Belonging and Productivity: How to Strengthen Bonding in the Workplace

Belonging is fundamental to understanding individuals and the processes of establishment and contribution in the workplace. Belonging to the workplace and feeling part of the work is linked to the possibility of sharing practices in community, creating meaning, participating in common goals, learning through participation, understanding new forms of identity through relationships with others, and transforming personal investments, representations, and growth.

Globalization and digitalization have created opportunities to be in different places at the same time, and smart work reduces the need for physical offices and borders, increasing the ability to work from anywhere, at any time.

Exploring workplace belonging, or belonging in the workplace, in the changing context of space and place is fundamental to understanding workplace learning. Belonging is a set of interrelated concepts ranging from basic human needs (Baumeister and Leary, 1995), social identity (Brewer, 2007), identification and meaning construction (Wenger, 2009), to situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991). ) and negotiated experiences in communities of practice (Brown and Duguid, 2001; Wenger, 1998, 2003).

The two components of the term "belonging" help us to play with some hidden meanings of the concept. "Being" and "longing" or "longing to be part of" present a vision of belonging that is driven by affective dimensions. "To be" and "long", or "to be for a long time", offer an alternative vision of belonging driven by spatial and temporal dimensions.

Belonging is the foundation of social identity, where the degree to which people feel they belong to groups involves cognitive, emotional, and evaluative elements (Ashforth and Mael, 1989; Brewer, 2007; Tajfel, 1972). Creating a sense of belonging to a community is strengthened when it involves understanding one's own identity: Who am I? Who do I want to be? (Child and Rodriques, 2011; Gherardi and Nicolini, 2002).

Wenger (1998) argues that to make sense of identity formation and learning in communities of practice, it is necessary to consider three modes of belonging. The first is engagement, which involves the active negotiation of meanings through the formation of trajectories and the development of histories of practice. Mutual engagement creates a sense of a shared reality in which to act and build identity. Shared histories can lead to the negotiation of meanings, but they can also create barriers to learning by maintaining social identity.

The second mode is alignment, which coordinates energies and activities so that participants' behaviors are aligned with the perceived collective enterprise and shared goals to contribute to broader structures. Participants do what they need to do to be part of something big, such as a transformation process. Alignment can increase participants' power and sense of possibility, but it can also be blinding and disempowering, leaving participants vulnerable to delusion and abuse.

The third mode, imagination, refers to the extrapolation of one's experience across time and space. It involves constructing an image of oneself, one's community, and the world that allows for the development of a reflective orientation to one's situation beyond direct engagement (Belle et al., 2015; Wenger, 2000). Imagination can create identity relations at any point in history.

The transformation process is driven by social, material and relational dynamics, including tensions. It is in the transformation process where commitment is fundamental, but also where the negotiation of meanings is central to learning to belong. This dual process of belonging and negotiating meanings in social practices affects the extent to which participants participate in social practices (Easterby-Smith and Lyles, 2003; Wenger, 2007), the boundaries of being and becoming, and thus possible barriers to belonging. Our participants' perceptions related to equality, uniqueness, among others, and to a large extent focused on informal social practices, can be a barrier to the formal organization or structure.

The basic need to belong is reflected in the theme of being part of something (the group, the organization, or one or more colleagues, with close relations to who the person wants to be [identity, in relation to others]). Belonging includes the material dimension of where a person belongs.

Belonging is always a situated and dynamic experience. It's about belonging here and now, through activities, shared goals, achieving together, feeling proud of the workplace, and being part of something as an equal.

Many factors influence employee performance, including job satisfaction and a sense of belonging. Employee ownership is also expected to reduce turnover, so that companies do not have to recruit frequently due to high employee turnover. By understanding the factors that contribute most to improved performance, companies can determine which aspects need the most attention compared to other factors.

References

• Dewi, S. , Suryamarta, R. , Kurnia, D. , Andariand . (2020), Sense of Belonging and Job Satisfaction on Employee Performance, Atlantis Press, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 116-142. https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/iccd-20/125945303
  

• Filstad, C., Traavik, L.E.M. and Gorli, M. (2019), "Belonging at work: the experiences, representations and meanings of belonging", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 116-142. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-06-2018-0081