Many organizations are struggling with attrition, disengagement, and costly mis-hires that quietly destroy value. The real problem isn’t finding talent, it’s creating conditions where people can perform.
Research suggests that when people feel they belong, organizations see significant gains in productivity, retention, and innovation. Belonging can be measured, built into how work gets done, and connected directly to business outcomes.
So how can talent acquisition use belonging to change how it hires and the strategic value it delivers?
My guest this week is Eric Knauf, Founder and CEO of BelongHQ and author of The 56% Solution. In our conversation, he shares a practical framework for measuring belonging and explains how it could reshape TA’s role in an AI-driven world.
In the interview, we discuss:
• The five pillars of belonging
• Measuring belonging against business outcomes
• Why workforce planning comes before EVP
• Breaking roles down to the task level
• Belonging as a talent differentiator
• Shifting TA from seats to strategy
• The hidden cost of untapped potential
• Building trust during the recruiting process
• What does the future look like
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00:00
Matt Alder
Belonging isn’t about cultural aspiration. When it’s built into how organisations work, it changes who you hire, how you hire and why you hire. So what does that look like in practice? Keep listening to find out. Support for this podcast is brought to you by the Excellent Workplace Rating by Time Magazine and Statista, a new global standard for workplace recognition. If you’re committed to building a standout employer brand, your company can apply for the Time Magazine Excellent Workplace Rating and be evaluated across 14 categories covering the full employee lifecycle. You’ll receive a detailed data driven report highlighting where you excel as an employer and where you can improve. Companies that qualify will also earn the Time Magazine Excellent Workplace Award and logo to showcase their achievement beyond recognition.
00:59
Matt Alder
The program helps you truly understand your workplace and your people, benchmark against peers and strengthen your employer brand with credible third party validation. Head to the contact form at time.com Excellent Workplace that’s time.com Excellent Workplace and include the discount code Recruiting Future in your Message to receive 20% off your company’s rating.
01:44
Matt Alder
Hi there, welcome to episode 787 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alderman. Many organizations are struggling with attrition, disengagement and costly mishires that quietly destroy value. The real problem isn’t finding talent, it’s creating conditions where people can perform. Research suggests that when people feel like they belong, organizations see significant gains in productivity, retention and innovation. Belonging can be measured, built into how work gets done and connected directly to business outcomes. So how can talent acquisition use belonging to change how it hires and the strategic value that it delivers? My guest this week is Eric Knauf, Founder and CEO of BelongHQ. In our conversation, Eric shares a practical framework for defining and measuring belonging and explains how it could reshape TA’s role in an AI driven world. Hi. Eric and welcome to the podcast.
02:51
Eric Knauf
Well, Happy Monday Matt. Pleased to be here.
02:54
Matt Alder
Happy Monday to you as well and it is a pleasure to have you on the show. Finally, can you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
03:03
Eric Knauf
Sure thing. I’ve spent the better part of my career in TA land. It’s a place that I call home. Something that is familiar to me. I started back in 89 so a year or two ago, starting off doing full life cycle TA work, specifically in retained search and so over time my work shifted from the mechanics of how we do our job to something that is more underlying from A systems or a human infrastructure situation. Like what are the systems, the norms, incentives around people that enable them to do their best job that we’re hiring them for. So I moved from my TA role in a firm environment into broader RPO into that landscape. My first role was with a Fortune 150 organization leading corporate TA. And then from there I did a tour of duty in Lean Consulting.
04:04
Eric Knauf
How do you identify what value is, how do you identify what waste is and how do you mitigate those things that cause waste? And then happily I found myself back into TA in the tech sector. So I was with ARIBA when were bought by SAP. And since then I spent time in both publicly traded as well as privately held environments, both VC and private equity based. And that brings me sort of current up until I decided to launch my own thing.
04:36
Matt Alder
Tell us a little bit more about what you actually do now.
04:39
Eric Knauf
I had gone from environments where my background was focused on how do we double in size in a given period of time, how do we increase headcount, how do we automate, how do we move more quickly, how do we hit our headcount targets. I was brought in to a privately held environment pre IPO company that had just received a multi hundred million dollar investment to grow radically. And in doing so, the headcount that was to be on my team when I arrived, shortly after I arrived was to be 113 individuals. And so that include TA that included a breadth of areas within the HR organization. Within six months, Matt like the headcount was then capped at 38. We went through a radical riff and in that process I inherited the better part of the HR organization.
05:48
Eric Knauf
We cut 55% of the headcount and at this point my team was sitting at 11 people. Our amps was negative 73. If the quest was negative 100, were on our way there. What drives that? Well, people are upset. My team actually had a worse EMPS score than that, negative 73. So I brought everybody in to the corporate office and we ran a two day workshop with the team. The first day was radically different than the second day. The first day, Brian Chaney, who some of you know, actually helped facilitate part of the conversation. I wasn’t in the room. It was intentional that I was not in the room. It was described as a bloodletting.
