Employers Report a Sense of Belonging Important to Success

The Business Case for Belonging at Work — and How to Build It

Belonging is one of the most measurable drivers of performance and retention — and one of the most at risk in a distributed, polarized world. Here’s the evidence, Deloitte’s three-part model of what belonging actually consists of, and how to build each part.

People who feel they belong to a group thrive within it — and the workplace is no exception. When employees perceive themselves as belonging to an organization’s culture, they are more likely to be engaged, productive, and to thrive at work. That intuition is now backed by a substantial evidence base: belonging is one of the most measurable cultural drivers of performance and retention an organization has, and — in an increasingly distributed and polarized world — one of the most at risk.

This article lays out the business case for belonging with the data behind it, unpacks Deloitte’s three-part model of what belonging actually consists of, and — the part most ‘why belonging matters’ pieces skip — turns that model into a practical guide for building each component.

The business case: belonging is measurable

Belonging has climbed the ranks of recognized organizational success drivers alongside well-being and diversity, and the research quantifies why. The figures below are drawn from Deloitte’s and BetterUp’s foundational belonging research; dates are noted so you can gauge their vintage:

That last figure is worth stating in full: organizations that establish an inclusive culture — a foundation of belonging — are twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets, three times as likely to be high-performing, six times as likely to be innovative and agile, and eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes (Deloitte, 2020). Belonging is not a soft nicety; it is a driver of the outcomes organizations already measure.

Why belonging is under pressure

Two forces are making belonging harder to sustain, which is precisely why it has become a business imperative rather than a nice-to-have.

• A more polarized society. External division seeps into the workplace. The World Economic Forum has observed rising ‘public frustration with the status quo’ and the division of groups into ‘us vs. them’ across the US, UK, and elsewhere — dynamics that don’t stop at the office door and can quietly erode employees’ sense of belonging.
• Distributed and remote work. The large-scale shift to remote and hybrid work that accelerated in the early 2020s made distance a permanent feature of most organizations. Technology can paradoxically increase loneliness, and simply working from a remote location can alienate an individual from the organization’s sense of community if belonging isn’t built deliberately.

Neither force is reversible by an organization on its own — which means belonging now has to be actively designed rather than assumed to happen on its own in the office. That makes a clear model of what belonging consists of especially useful.

What belonging actually consists of: comfort, connection, contribution

Deloitte breaks an employee’s sense of belonging into three attributes that build on one another — comfort, connection, and contribution (Deloitte, 2020). The value of the model is that each attribute points to different, concrete actions. The table lays out all three, then each is developed below:

Comfort: the baseline

Comfort is the foundation — employees have to feel comfortable in their working environment before deeper belonging is possible. This is where inclusion, fairness, and diversity do their work: people who feel treated equitably and free to be themselves have the psychological safety that everything else builds on. Comfort is closely tied to the inclusion and diversity research covered in our companion pieces, and it’s the attribute most directly damaged by the ‘us vs. them’ polarization noted above. Building it means investing deliberately in fair treatment and an inclusive environment, not assuming it.

Connection: meaningful relationships and shared values

Connection is the next layer — feeling linked to the organization and the people in it. Employees are more productive when they maintain meaningful working relationships with coworkers and when their own values align with their employer’s. This is the attribute most threatened by distributed work, because informal connection doesn’t happen automatically across distance. Building it means creating deliberate opportunities for relationships (not leaving them to chance), and communicating organizational values clearly enough that people can genuinely align with them.

Contribution: the deepest form of belonging — and the most measurable

Contribution is the deepest attribute: employees feel they belong most fully when they believe their work matters and that their contributions are recognized. This is where recognition does its most direct work on belonging — recognition is the clearest, most immediate signal an organization can send that a person’s contribution is seen and valued. It’s also the most measurable of the three attributes: while comfort and connection are somewhat diffuse, whether contributions are being recognized — and whether that recognition reaches everyone, including remote and frontline workers — is something you can actually track. Rewardian’s platform data shows that teams where recognition reaches contributors broadly (rather than concentrating on a visible few) report meaningfully higher belonging-related engagement and lower turnover than teams with narrow recognition distribution (Rewardian Platform Analytics, 2024).

Building belonging: putting the model to work

The three-attribute model turns ‘build belonging’ from a vague goal into a concrete agenda. A practical approach works all three layers deliberately:

• Build comfort by investing in inclusion, fairness, and psychological safety — the baseline conditions that let people be themselves, and the ones most eroded by external polarization.
• Build connection by creating deliberate opportunities for relationships (especially for remote and hybrid employees, where connection doesn’t happen by default) and communicating values clearly so people can align with them.
• Build contribution by making work meaningful and recognizing contributions consistently and broadly — the most direct and measurable lever of the three, and the natural place to start.
• Measure it. Belonging climbs the same rankings as well-being and diversity precisely because it can be tracked. Recognition distribution, engagement, and retention by team and location turn belonging from an aspiration into a managed practice.

Belonging, well-being, and diversity all continue to climb the ranks of important organizational success drivers — and belonging may be the one that ties the others together. Employees who feel they belong are more engaged, more productive, and more likely to stay. In a world where polarization and distance are pulling the other way, building belonging deliberately — comfort, then connection, then contribution — is one of the higher-leverage cultural investments an organization can make.

Sources

1. Deloitte. (2020). 2020 Global Human Capital Trends: The social enterprise at work — Paradox as a path forward. Belonging as an organizational priority (79%), the comfort/connection/contribution model, and inclusive-culture business outcomes. [link]

2. BetterUp. (2019). The Value of Belonging at Work: The Business Case for Investing in Workplace Inclusion. High belonging associated with +56% job performance, -50% turnover risk, -75% sick days. [link]

3. World Economic Forum. Observations on rising public frustration and ‘us vs. them’ social division as context for workplace belonging.

4. Rewardian. Workplace Well-Being and Its Impact on Performance; Diversity & Inclusion. Companion articles on the well-being and inclusion dimensions of belonging. [link]

5. Rewardian Platform Analytics. (2024). Recognition Distribution and Belonging: Effect of Recognition Reach Across Teams and Remote Workers on Engagement and Retention. Internal data from recognition programs with 200–5,000 employees, 2022–2024.

Refined and restructured June 18, 2026. This version preserves all original citations (Deloitte 2020, BetterUp 2019, World Economic Forum) and dates them inline; neutralizes the 2020-specific time references (‘this year’s abrupt shift,’ ‘173% since 2005’) into durable framing; organizes the statistics into a table; develops Deloitte’s comfort/connection/contribution model from a single paragraph into three full sections plus an action layer; adds a descriptive title and meta description; and adds Rewardian recognition-distribution data on the ‘contribution’ attribute.