Why redesigning access (not adding more events) is the key to sustainable ERG engagement
If you lead an ERG, you’ve likely said some version of this out loud — or under your breath:
“People really care about what we’re doing… they just don’t show up.”
It’s a frustrating place to land. You plan thoughtfully. You promote. You try new ideas. And still, participation clusters around the same small group while others remain just outside your reach.
For a long time, this has been framed as a motivation problem. It isn’t.
What the GEN Insights Report makes clear is something ERG leaders have been experiencing for years but rarely had language for: engagement has shifted from an attendance challenge to an access challenge.
When Interest Exists—but Access Doesn’t
Across organizations, employees are navigating increasingly fragmented workdays. Hybrid schedules have reduced spontaneous connection. Frontline and deskless roles operate on shifts, not calendars. Attention is scarce, and volunteer leaders are being asked to do more with less.
So when engagement is defined primarily by who attends meetings or events, the system quietly excludes large portions of the workforce—often the same groups organizations say they most want to include.
And yet, interest hasn’t disappeared.
ERG leaders consistently tell us that employees like the idea of the group. They just can’t fit participation into how their work actually functions. That distinction matters, because it changes the solution entirely.
This is not about trying harder. It’s about rethinking how engagement is designed.
Engagement as Design, Not More Effort
One of the strongest patterns we see across organizations is this: ERGs that expand reach aren’t doing more programming. They’re experimenting with new ways of making participation possible. They stop treating engagement as a moment and start treating it as a system.
At a large global logistics company, leaders faced a simple reality. Most of their workforce wasn’t sitting at desks. Many employees didn’t have regular access to email or internal platforms during their shifts. Traditional engagement tactics simply missed them.
Instead of trying to pull those employees into meetings, the organization asked a different question: How do we bring ERGs into the flow of their day?
They introduced strategically placed kiosks in common areas and spaces employees already passed through during breaks or shift changes. These kiosks allowed workers to see which ERGs existed, what they focused on, and how to get involved—without logging into a system or attending a meeting. Engagement didn’t begin with attendance. It began with visibility and access, and participation followed. It didn’t happen all at once, but steadily as employees could engage when it made sense for them.
Access Activates Participation
In a very different environment, an energy company encountered a similar challenge. Their workforce was distributed across sites, operating on tight schedules where safety and operations came first. ERG updates often felt like “extra”—important, but separate from the real work of the day.
Rather than creating new meetings or channels, the organization made a subtle but powerful shift. Once a week, brief ERG updates were incorporated into existing safety huddles. No added time. No additional lift for leaders. Just intentional integration into a rhythm that already mattered.
That decision changed how ERGs were perceived. They were no longer an optional activity that was competing for attention. They became part of how the organization communicated, connected, and aligned people. Employees moved from passive awareness to active involvement because participation finally fit into their reality.
While at Amazon, I was part of a cross-functional team that developed a solution to connect thousands of employees in warehouses, trucks, and offices around the world. We gathered ideas and needs from Employee-Led Group leaders and members, and thought deeply about how to reach people through channels which were already in use, rather than inventing a completely “new wheel”. And rather than tacking on a new or separate system, information and communication about the groups was integrated into successful and sustainable mechanisms.
From One-Off Events to Systems That Hold
These examples are not about novelty or technology. They reflect a deeper shift: engagement grows when it is designed to activate people, support collaboration, and strengthen over time.
When ERGs rely on one-off events or individual energy, participation becomes fragile. When access is predictable and built into existing systems, engagement becomes more durable—and leadership becomes more sustainable. This is where many ERGs feel the difference most acutely. Leaders stop chasing attendance and start seeing patterns of progress. Reach expands, responsibility is shared, and burnout eases (or ideally, is prevented). And perhaps most importantly, the work begins to outlast any one leader, planning cycle, or moment.
Why This Matters Now
Organizations continue to expect ERGs to engage the full workforce across roles, regions, and realities. That expectation isn’t unreasonable. But it does require a different model than the one many groups inherited.
The insight from the GEN Insights Report is clear: when engagement depends on attendance alone, it will always plateau. When it is designed around access, it becomes possible to see participation grow, collaboration deepen, and change take hold in ways that last. This is not a loss of ambition. It is an evolution in how impact is built.
What Comes Next
Recognizing engagement as an access challenge is the turning point. Next is learning how to redesign participation so it fits your workforce, your capacity, and your organizational rhythms. That’s where intention replaces scramble and where engagement begins to move from isolated moments to sustained momentum.
In this month’s Spark Series, we’ll move from insight to execution, sharing practical ways ERG leaders are redesigning engagement for access, along with a high-value tool to help make participation barriers visible—and fixable.
Not more to do. Just smarter design for the work already underway.