From affinity to advocacy
We move an Employee Resource Group from a community of interest into a strategic advocacy body the business cannot ignore, with proof attached.
Let us scope this for your organization →Your business is already asking how it can help
ERGs are the most over-relied-upon and under-resourced piece of belonging infrastructure inside most companies. The leaders are volunteers. They are treated as event planners. They burn out. And increasingly, the ERG is the last institutional home this work has.
That creates a narrow, high-leverage moment. Business leaders are quietly asking their ERGs how they can better support the community. Most ERG leaders do not have a strategic answer ready. They have programming. They do not yet have a unified message, a business case, or a roadmap.
A method that turns ERG energy into measurable outcomes
Three gears, sequenced. The leadership team finds one voice, that voice radiates outward, and the win becomes a story the company can tell.
Align
The leadership team finds one voice. Customized pre-work for every leader, a vision reverse engineered from the headlines the ERG wants in one, three, and five years, a unified message to the business, and an individual development plan that turns underused senior talent into activated advocates.
Activate
Alignment becomes action. The team learns to build the business case, the single most important advocacy skill, and to bring it to the leaders who can act on it. Members and executive sponsors are equipped to carry the message, so advocacy is owned by more than the core team.
Amplify
The win becomes the story. Sustained advisory, business-case coaching, executive sponsor briefings, and the capture of proof, so the ERG produces a real outcome and that outcome becomes a case study the company tells inside and out.
Know which rung you are standing on
Most ERGs have no language for the climb. Four rungs give the leadership team a shared way to locate themselves, and a clear direction of travel.
Affinity
A belonging space and a social club. Important, however not yet influential.
Programming
Events, awareness, heritage-month visibility. Active, however reactive.
Advocacy
A unified voice, business cases, and real influence over policy and practice.
Partnership
Embedded in business decisions, co-creating benefits and strategy with leadership.
From community group to benefits architect
A unified ERG, equipped with strategic skill and trained in business-case development, moves real benefits and real culture, not just programming.
Under Christopher's leadership as Global Head of Belonging at Krispy Kreme, the parents and caregivers ERG, Raising Minis, evolved from a community of interest into a strategic advocacy body.
The ERG identified a real gap: working parents and caregivers needed reliable backup childcare. Rather than presenting a complaint, they built a business case and partnered directly with the Total Rewards team.
The result was a nationwide on-demand backup childcare benefit reaching every employee, salaried and frontline alike. That is the trajectory From affinity to advocacy is designed to put your ERG on.
We have sat on the other side of the table
Most people selling to ERGs are facilitators. They run a workshop and they leave. Christopher Bylone is the executive ERGs were trying to reach. He knows what a business case has to look like to actually move, because he is the one who used to approve them.
- Former Global Head of Belonging at Krispy Kreme
- Former Global Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at International Flavors & Fragrances
- Certified Diversity Executive, NGLCC LGBTBE certified for supplier diversity
- Host of the I Know I Belong When... podcast, contributor to the Senior Executive HR Think Tank
Let us scope this for your organization
Every engagement is built around your size, your number of ERGs, and your ambition. Tell us where your ERGs stand today, and we will design the path forward together.
Start the conversation →