At Workplace Options, one of our core missions is to help organizations create psychologically safe and inclusive environments that enable all employees to thrive and unlock their full potential at work. This is achieved by embracing diversity, championing inclusive, accessible leadership, mitigating psychosocial risk, and honoring the whole person and their holistic wellbeing—but most importantly, it’s done by creating a culture of belonging.
Creating this culture of belonging can be particularly challenging in today’s globalized world of work, as more organizations must contend with time, language, and cultural barriers in order to effectively manage increasingly diverse teams. To cultivate belonging in these environments requires more than simply making employees feel seen and heard; it involves empowering people to work together toward a common goal, feeling like they’re a part of something greater than themselves.
At its core, belonging is about feeling not just respected, included, and supported, but feeling agentic—having a shared sense of ownership and influence over something, whether that’s a project, team, workplace, or organization. It comes when leaders not only listen to what their employees have to say but thoughtfully implement their suggestions. It comes when employees across different regions or backgrounds can not only get along, but get things done.
These are all important insights highlighted in a recent publication by WPO’s own Rivkah Sherman, Certified Coach and Project Development Coordinator who recently completed a Master’s degree in Human Systems Intervention (Process and Change Management) at Concordia University. In her article, A Microcosm of Belonging Amidst Global, Multilingual Organizations: A Case for a Design Team, published in the latest issue of the Organizational Development Review, Sherman relates her experience leading a design team for an internal summit and examines how this initiative helped bridge communication gaps, foster collaboration and innovation across diverse teams, and create a stronger sense of belonging within the organization.
To celebrate this achievement and explore its implications for global organizations, Bob Batchelor, VP of Global Marketing and Communications at WPO, recently sat down with Rivkah in a new podcast episode to talk about her findings and consider how global organizations can apply these insights to better manage diversity, foster belonging, and unlock the full potential of their teams.
Read below for a glimpse into their insightful conversation:
Bob Batchelor: For those who haven’t read the article, A Microcosm of Belonging Amidst Global, Multilingual Organizations—which we know is about Workplace Options—was your case study. What did you see at that initial summit that shaped your approach when you started putting the project together the next year?
Rivkah Sherman: That’s a big question. But before I answer, I want to acknowledge my academic supervisor, Rosemary, from Concordia University in Montreal. She’s an absolute saint for putting up with me.
The irony is that when I first took on this project, I wanted to do it all myself. But she told me, “No, Rivkah. It’s not dialogic organizational development if you do it alone.” And I didn’t get it at first. She had to tell me—again and again—until, finally, I did. But it was only by going through the process that it really clicked: It’s better if we do it together.
That’s what my article is about. I had thought I could just orchestrate everything myself. In school, group work always felt like meetings, coordination, discussions. I figured, “This will be my chance to do it my way.” But my supervisor insisted, “No, you need a group. And not just any group—you need a microcosm, a true reflection of the company.”
By the end, I loved these people. Most of them are still with the company. They had never met before, but we worked together across the world on this project—and became friends. I couldn’t have done it without them.
And just for dramatic effect—my grandmother passed away on the first day of the summit. Because of that, I stepped away more than I would have otherwise. And this eight-person committee I had assembled? They stepped up. It made me realize—if I had been doing this alone, it would have crashed.
Yes, it took longer. But in an organization as complex as ours, with different departments and countries, collaboration wasn’t just better—it was essential. Looking back, it’s almost comical that I thought I could do it alone.
Bob: Yeah, the complexity must have been overwhelming at first. Smart people think they can carry the world on their shoulders.
I’m always surprised by how interconnected everything is in an organization—not in a bad way, but in how one thing touches so many others, often in ways you don’t expect.
Did this process feel typical of other corporate projects you’ve worked on? Because most projects don’t end up as a master’s thesis and an article. Did that add pressure, or did you eventually get so immersed in the work that you forgot about the bigger picture—like a reality show where the cameras fade into the background?
Rivkah: What stood out was how much leeway I was given. I kept thinking, Really? You’re letting me do this?
My role became bridging that freedom with structure—defining what we could do within our constraints: “We have one week, this many people, this much time, this budget.” But beyond that, the trust Alan, Molly, Darrell, and everybody placed in us was special. That’s why I wanted to do my project with WPO—because real collaborative change happens when leadership trusts employees to know what’s best.
All we did was host conversations. Employees weren’t making top-down decisions; they were simply given space to share their intelligence and experience. And executives showed up—not just to listen, but with genuine enthusiasm. Seeing senior leaders engage directly with employees on problems they probably spend so much time thinking about was really powerful.
