How two companies are compensating their ERG and affinity group leaders

Employees take on extra work when they volunteer to lead employee resource groups (ERGs), but they’re often not compensated for it.

That may have started to change in recent years, with more organizations offering compensation—either through cash, equity, or other means—to employees who lead ERGs. A recent report by The Rise Journey, a DE&I consulting group, found that 46% of organizations compensated their ERG leads in some form last year, up from just 6% in 2020.

People leaders at two organizations told HR Brew they see compensation boosting engagement, recruitment, and retention among ERG leads.

Granting equity. Gem, a recruiting software platform, has six ERGs, including groups geared toward Black, Latinx, and LGBTQIA+ employees. ERG coleads typically spend eight to 10 hours a month on related activities, according to Heather Dunn, Gem’s chief people officer.

Dunn said the idea of compensating ERG leads came up in a discussion with Gem’s chief financial officer shortly after she joined the company in 2021.

“This doesn’t sit right,” Dunn said, describing her thinking at the time. “We’re asking underrepresented folks to do work on behalf of the company, for free.”

She and her team came up with a list of roles and responsibilities employees could expect to take on as ERG leads, including a rough estimate of the hours they’d spend on ERG-related tasks. From there, she got the CEO and CFO to grant $10,000 worth of equity in the form of restricted stock units (RSUs) to each ERG co-lead.

The equity grant, which was rolled out this February, will fully vest after a year. Dunn said that offering compensation has helped retain leaders in what tends to be a high turnover role—she said via email that only one ERG leader out of 18 has stepped down over the last few months. She’s hopeful it will make recruiting ERG leaders easier, too.

Dunn said she took inspiration from Notion, a productivity platform, which awards the equivalent of $10,000 in RSUs to affinity group leaders for each year of service. Maryanne Caughey, Notion’s chief people officer since 2020, was involved in building out its affinity groups, of which there are now 10.

“There was no question from our leadership team that this is work that was going to be paid,” Caughey told HR Brew. In a proposal to leadership, Caughey and her team said they believed affinity groups would be “core to how we build engagement,” and thus that leaders should be compensated.

Caughey told HR Brew she believes the equity grant has helped sustain engagement and retention among affinity group leaders. Affinity group leads are asked to serve in the role for two years, and Caughey said most every lead has done so, with many staying on for a third year. “I don’t think we’ve experienced the burnout that you might see in other places,” she said.

She emphasized that compensation is just one way Notion works to support its affinity group leaders. Providing resources—such as training on how to run a group, as well as assigning an executive assistant to dedicate 25% of their time to supporting the groups—is key, as well.

Compensation > virtue signaling. The growing number of companies compensating their ERG leaders may be attributed in part to their reliance on them to promote culture, DE&I education, and retention, according to Jes Osrow, co-founder of The Rise Journey.

“What they’re compensating—a couple $1,000 a year per lead, it’s pretty nominal, with how much impact you get,” Osrow said. (The Rise Journey’s recent report found organizations were paying ERG leads $2,136 annually on average.)

The report found that 24% of organizations compensated their ERG leads in cash—Osrow’s preferred method, since equity can be affected by corporate buyouts or IPOs, for example. Caughey said Notion would be flexible if affinity group leads asked for cash, but opted for equity because the company believes it sends the message that these leaders are helping build the company.

For HR leaders who want to pay their ERG leads but aren’t sure how to get started, Osrow recommended getting a line in the budget that’s specific to ERG compensation. She suggested organizations pay their ERG leaders at least $15 an hour for their work.

“This money goes really far for these folks,” Osrow said. “It shows appreciation, it shows awareness, it shows investment into DE&I…This is a great way [to not] virtue signal.”