other studies have discovered several positive outcomes consistently associated with workplace belonging. For instance, employees who rate higher on workplace belonging also tend to feel better about their jobs and work cooperatively with others. Results from the study showed that employees who experience true belonging are:

• 3x more likely to look forward to work
• 3x more likely to say their workplace is fun
• 9x as likely to believe people are treated equitably
• 5x more likely to stick around

Research has shown that a strong sense of workplace belonging can have significant positive gains, especially for education personnel. It can lead to increased job satisfaction and work-related happiness, which can result in higher productivity and lower burnout. It can also foster deeper institutional commitment, leading to less turnover, more stability and greater creativity and innovation.

In short, the key to workplace belonging is trust, and trust is defined as a foundational building block for culture. It depends, in part, on staff knowing your intentions, believing your commitments and understanding your behaviors. Boosting employees’ sense of belonging at work takes time, and thus, belonging is built at the speed of trust.

Ways to recruit, retain and regain employees

Building a culture of belonging requires a proactive approach from organizational leaders and managers. It involves creating an inclusive environment where every employee feels valued, respected and supported. Here are some strategies organizations can implement to foster workplace belonging for staff and broaden professional pipelines:

Cultivate psychological safety using a variety of evidence-based, proven strategies:

Psychological safety refers to feeling able to speak up freely, ask questions, make mistakes and take risks without fear of judgment, negative consequences or retaliation. Promising practices include active listening, open dialogue, “no-judgment” zones and creating “brave spaces” where diverse perspectives are celebrated though they courageously challenge the majority. When employees feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work, they thrive and flourish.

Offer equitable pay and financial incentives to help attract, (re)gain and retain diverse, talented educators and employees:

For example, ZipRecruiter reports the average teacher salary in Texas is $41,544, ranging from as low as $19,565 to well over $64,000, which means some public school teachers are paid less than a living wage. District leaders, administrators and policymakers must advocate for higher, more equitable pay for such teachers — it’s hard to feel like you matter and belong when you’re not compensated fairly for the work you do. Financial incentives like salary raises, relocation assistance, tuition reimbursement, paid time off and signing bonuses can go a long way in improving the perception of prospective staff.

Foster an inclusive culture of acceptance and respect to ensure staff can show up authentically and feel safe and secure at work:

By authentic, we mean freely expressing oneself without fear of judgment or pressure to alter one’s true identity to fit in. Leaders might consider creating ERGs for underrepresented groups, book clubs and/or offer training about positive workplace culture to ensure psychological and physical safety and security across and within teams. Take it a step further and employ tools that allow people to see themselves and each other more fully. Tools that embed psychometrics and then apply AI can help employees better understand each other, feel more connected, work more effectively together, and feel more like a team.

In the end, whether your working within or across teams or leading them, following these tips will help you implement the right foundation to foster a more natural version of belonging and inclusion. By establishing clear communication channels, fostering safe spaces of trust and mutual respect, and celebrating the strengths each individual brings to the the team, organizations can leverage the unique strengths of each team, enhance collaboration, and achieve better results.