I think that’s where I ultimately found success with this project. I wanted to create opportunities for the VP of our company to have a brainstorming session with the person who delivers the service and then everybody in between, and for them to come up with a suggestion and then implement it. And we’re still working on implementing those suggestions now.
Bob: This is fascinating because it touches on so many things that get talked about a lot, but not always acted on. On one hand, I think, Why isn’t everyone doing this? But then there’s the reality of running a business—where ideas often get reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet.
So it’s fascinating to hear not only that this was a case study, which makes it infinitely more interesting than just the exploration of a theory or something like that – but that you got the human reaction and saw that, over time, some of these things that were suggested could become real, which is so important.
“A microcosm of belonging.” Can you talk a bit about the idea of belonging? It’s a word that gets used frequently, but I wish more C-suite leaders genuinely cared about it. Maybe I’m too pessimistic when it comes to that, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on belonging in an organizational and cultural context.
Rivkah: I want to preface this by saying that I think, often, we hear belonging in the context of diversity, equity, and inclusion—DEI&B. But when I started researching belonging, I was surprised at how little had been written on belonging itself, outside of DEI. And the idea for this came from a friend of mine in Halifax, Bradley Day, who runs an HR company. He led a DEI workshop but started with belonging—and it was eye-opening.
As a cis, hetero white woman, I sometimes felt like I shouldn’t have an opinion on belonging because I haven’t faced systemic exclusion. But Bradley made me remember that, of course I know what it’s like not to belong. Whether from being neurodiverse, an only child, the new person at school, or starting a new job—everyone has felt it in some way. And by making the workshop about belonging, that just lit me up inside, and I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s what actually matters.’
Why did I choose to do this project with WPO? Because for the first time in my life, I belonged at work. I have late-diagnosed ADHD. I’m highly creative. I’ve worked at many companies, but only at WPO did I feel truly seen and valued for my strengths.
That led me to a core question: How do we help employees be their best? They need to feel like they’re part of something. When I asked people—during the summit and while organizing it — “When do you feel most engaged at work?” their answers that came up were: “When I feel like people are listening to me,” “When I feel like my opinion matters,” “When I feel like I can ask for help without being judged.” And those are the same things that come up when we ask what belonging is.
Bob: That’s fantastic. What I love about this is – I spend so much time writing about these topics – but hearing it as a lived experience, as a case study, brings a whole new perspective.
One of the things that came out of the WPO acquisition of The Diversity Movement was the creation of the Employee Engagement Model, and it really is a way to structure thinking about employee engagement because we know from studies that only about 20% of global employees feel engaged at work, which leads to all kinds of bad things. In the individual needs bracket of that model, ‘What does a person need to feel engaged?’ They need wellbeing, they need belonging, trust, professional development. And you’ve just hit all four with your experience. So, I love the fact that you don’t just say you love working at WPO—you say you belong.
Rivkah: Yeah, and I think when we talk about employee engagement and belonging and ask, ‘What does it mean to belong?’ It’s not only feeling seen and heard but – and this is what happened in the planning committee, and it’s what happens on a team at WPO, and it’s what happened in my cohort for my Masters – when the going gets really tough, what’s going to keep me showing up and keep me engaged is that I care about the people that I’m working with. That’s why I wanted to publish this article—because I care about my colleagues and their opinion of me. I know they’ll celebrate my successes. That’s also what belonging is.
What I learned from my research and this project was that it’s not enough to just sit around as a committee and talk about stuff, you have to do work together to have belonging happen.
Committees often get a bad rap, but when they actually do something—not just meet for the sake of meeting—that’s where belonging happens. That’s what made this summit special. After meetings, people weren’t just discussing ideas—they were spontaneously drafting documents, translating content, proofreading for each other. That’s when we really flexed as a global organization. That’s when the magic really started to happen. So I think that’s an interesting piece about belonging, too. It’s not just about talking or sitting on committees or having a group session—it’s about doing work together.
Bob: Yeah, that’s great, too, because when you go up the scale, the Employee Engagement Model is built like a pyramid, with employee engagement at the top. It’s really designed to help leaders and employees understand how to achieve engagement. A lot of that work happens through teams.
Personally, I’m the same way—I’d rather do things myself, but it’s never as powerful as when it’s a team effort. Team outcomes—collaboration, innovation, retention, and productivity—are key. You mentioned that most of the people are still here, and I’d imagine this experience made them feel good about themselves and about WPO. You were innovative, and you just described productivity through collaboration. This is essentially a case study for the Employee Engagement Model, and you’re bringing it to life, which I love to see.
