The Brain Science & Business Case for Belonging

When was the last time you truly felt like you belonged at work? Not included, not tolerated, but genuinely part of something. Most people can answer that question instantly, because the feeling, and its absence, is unmistakable. What’s less understood is what’s actually happening in the brain when belonging is present or missing, and what that means for the bottom line.

We brought in Alyssa Dver, founder of the American Confidence Institute and the ERG Leadership Alliance, to unpack the neuroscience behind belonging and the business case for taking it seriously.

Belonging isn’t complicated, until you try to build it

Ask a room what belonging means and you’ll get a dozen different answers. The dictionary version is simple enough: a feeling of being accepted, valued and connected to a group, where people feel safe, seen and heard. But as Dver points out, even organisations with a Head of Belonging on the org chart will tell you it’s harder to create than it is to define.

That’s because belonging isn’t a single initiative or event. It shows up, or doesn’t, in the small moments: whether someone feels comfortable speaking up in a meeting, whether they know the person in the next cubicle, whether they feel like they can be themselves without hiding parts of who they are.

It’s a biological need, not a nice-to-have

Dver’s argument rests on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and on what modern neuroscience has since confirmed about it. Physiological needs come first: eat, sleep, breathe. Safety comes next, including psychological safety. Belonging sits in the middle tier, and Maslow’s insight, still holding up decades later, was that people can’t move up the pyramid toward self-actualisation, toward doing their best, most innovative work, until belonging is met.

Functional MRI research has since given that theory a biological backing. When someone feels emotionally threatened, whether by a bad manager, a moment of self-doubt, or a scroll through LinkedIn that leaves them feeling like an imposter, the brain’s amygdala reads it as danger and routes the response to the brainstem. That triggers fight or flight: defensiveness on one end, withdrawal and disengagement on the other. Neither is where good thinking happens.

When people feel safe and like they belong, the brain operates differently. The prefrontal cortex, the seat of reasoning, creativity and clear thinking, stays in charge. “When we feel a sense of belonging, we actually get the ability to be up here in our prefrontal, in our ability to think clearer,” Dver explained, “because we’re not scared, because we’re not emotionally under attack all the time.”

You can’t fake it, and the data shows when you don’t

Dver was direct on this point: belonging can’t be manufactured on the surface. A line in an ESG report or a slide at a recruiting fair doesn’t move the needle if people don’t feel it day to day. But when organisations genuinely build it, particularly through Employee Resource Groups, the results are measurable:

• Turnover drops by 50% when employees feel a strong sense of belonging.
• High performance rates rise by up to 89% among ERG members, and 153% among ERG leaders.
• Sick days fall by 75%, and job performance rises 56%.
• Job satisfaction increases by 40%, and innovation speed roughly doubles.
• For a 10,000-person organisation, the combined effect adds up to around $52 million in annual savings, with healthy ERGs linked to up to 23% more profit.

The common thread, Dver argued, is that ERGs remain the most consistent and common way organisations actually build this sense of belonging at scale, not through mandates, but by giving people a genuine community inside their workplace.

ERGs are shifting, not disappearing

Dver didn’t shy away from the current climate around DEI, particularly in the US, where a government directive has left many organisations, especially global ones, uncertain about how to support these programs. But her data tells a different story than the headlines might suggest: across 200 organisations surveyed, almost none reported shrinking their ERG budgets. Most held steady, and many reported growth.

Her read: ERGs are thriving not despite the political climate, but because they were never only about diversity in the first place. They’re about connection, in a world where remote and hybrid work, information overload and general disengagement have left a lot of people quietly lonely, even while sitting in a shared office.

The one thing anyone can do, starting today

For all the brain science and business data, Dver’s practical takeaway was almost disarmingly simple: let people know they matter.

That might be as small as thanking a colleague for making a job more enjoyable, or telling someone in a meeting that their point was a good one and you’re glad they raised it. “It’s so easy to do,” she said, “and yet how many of us would confess that we really haven’t done that consciously, maybe ever.”

Her closing challenge to the audience: support your ERG, and use it as a vehicle to let people know they matter. Do that consistently, and the rest, engagement, retention, performance, tends to follow.

Watch the full session or read the complete transcript for the full Q&A, including audience questions on measuring belonging and building ERGs in smaller or trade-based organisations.