Create a culture of belonging
Whether you are looking for your next opportunity or building your next team — we can help
What is Belonging?
Creating and maintaining a sense of belonging in the workplace means facilitating an environment where employees can bring their full selves to their jobs. Accomplishing that can be much more difficult than it sounds; it requires an on going process, as well as the culmination of success in areas like inclusion and communication.
To employees, a positive work culture is a group effort, and it’s an effort most of them want to be included in; they want to work with a team that takes each other’s strengths and capabilities into account, and supports each member’s needs.
Common Workplace Culture Problems—
Why They Matter
that silently damage performance, trust, and retention.
High
Turnover
Employees leave when they feel unseen, undervalued, or out of place. This is especially true for new hires who don’t feel welcomed or supported early on. The cost? More than just recruitment dollars. Constant turnover disrupts team dynamics, delays projects, and harms morale.
Low
Engagement
When employees feel disconnected from their team or purpose, participation drops. Silent Zoom calls, skipped meetings, or less feedback from work. These are not personality issues — they are cultural warning signs. Low engagement leads to missed ideas, stalled innovation, and inconsistent performance
Inauthentic
Behaviour
If people feel unsafe being themselves — culturally, personally, or professionally — they start to “mask.” They hold back questions, ideas, and even their personality, fearing judgment or exclusion. A surface-level workplace that looks “fine” but lacks real creativity, collaboration, and connection.
Strategies to Create Belonging
Even with the best intentions, many teams struggle with invisible culture issues
that silently damage performance, trust, and retention.
Create Group
Foster belonging by offering an inclusive space for community engagement to build trust among members. Skill Squirrel's convenient AI feature for creating groups allows you to capture the essence of your organization to describe your group's purpose, then freely enhance it for a more personalized approach to make your members feel welcomed.
Hold Community Building Events
Bring members of your workplace closer together by offering them opportunities to connect on a personal level. Some ways this can be achieved is by hosting team bonding events outside of working hours, or supporting the fundraising activities of local non-profits to strengthen community engagement. Building awareness for these initiatives is easily done by creating event posts on Skill Squirrel and sharing them on socials or by email.
Start a Mentorship Program
Mentorship between different levels of workers is an effective way to foster a sense of community, loyalty, and companionship in the workplace. Employees that have mentors are likely to approach new job challenges feeling more prepared and feeling confident in their skills, while mentors have the chance to reinforce their own knowledge and gain new perspectives on job roles. Employers that provide both proteges and mentors with recognition of their achievements using verifiable digital credentials benefit from positive brand positioning, which helps to attract talent.
Keep Everyone in the Loop
Employees want to participate in a work culture built on belonging, so make sure that they are aware of any events and programs where they can do so. Make use of Skill Squirrel's Widget Maker to create an opportunity board made expressly for use by your employees and located within your corporate intranet. Then share key data insights as evidence of your organization's efforts to foster a culture of belonging, because employees don’t only want to see the implementation of belonging strategies, they want to see that you genuinely care about achieving a better work culture.
Practice Effective Communication
Be willing to listen to and address issues employees might be experiencing. Listen openly to suggestions and seek out constructive opinions to find a solution that improves work life for everyone. Consider using Skill Squirrel to set up private feedback groups moderated by a neutral party, where employees can express their concerns and ideas for improving their work environment. Strive to communicate in an encouraging way; if someone is doing a good job, acknowledge their efforts, or if someone is struggling, ask them what they need to succeed.
Finding a Workplace Where Your Truly Belong
Being in a negative work culture isn’t easy, and many people experience problems with communication styles or work habits that don’t match up throughout their careers. These types of issues usually don’t become apparent until after you’re onboarded. It’s hard to really get to know a company without experiencing it for yourself, but there are still ways to determine if it might be a bad fit.
Join Groups
Use Skill Squirrel’s group page to review an organization's public group, and see how you feel about the posts and content shared there. Browsing groups can provide helpful information about the organization, and allows for a closer look to be taken at how their work culture might be. Some positive signs to look for include groups that off training, events, and credential earning opportunities.
Ask Questions
Questions like “how would you describe your work culture” are commonly asked by interviewees. While this is an important topic to bring up in an interview, a company looking to recruit will never tell you that they have an unhealthy work culture. A probing approach to questioning, such as: “Can you share a specific example of a time when the company's core values guided a difficult decision—especially when there was pressure to prioritize revenue or faster growth over doing the right thing?" can elicit more detailed and revealing response, because it move beyond generalities.
For more tips that you can apply during the interview process, such as using body language to your advantage and speaking confidently, check out Skill Squirrel’s workshop video Career Soft Skills Primer.
Do Your Research
Research is a crucial part of job searching, but don’t let your process end at the positions themselves; research can also help evaluate your fit in a company’s work culture. Before joining a company, take some extra steps to find out if they align with the type of environment you want to work in.
Most people find it difficult to research career and/or job options within an industry when exploring “dream jobs.” This Skill Squirrel workshop simplifies research techniques using a step-by-step process.
Watch for Indicators
Pay attention to descriptions within job postings, particularly any sections mentioning work culture or other employees. While there are no guarantees about how inclusive or welcoming a work environment is from looking at a post, keep an eye out for descriptions pertaining to specific sectors of society a post is targeting, as well as any inclusivity and accessibility indicators.
Skill Squirrel's process for creating posts includes the ability to more fully describe opportunities using these indicators:
Community Tags:
Skill Squirrel posts allow for community tags to be attached to indicate if the opportunity is targeting BIPOC, Disabled, Newcomer, Older, Veteran, Women, Youth, or any combination thereof.
Accessibility:
Skill Squirrel posts may also have an accessibility indicator attached to indication if the place pertaining to the opportunity is accessible for individuals with limited mobility, including wheelchair users.
Physical Demands:
Skill Squirrel's interactive physical demands form may be added to posts for describing the physical requirements, as well as cognitive and environmental conditions, pertaining to an opportunity.
These indicators allow candidates to select opportunities best aligned with their needs for a potentially better cultural fit.