Structure Complexity as a Determinant of Employee Resource Group (ERG) Response to COVID-19

Employee resource groups (ERGs) have expanded since COVID-19 started, in part, to help a challenged workforce. ERGs are “voluntary, employee-led groups” that are “dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment” (Welbourne, Rolf, & Schlachter, 2017: 1817). These groups have been expanding in large, global, established firms like Amazon, Bank of America, and Coca-Cola; and they have also been started and growing in younger companies like Zillow, Twitch, and Riot Games. The general assumption is that ERGs are an integral part of a firm’s diversity strategy; however, many ERGs work in ways that are independent of the diversity office and certainly that take on goals beyond diversity and the human resource function. Examples of this type of beyond HR/diversity work include innovating new products for their firms, customer-centric work, and recently, helping companies respond to COVID-19. In this paper we focus in on ERG responses to the 2020 pandemic and examine the degree to which the ERG structure, in particular its complexity, is related to responses to COVID-19. We test the hypothesis that more complex ERGs, often formed as parallel organizations, were able to respond faster and in a higher impact manner with a broader audience, including helping non-employee community members. Our study uses survey data from ERG leaders and members; these data were collected in 2020 and 2021. Results show a pattern that supports our hypotheses. Keywords: Employee resource groups (ERGs), diversity, COVID-19, parallel organizations (POs)