What Organizational Readiness Actually Looks Like in Volatile Moments
In the spring and summer of 2020, organizations across the country were confronted with two simultaneous crises — a global pandemic that had upended every assumption about how work functioned, and the murder of George Floyd, which forced a public reckoning with racial inequity in the United States that many companies had spent years managing around rather than addressing directly.
What happened next in a lot of organizations was predictable, even if it didn’t feel that way at the time. Leaders who had no established framework for responding turned to the people who seemed closest to the moment: their Black Employee Resource Groups. Requests came quickly — for listening sessions, for town halls, for statements, for programming that could help the broader organization understand what was happening and why it mattered. The intent, in most cases, was genuine. The impact on the volunteer leaders who received those requests was something else entirely.
I watched ERG leaders carry weight during that period that no volunteer should have been asked to carry alone. They were creating space for their communities while processing their own grief and fear. They were fielding organizational requests while managing member expectations that were, in some cases, in direct conflict with each other. And they were doing all of it without meaningful infrastructure, formal training in crisis response, or clarity about what they were actually authorized to say or do on behalf of the organization.
That moment exposed something important: ERGs are critical communities. They are not designed to be crisis response infrastructure. And treating them as though they are creates harm — to the leaders, to the members, and ultimately to the trust the organization is trying to rebuild.
The Pressure Comes From Every Direction
During a cultural crisis, ERG leaders often face competing pressures from inside their own communities.
Members who are hurting want action. They want their ERG to speak publicly, to demand change, to take positions that feel proportionate to the weight of what’s happening. That impulse is entirely understandable — and it puts ERG leaders in an extraordinarily difficult position. Because the role of an ERG, however passionate and community-rooted, is not the same as the role of an advocacy organization. There are things that are appropriate for an ERG to do within an organizational context, and things that aren’t — and in a heated moment, with members looking to their leaders for a response, the line between community support and organizational advocacy can become very hard to hold.
ERG leaders without organizational backing are navigating it alone, often without clear parameters, and frequently absorbing criticism from members who feel the response isn’t enough. That’s an unreasonable position to be in. And the leaders who burn out, step back, or leave the organization after moments like these are often the ones who tried hardest to get it right.
What Organizations Can Actually Do
Here’s what I think gets missed in these moments: organizations are not without resources. They have communications teams, public relations professionals, human resources leaders, employee assistance programs, legal counsel, and crisis management expertise. These are paid professionals whose jobs include navigating exactly these kinds of situations. In most organizations, they aren’t formally connected to the ERG ecosystem before a crisis arrives — only in the midst of it.
Waiting until something happens to figure out who does what is its own kind of failure. Cultural and social crises are not unpredictable in the aggregate. We may not know the specific event, but we know the categories: racial violence, political upheaval, natural disasters, public health emergencies. Organizations that prepare for these moments in advance — that establish clear protocols for how ERGs will be supported, what resources will be activated, and who carries which responsibilities — are in a fundamentally different position than those that improvise.
That preparation includes giving ERG leaders something concrete: clear parameters about what the organization expects of them during a crisis, what falls outside that scope, and who to escalate to when member expectations push beyond what the ERG is positioned to deliver. That clarity isn’t a limitation on ERG leaders. It’s protection for them — something they can point to when a member demands an action that isn’t theirs to take.
Redirecting Without Abandoning
One of the most useful things an organization can do during a moment of social crisis is acknowledge that the desire for action is legitimate — and then help employees find appropriate channels for it.
ERG members who want their organization to do more aren’t wrong to want that. The answer isn’t to shut that energy down. It’s to redirect it toward community organizations, advocacy groups, and civic channels that are built for that purpose and have the expertise to use it well. Organizations can support that redirection actively — by partnering with relevant nonprofits, facilitating volunteer opportunities, matching donations, or simply naming community organizations that employees can engage with directly.
This does two things. It honors the impulse behind the demand without asking the ERG to become something it isn’t. And it signals that the organization takes the moment seriously enough to point employees toward meaningful action, rather than simply absorbing the pressure internally and hoping it dissipates.
The Leaders Are Not Separate From the Moment
One more thing worth saying directly: ERG leaders are not neutral facilitators during a crisis that affects their community. They are members of that community. The Black ERG leaders asked to host listening sessions about racial violence in the summer of 2020 was also a Black employee navigating her own response to those events. The expectation that she could hold space for others without organizational acknowledgment of what she was carrying herself reflects a kind of blindness that organizations need to be honest about.
Supporting ERG leaders during a crisis means recognizing that they are not a resource to be deployed. They are people — volunteers — who may be more directly affected by the moment than anyone asking them to respond to it. The support structures the organization builds need to account for that, not work around it.
What Becomes Possible
When organizations build even basic frameworks for crisis navigation in advance — clear roles, activated resources, parameters for ERG involvement, and pathways for redirecting member energy — the dynamic shifts in ways that matter. ERG leaders can show up for their communities without absorbing the full organizational weight of the moment. Members feel supported without placing impossible expectations on volunteer leaders. And the organization demonstrates that its commitment to employee wellbeing doesn’t evaporate precisely when it’s needed most.
None of this eliminates the difficulty of navigating a genuine crisis. But it distributes the weight more honestly — across the organization that employs these people, rather than onto the volunteers who care most about them.
Reflections
For ERG Leaders
Do you have clear parameters from your organization about what’s within your scope during a cultural or social crisis — and if not, what would it mean to ask for them explicitly?
When a crisis hits, who in your organization is formally responsible for supporting you — not just the community, but you specifically?
For Program Managers
Does your organization have a framework for how ERGs are supported during social or cultural crises, or is the response improvised each time?
What community organizations and external resources could you identify in advance, so that redirecting member energy toward meaningful action is something you’re prepared to do rather than figuring out in the moment?
For HR Leaders and Executives
Are the paid professionals in your organization — communications, HR, employee assistance, crisis management — formally connected to your ERG ecosystem before something happens?
If your ERG leaders burned out or stepped back after a difficult moment, do you know why — and has anything changed since then?