introducing-the-employee-representation-group-erg
People
Aug 24, 2021

Introducing the Employee Representation Group (ERG)

Bhavna Mittal
Senior Manager - Supplier Experience

The Employee Representation Group (ERG) makes its public debut with an interview with its current Chair, Bhavna Mittal. The ERG is a group of employees elected by colleagues to represent them on company matters and advocate on its behalf to the executive team. Bhavna, who’s also a global sales project manager based in Dubai, highlights the team's wins, what it does, and what she thinks it takes to make an impact as an ERG member.

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Can you tell us about the ERG and what its purpose is?

The ERG is an entity of nine employees elected from across our offices around the world. Our purpose is to ensure that all employees feel represented and included in the workplace. Every GetYourGuide employee should feel valued, safe, and heard no matter their seniority, time with the company or location. By championing our colleagues in this way, we are enabling them to reach their full potential and nurturing the best possible working environment to serve our customers.

We try to impact real change in the workplace driven by our colleagues’ needs. We do this by analyzing feedback from the grass roots up which allows us to offer recommendations and solutions to senior management on issues affecting the workforce.

So what exactly does the ERG do? How do you prioritize the work?

The ERG supports our colleagues on a plethora of cross-company topics. These include company culture, employees compensation and benefits, career growth, and diversity and inclusion.

As you can imagine, deciding which areas to prioritize can be challenging, but we always aim to focus on the issues and concerns that most impact our colleagues. Quarterly objectives are established following analysis of the data collected through our various feedback channels, such as an internal intranet contact form and email. Recognizing the sensitive nature of some of these issues, we also allow anonymous feedback.

Once objectives are established, they progress in several ways. One way is through healthy, constructive discussion with our exec team, to whom we often present initiatives which we feel would benefit our colleagues. A recent success here is our involvement with the design of the Future of Work (FOW) principles. As well as being integral in their creation, we offered feedback in the development phase on behalf of our colleagues. Must of this input was incorporated into the final version

The ERG supports our colleagues on a plethora of cross-company topics. These include company culture, employees compensation and benefits, career growth, and diversity and inclusion.

We have also been fortunate to receive funding for voluntary focus groups within the company and have used this to sponsor activities on topics brought forward by these cohorts. As a result, we launched training for people managers on fostering sensitivity and management of mental health within teams and funded a customer research study on responsible tourism.

Finally, to assist our employees on these issues, we also support the People team’s OKRs and initiatives, where applicable. We meet monthly with the Execs and also have bi-weekly check-ins with the Chief People Officer.

How are people elected? Can anyone be an ERG member?

We're the second-ever elected ERG at GetYourGuide, and terms last for one year. Employees that have been at the company for over a year are eligible to nominate themselves or be nominated by a colleague to become a member. All nominated candidates then have an opportunity to make their case for election before a company-wide vote. A verified algorithm also ensures that the elected body represents all employees with due consideration to gender, departments, levels, and office locations beyond the headquarters.

What's one thing that the ERG has achieved that you are particularly proud of?

The pandemic and the subsequent shifts it brought to the working landscape put us on a steep learning curve. It also led to a lot of intense work on sensitive and urgent matters, but I am pleased to say that this did not stop us from driving clarity on critical topics for our colleagues and management.

Our advocacy for more transparency on career progression, levels, and compensation has been a case in point. Today, employees can find their level and career progression tiers listed against their organizational profile, and there are clear guidelines and structures in place for compensation and benefits benchmarking.

Another big win for the ERG has been our collaboration and contribution to the Future of Work Beliefs and Principles. Our hybrid approach took many months to formulate, and the ERG was consulted on at every step.

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