Reasons 6 & 7: When ERG Programming Gets Desperate and Unethical

There’s no nice way to say this, so I won’t: tying someone’s right to community to their ability to make your company money is unethical.

And that’s exactly what happens when ERGs are forced to justify their existence through revenue generation. You’re not just shifting strategy — you’re shifting the moral center of the work. You’re telling employees (who probably are already experiencing work burnout) that they only deserve resourced connection and support if their interests, lived experience, and volunteerism is profitable.

One could say that’s exploitation dressed up as innovation. ERGs weren’t created to drive sales. They were created to give employees space to breathe. To find each other. To be seen. When you wrap that purpose in ROI metrics and product goals, you gut the entire reason they exist.

It’s a slick way of saying, “You can belong here… as long as we can sell it.”

And it’s not just immoral — it’s lazy.

It avoids the real work of building equitable workplaces. It turns identity & interests into a tool to be leveraged rather than a part of someone’s humanity to be protected.

Suddenly, your Black ERG lead is expected to be a brand strategist. Your LGBTQ+ ERG is being asked to pitch marketing campaigns. None of these leaders were hired for this, trained for this, or paid for this. But they’re being pushed into it anyway — with no safety net, no data, and no backup.

The kind that eventually erodes trust in the very communities you claim to champion.

To illustrate: You don’t invite someone over for a meal and then ask them to sell dessert to the neighbors to justify their seat.

The ERG isn’t supposed to make the company money. It’s supposed to make the company worth being part of.

Now, let’s address the other side of this: the insecurity behind the scenes.

Because let’s be real — most companies don’t chase revenue framing for ERGs because it’s a good idea. They do it (the PMs) because they’re panicking.

Their program isn’t getting traction. Their executives aren’t bought in. Their metrics are fuzzy. They don’t know how to actually support the ERGs, so they slap on a sexier label: “Business Resource Group.”

They think it’ll help. That it’ll make executives listen. That if they can just tie it to sales or brand reputation, someone will finally care.

But instead of fixing the structure, they just rebrand the symptoms.

They pressure ERG leads to perform value instead of creating value.

They grasp for optics over operations.

And in the process, they build a program that looks good on paper and feels terrible in practice.

Because if your solution to a broken ERG strategy is “let’s make them pitch revenue,” you don’t have a strategy. You have a fear-based reaction.

And it’s showing (or will soon).

These were technically Reasons 6 and 7 — unethical and desperate. If nothing else, these final two reasons should drive the point home by making clear just how risky this approach really is.