SIOP Foundation and CHRO Association ERG Research Collaboration

One of the primary goals of the SIOP Foundation is to ensure that the science and best practices of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology are accessible to leaders who can drive meaningful change within organizations. In pursuit of this objective, the Foundation has established a partnership with the CHRO Association, an organization comprising nearly 400 Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) from the largest employers in the United States and globally. The first collaborative project has focused on examining Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).

This initiative began with a request for experts to summarize key scientific findings from existing literature on a variety of topics. Dia Chatterjee, Larry Martinez, Ann Marie Ryan, and Kecia Thomas, under the guidance of SIOP Foundation trustees Mirian Graddick-Weir and David Rodriguez, developed concise summaries to share with the CHRO Association. With input from Dia Chatterjee, Ann Marie Ryan, Bill Macey, and Nancy Tippins, the CHRO Association subsequently designed a survey and a follow-up interview to assess ERG practices among CHROs. The interviews were conducted by Dia Chatterjee, Adrienne Colella, Sarah Walker, Jennifer Wessel, Felix Wu, and Ann Marie Ryan, with support from Tim Bartl, Ani Huang, Alexandria Trujillo, and Nancy Hammer of CHRO Association. The CHRO Association report has now been released and is available here.

Beyond the survey, the CHRO Association hosted a workshop for its CHRO members on ERG-related topics, during which Ann Marie Ryan presented insights from an I-O psychology perspective. Additionally, Ann Marie is preparing a separate report analyzing the survey results through the lens of I-O psychology.