Rivkah: Yeah definitely, that’s so true. And it’s interesting because I hadn’t even known about the model when I wrote the article, but it does really reflect my experience, and I think that’s why organizations need people in organizational development. You might think, ‘Why do I need someone to help me work with others?’ but the reality is, not many people have actually learned how to work together; most of us weren’t taught how to collaborate effectively. And that’s the kind of work that I do and that I learned to do in my Master’s program.
In my opinion, we need systems, frameworks, and processes to do good work together. It’s like having a map. One of my mentors once told me that theories function as maps—it’s not about being proven right or wrong, but about acting as guides. When I started working with a committee of people who didn’t know each other, I presented a theoretical map on a PowerPoint Slide, I can’t recall the exact name of it now, but it helped set expectations for our journey and form the basis of how we were to communicate together. You have to take the time to set the stage—an intro meeting, a round table where every voice is heard—because that’s how psychological safety is created. And that’s even more critical when working across cultures, right?
That’s something we talk about a lot at Workplace Options. You might be in a meeting with people from Uruguay, Australia, and Portugal, and we all have different ways of working, but at the core, we’re all human. And so, it’s important to acknowledge that and find a way of working together that honors that fundamental commonality.
Bob: Yeah, that’s something we focus on a lot at The Diversity Movement. There’s a practicality to it, but it’s not something people are typically taught. You see this with ethics—some schools have adopted ethics courses because they recognize how much unethical behavior exists in the world. Whether organizations act unethically on purpose or just stumble into it, someone eventually realized, hey, maybe we should be teaching this earlier.
I feel the same way about belonging, diversity, trust, and psychological safety. These should be taught alongside so-called leadership skills because, in my mind—and tell me if you disagree—I don’t think future leaders will have the luxury of ignoring these topics. If demographic trends continue, younger generations simply won’t tolerate the kinds of workplace conditions that older generations, like mine, had to endure. I could tell you some horror stories about how awful the workplace was when I was in my 20s and 30s. But I don’t expect my daughters, who are in college now, to put up with the same. Even with DEI being politicized, organizations still take these topics seriously because they recognize their importance.
Rivkah: Absolutely. And I want to acknowledge the skeptic in the room—the eye-roller who’s listening to this and thinking, oh, here we go again, because my article—and my lived experience—are proof that these aren’t just nice-to-have concepts. When you practice psychological safety, relationship-building, and inclusive leadership, the work itself improves; it’s more efficient. So, yes, you can do it because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it makes the work better, right? It sounds so simple, yet we often forget it.
That’s why leadership training is important, but I’m especially interested in the small, everyday ways we build better teams. adrienne maree brown, who I quote in my article, talks about the ripple effect—how small actions can have a big impact. If you’re a leader and you want to practice inclusive leadership, how do you start your meetings? Do you take a moment to check in with your team? “Hey, Bob, how are you? How are things going?” Do you take that time? Especially in remote work, where we don’t have the water cooler moments—do you know what’s going on in your colleagues’ lives? Not in an intrusive way, but just enough to acknowledge each other as human beings? Are we humans first? I think that’s an important thing to remember.
That’s something I love about and truly believe is the privilege of working globally. I’ll generalize a bit here, but our colleagues in South America remind me of this all the time. Whenever I’m working with someone from the U.S., they usually dive right into the issue within the first five minutes. But if I’m coaching someone from South America, they need to know where my mother is from, where I went to school, what I had for lunch. And they need to feel like we have a human connection before they’re ready to tell me their secrets, and that’s actually so valid, right? We need to have this relationship built before we can do good work, and I think that’s what belonging is really about. Even if that takes place in an hour and a half meeting, right? How do you build the relationship in order to do the work? Skipping it is like fast food.
Bob: Wow, that’s really powerful. That’s a great question that should maybe be the main question they teach in MBA programs: Are we humans first?
For more powerful insights about the importance of belonging and how it can be fostered within global organizations, listen to the full conversation between Bob and Rivkah now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or at https://www.workplaceoptions.com/podcasts/fostering-belonging-at-work-insights-for-global-organizations/.
Check out Rivkah’s full article, A Microcosm of Belonging Amidst Global, Multilingual Organizations: A Case for a Design Team, published in the Organizational Development Review (Volume 57, issue 1) here.
