“Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.”
~ Jacqueline Woodson
To our partners in belonging,
Belonging fuels an organizational body: the Head, Hands, and Heart.
In this edition of The Belonging Brief, we’re making The Case for Belonging, drawing from the insights of our first Bringing Belonging to Work webinar.
Here’s what you’ll find inside:
A breakdown of what DEI is (and isn’t)
The Head: How belonging drives stronger outcomes
The Hands: Why organizational culture matters for employees
The Heart: Exploring your organizational WHY with AmazeWorks
Level Setting
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
DEI has been a hot-button topic for years, and 2025 brought renewed debate. Misunderstandings persist, so here’s an AmazeWorks breakdown of what DEI looks like when it’s done well.
What DEI is
For everyone: DEI benefits us all, across identities, lived experiences, and even personality types. When done well, it improves work cultures for every employee.
Good for productivity and innovation: DEI aims to increase the candidate pool and broaden our perspectives on how to best do the work. This improves performance, building teams that are more innovative, effective, and efficient.
Cost-effective: Discrimination, bias, and harassment harm organizational culture, and they also come at a literal price. DEI helps prevent those losses.
Fair: Despite our best intentions, all humans have biases that impact our work, relationships, and decisions. DEI practices hold us accountable to our values by creating systems that reduce discrimination and expand opportunity.
What DEI is NOT
A checklist: DEI isn’t a quick fix. Just like any other project, DEI objectives must be clearly defined, funded, measured, and supported in order to work well.
Reverse discrimination: DEI removes barriers, ensuring that our biases don’t dismiss great candidates for opportunities like jobs or promotions. If your instinct is to assume that hiring a person with marginalized identities meant the quality bar was lowered, take a step back and think about where this bias comes from.
Formulaic: Every organization is unique. There’s no “right” way to create a culture of belonging. When we channel bravery and step into the discomfort of making mistakes, we can bring belonging to life for all of us.
Our webinar shared real-world examples of how belonging strengthens organizations. Here are a few research highlights, framed through the Head, Hands, and Heart:
This study found that 68% of leadership felt that the workplace environment empowered employees to be themselves, raise concerns, and innovate without fear of failure.
So why did only 36% of employees feel the same?
Clearly, there is a disparity between how leadership and other workers perceives organizational culture. If this gap were cut in half:
More women would feel valued as key team members and trust their input matters, rising from 1-in-4 to 1-in-3.
Retention rates would increase—by 5% for women and 1% for men.
More women would seek leadership positions, with aspirations increasing by 21%.
Culture matters, and it must be felt across the organization for belonging to thrive.
Every individual and every organization has a unique WHY for doing this work. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to creating a culture where everyone feels seen, heard, and valued.
That’s why AmazeWorks is offering free Q&A sessions just for our subscribers. Having support in this work can make all the difference.
Want to talk through strategic ideas?
Need someone to process an internal issue or conflict?
Have questions about cultures of belonging in practice?
