Belonging In The Workplace: Creating Space For Authentic Self-Expression

Allowing authentic self-expression in the workplace is good for individuals and the organizations that employ them: it can enhance wellbeing, increase job satisfaction, improve employee motivation and more.

Realizing those benefits, however, requires more than the creation of policies and procedures that formally protect employees’ rights to express their social identities. Indeed, unless employees feel safe and supported to take up the invitation extended to them, few will.

This month, communities around the world – including in the United Kingdom and the United States - celebrate Pride Month and the countless positive contributions made by members of the LGBTQ+ community. But Pride also reminds us that underrepresented social groups, including the LGBTQ+ community, continue to be stereotyped, marginalized, and negatively targeted for expressing their social identities.

This reveals a difficult truth: The risk of being one’s authentic self is not distributed equally.

In fact, it can actually come at a cost. Employees from marginalized social identities can face backlash and bias from colleagues for simply being themselves, insofar as that deviates from the norm. These sanctions need not be conspicuous or even conscious. They may range from excluding a colleague from a particular discussion or outing to denying an employee a promotion because they do not “fit” with the prototype of a leader.

Research has found that 18% of LGBT staff in Britain were targeted with “negative comments or conduct from work colleagues” over the preceding year because of their LGBT identity. For those whose identities intersect across multiple marginalized groups, the barriers can be even greater. The same research stated: “One in ten black, Asian and minority ethnic LGBT staff (10 per cent) have similarly been physically attacked because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, compared to three per cent of white LGBT staff.”

Similarly, women of colour describe code-switching to fit into the dominant culture of a group and hiding their authentic selves to avoid making others uncomfortable.

Leaders and organizations often have the right talk when it comes to high-level commitments to support employee self-expression. But is this rhetoric embedded in the everyday culture of their companies? How can leaders ensure their organisations behave as allies to facilitate self-expression?

One way is to create an environment where all employees feel a sense of belonging, regardless of their social identities. Here, belonging refers to is an individual’s ability to be themselves and be accepted as an equal in a particular environment or context. It is important at both an individual and organisational level - belonging can increase job performance and reduce the risk of job turnover.

We know that to establish a sense of belonging, people look to their surroundings for cues that will either lower or raise uncertainty about the acceptance of their social identity.

There are several ways leaders can ensure those positive signals are communicated to employees: by improving representation, removing stereotyping cues and highlighting their belief that potential is widespread.

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