Belonging is often considered a feel-good extra. But if your organization is serious about performance, you need to reframe it as a business essential.
In high-performing organizations, belonging isn’t an accident. It’s the outcome of deliberate effort. And the ROI is hard to ignore:
Yet, despite the upside, 3 in 4 employees have felt excluded at work. That’s not just a culture problem. That’s a performance gap.
It’s time to elevate your organization’s potential through belonging.
Belonging in the workplace means more than team happy hours or a Slack emoji reaction. It’s about whether people feel valued, included, and safe enough to contribute fully.
Based on longstanding psychological principles, belonging has four key ingredients.:
When these conditions are met, people engage more deeply, collaborate more effectively, and stick around longer.
Let’s look at what the numbers say:
Turn that around: When people don’t feel they belong, they’re more likely to disengage, burn out, and eventually leave.
You don’t need a huge budget to build a culture of belonging. What you need is consistency and intention. Here’s how to start:
Regular praise and acknowledgment help team members feel seen. Don’t wait for annual reviews. Appreciation works best in real time, especially during moments of stress or success.
Example: Exos encourages regular shoutouts on our intranet. The public recognition lets people feel seen and appreciated, and can even include spot bonuses and awards.
Make Well-Being Part of Your CultureThis is a big one. Breaks, flexibility, and recovery aren’t perks. They’re prerequisites for people to feel safe and sustained enough to belong.
Most importantly, it’s about helping people show up recovered. From our own hands-on research with Adam Grant and Marissa Shandell of Wharton School of Business, we found a high correlation between well-being metrics and belonging.
When people feel healthy and energized, they create a stronger culture, as well.
Example: At Pfizer, the Exos team added 10-minute movement and mindfulness breaks during peak stress periods. Survey data showed a noticeable lift in employee satisfaction from our Recharge Breaks.
Encourage Real Talk
Make space for respectful disagreement. It shows your team that honesty is welcome, not punished.
High-performing teams are made up of individuals who feel safe to challenge the status quo with their own ideas. While social connections are clearly important, building true belonging means empowering team members to truly speak their minds without fear.
Example: Leaders at Exos emphasize speaking last when asking for ideas, and intentionally asking for different perspectives. That means actually listening to and considering new ideas, while making teammates feel heard.
Welcome the Whole Person
Ask people how they’re doing outside of work. Be open to nontraditional paths, backgrounds, and perspectives.
Example: A manager starts one-on-one meetings with a check-in question like, “What’s energizing you this week,” or “How is life going for you in general?” The answers often reveal more than any status update.
Anchor in Purpose
Tie day-to-day work to shared goals and values. People feel like they belong when they know how their role fits into the bigger picture.
Example: One team starts their week by revisiting their mission statement. Then they connect it to one project they’re prioritizing that week to ground everyone in the “why.”
Belonging thrives when people feel heard. Build feedback loops into team rituals, then close the loop by acting on what you learn.
Example: RRD listened to their employees’ feedback that they were struggling with burnout and communication struggles. To address this, they partnered with Exos to bring the Performance Workshop to their team. Afterwards, 93% of participants agreed that their team's sense of belonging deepened.
Include Belonging in KPIs
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Treat belonging like any other performance metric. Build it into manager scorecards, quarterly goals, and leadership development.
Example: One Exos partner added belonging scores from their quarterly pulse survey into their leadership KPIs, putting culture and performance on equal footing. They’ve seen considerable improvements since tracking the metric.
Budget for Belonging
If it’s not in the budget, it’s not a priority. Make room for initiatives that build team connection, recovery, and inclusion.
Example: A company funded a monthly team experience fund, supporting things like team lunches, gratitude campaigns, and guest speakers.
Design for Inclusion
Think about belonging in everything from facility layout to meeting norms to tech tools. That includes cultural norms, too.
Inclusion is an essential foundation for principled dissent, allowing people to feel unafraid in speaking their minds.
Example: One organization revised their onboarding playbook to include belonging touchpoints, from welcome buddy systems to virtual coffee chats with execs.
Promote People Who Prioritize People
Recognize and advance leaders who create inclusive, high-trust environments — not just those who hit targets.
Example: A company built manager 360 reviews around psychological safety and team trust. This led to stronger teams and a more people-centered leadership structure.
When belonging is built into how you hire, promote, budget, and measure, it’s no longer just a nice-to-have. It’s part of how you win.
You don’t need to overhaul your culture overnight. But you do need to treat belonging as more than a morale booster.
Workplace belonging is a driver of retention, engagement, and business growth.
If you’re ready to turn intention into action, look into how Exos can support your organization’s belonging & performance.
About the Expert
Stefan Underwood, MS, CSCS, is Exos’ Senior Vice President of Methodology and a recognized authority on human performance. He holds a BSc in Exercise Science and a MS in Organizational Psychology. With 20 years of coaching elite athletes, Special Operations Forces, and Fortune 500 leaders, he helps turn human potential into peak organizational results. Stefan leads Exos’ multidisciplinary Performance Innovation Team and teaches cutting-edge methods worldwide through Exos Education.