belonging and retention

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An individual's sense of belonging has been widely recognized to enhance employee performance and commitment (Davila & Garcia, 2012) . To take advantage of this source of motivation, corporations have used orientation programs to acquaint new hires with staff and supervisory personnel, new employee mentoring programs, and more open communication for employee ideas and innovations in efforts to increase employees’ sense of belonging.  Universities have responded by creating programs to help students “fit in” through ethnically centered groups, culturally sensitive administration, and curriculum reevaluation (Miller, 2015).  Often these programs have fallen far short of their goals and sometimes even had negative effects.

Employee Retention

The Critical Elements of a Sense of Belonging indicate that an employee’s sense of belonging is built from clarity in a stable role. This role must connect to his beliefs, values, and goals through interactions that contribute to maintaining or strengthening his self-identity. Participation in the role must provide self-esteem, continuity, distinctiveness, (social) belonging, efficacy, or meaning.  The efforts of corporations to create a sense of belonging listed above fall far short of creating this level of relationship commitment.  

A job description and an employee handbook cannot achieve this relationship.  An employer needs to consider more than its objective role responsibilities such as salary and benefits that can be matched elsewhere.  The usual quarterly or annual performance reviews include only the objective performance of the employee’s role and seldom consider how the role is being assessed subjectively by the employee.  It is also not enough that the employee supports the beliefs, values, and goals of the employer. The employee must also feel that his employment is supportive of his personal beliefs, values and goals (See Belonging and Leadership) 

There is a negative effect on job satisfaction when corporate values conflict with worker values (Kumar, 2012).  “Moral stress” created by a disparity in ethical values and expected employee behaviors has been connected to higher employee fatigue, decreased job satisfaction, and increased turnover (Detienne, Agle, Phillips, & Ingerson, 2012).  

Although developing a sense of belonging is an internal process for each employee, employers can implement measures to reduce barriers to its formation.  Employers need to consider all forms of role strain their employees encounter.  Wickham and Parker (2007) presented a reconceptualized model of organizational role theory in which employers need to consider “the potential employee’s family and non-family roles that they need to enact for their self-validation, self recognition and overall wellbeing”  (p. 456) and that these considerations should continue into employee review programs.  

To enable a strong personal commitment from employees, performance reviews need to also include a discussion of how the organization has performed in the relationship. A review of the Six Critical Elements may reveal a weakness in the relationship that could be limiting employee commitment.

Post-secondary Student Retention

Post-secondary institutions may benefit from reviewing their student success and retention plans to include ways in which they can help students, especially first year students, realize their role as students and how the role fits their personal beliefs, values, and goals.  The research relating a sense of belonging to first-year student retention in post-secondary institutions, especially studies of minority students, use questions on finances, support from family and friends, academic satisfaction, (Hausmann, Ye, Schofield, & Woods, 2009), but none on how attending this particular university fits the student’s personally identified beliefs, values, and goals.  

However, there are successful programs for building a sense of belonging in students that unconsciously use the Critical Elements developed in this study.  These studies show the importance of helping students move toward an achieved identity status.  Part of Countryman and Zinck’s (2013) retention program for first-year students was designed “to assist in strengthening students’ beliefs about their abilities” (p. 8).  The program addressed self-efficacy by reassuring students that they bring a wealth of knowledge and skills to their new situation.  Reminding students of the specific expertise that brought them to the program appeared to boost self-efficacy beliefs for some, and at least began the process of self-reflection for others."  (p.8)  In a study of a successful first-year mentoring program at the University of Windsor that was designed to help the students build skills in self-concept and networking, Salinitri (2005) wrote the mentees found “the mentors to be very good at providing guidance in exploring realistic options and attainable academic and career objectives [goals].  And as role models in sharing their own experiences, all mentors were found to be effective” (p. 866).   

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