Congratulations, new ERG Lead! 🎉
The next year is going to be amazing, and we’ll be here every step of the way to make sure you’re successful.
So where do I start?
Now that you’re an ERG Lead, there’s a handful of opportunities you have right off the bat to make sure you’re set up for success. This checklist details 5 of the most important things you can do as a new ERG Lead.
1) Make sure your ERG’s Overview is up to date.
Your group’s Overview page is the first impression and tone setter of your ERG. There are a few things you can check for to make sure you’re set up for success.
- Purpose/Mission Statement: It’s the first thing on the page for a reason. Make sure it’s up to date, and reflects the current state of your ERG.
- Logo: Having a brand for your ERG is a fantastic way to instill pride in the group, and make sure that the rest of your organization knows who you are. (Hint: most Brand and Creative teams love building logos for ERGs if you don’t already have one! It’s a great opportunity to blend your ERG and company identity into one, beautiful story.)
- Leadership Team: Have you updated your Leadership team breakdown? This is important so that existing members know who they can talk to in order to participate.
- New Member Message: If you’re not yet a member of an ERG, you’re shown a message from the ERG leads at the top of the Overview page inviting you to join. You can customize this message in the Lead Hub!
2) Plan your Meetings
ERGs tend to have Meetings monthly or bi-monthly to discuss goals, events, opportunities, or simply to network and meet others!
When you plan meetings in Verbate, a few things happen:
- Automated Emails: The morning of your meeting, an email will go out to your membership to remind them to join!
- Historical Knowledge: Any meeting notes or recordings you take can be saved within Verbate, making reporting and historical knowledge easy.
3) Add Event Ideas (and even begin to plan!)
Verbate’s Events tools are some of the most powerful (and helpful) for ERGs and their leads. Go ahead and Add New events to the Events board, helping you organize your ideas and planned events in one place!
- Define Details: You can designate who the event is for, the date and time, and so much more.
- Tasks: Once you’ve created an Event, you can begin defining the Tasks that will need to be completed in order for it to be completed. This is a great place to involve members of your ERG!
- Discovery: Any event that you’ve pulled into the Planned column will show up on the Upcoming Events tab, so everyone in the organization can participate.
4) Set your Goals
This one is huge. ERGs are able to accomplish amazing things, but only if they can stay focused and keep their resources headed in the same direction. This means creating goals that are able to gain the buy-in of the rest of your organization and are able to be accomplished within a reasonable period of time.
In order to help with this, we’ve incorporated key elements of OKR-based goal building and the 4C framework. We’ve found that by leveraging these familiar goal-setting strategies, it’s far easier to gain the support of your executive sponsor and the broader leadership team.
5) Tell people to join your group!
We’ve made this one easy: within the Lead Hub, you can find a link that’s easily shared in a company Intranet, Slack/Teams group, or email blast. Clicking this link will take them to a request to join your ERG!
Once someone has requested to join your ERG, you’ll have a chance to review their request and welcome them to your group.