06:41
Eric Knauf
And when they were done, I was finally invited back into the room and Brian said, brace yourself, you might not like what you see for some of this stuff is about you. I walk in to the room and lo and behold, all of it was about me as a member of the leadership team. It was all mine to own. Frankly. I cried. It was. It was brutal. The second day was sort of the antithesis of that. Embracing a page out of appreciative inquiry, which is a fantastic way to identify what do we look like at our best and what conditions need to exist for us to achieve that. I ran the team through the part of the exercise or the workshop where we did just that. Fast forward.
07:31
Eric Knauf
About half an hour after the meeting, I finally met with the CEO and he asked, so how did it go? After a while, decided that it was something that we ought to explore doing for the entire organization. And we did. We modified it so that it could be done by 15% of the company as opposed to everybody. We did it in three and a half hours as opposed to over two days. It yielded 76 recommendations of things that we ought to be doing. We chose to act on them. Well, the ELT decided not to act on all of them, but what are the top three priorities? And then let’s deliver on those.
08:14
Eric Knauf
And then without saying that we are working on them, we delivered on many of the others and then simply informed the organization that this is what we had done within six months. Our EMPs was positive 8. So that swing from negative 73 to positive 8 led Brian to say, you need to write about this. So that’s the good news. The bad news is within a month we had another riff and Brian and I both left the organization. But that did give me the opportunity to actually write about this. However, it morphed into something that I felt to be far more driven by science, including psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology, around this thing called belonging to. There’s some really good practitioners out there that have had a lot to say about the effects of belonging.
09:15
Eric Knauf
In fact, the book that finally came out was a 76% solution. And the title comes directly from a study done by BetterUp and Harvard. They found that companies that have belonging outperform their competition by 56%.
09:38
Matt Alder
Wow.
09:40
Eric Knauf
And it’s not only the 56%. They cut attrition by half. They were able to cut sick leave call offs and the like by 75%. And on the positive, they were able to increase throughput on innovation by 4x. Any one of those variables sound kind of good to me.
10:01
Matt Alder
Yeah, absolutely. And I think for a lot of people, belonging is seen as, you know, something that’s not really measurable or nice to have. Let’s just contextualize this a bit in talent acquisition so what is it that you’re seeing in hiring at the moment that you think is the biggest problem?
10:18
Eric Knauf
So, okay, there are a few things. Certainly there are use cases for automation in ta and I am a huge proponent of that. I think though the question is what is the value that is being derived from additional automation? So I think one issue that we have is there’s so many technical solutions being thrown at us that it’s hard to make out the force from the trees. That certainly is one. But I think what we’re seeing is there is a talent arms race for AI. Right now I see belonging. If an organization has it, that becomes a radical differentiator in the marketplace. After a while the amount of money on the table begins to. It’s not that all things are equal, but what is a differentiator there that is available?
11:11
Eric Knauf
What levers do we have at our disposal that we within an organization can draw upon when you unpack? Becomes pretty practical. Yeah, there is money, but there’s more about it in my work. So psychological safety. Can you tell the truth to power without being punished? Can you as a scientist, as an engineer literally say this is BS without fear of retribution? Can you actually call somebody out, obviously in a mindful way, but can you address the issue in the room? Does your voice matter? Or as a junior or fresh grad, are you subordinate to everybody else? That would be inclusion.
12:04
Matt Alder
Yes.
12:05
Eric Knauf
Are they going to provide you with the bandwidth needed to do your job? Are they going to provide you with the sponsorship to meet those outsized, those ROI expectations? Are they going to provide you with the sponsorship to actually be able to do that? That’s support. Are you going to be given access to the tribe of individuals that are going to enable you to grow so beyond who’s on your org chart, what about across the organization? That’s connection. Last but not least, the work that you are actually asked to work on, does it connect to the value that actually drive not only your ROI numbers but also the bigger impact on the organization in a way that you understand the why that’s purpose or alignment. These are things that frankly don’t cost a whole lot more than political capital within the organization.
13:12
Matt Alder
How do you measure this? How do you build it into, you know, a business case and how do you sort of apply it when you’re hiring people? How does it kind of fit together strategically?
13:22
Eric Knauf
So to measure belonging was found to have outsized impacts on bottom lines. According to this study that I, I mentioned a little bit ago, my question was behind the scenes, how is it measured not just around correlation, but causation. What is the direct line between behavior and outcomes? And tapping into the body of science that is out there for each of those five pillars that I mentioned, psychological safety, inclusion, support, connection and purpose. There have been some folks that have written works that I encourage every one of your listeners to check out. I would start off with perhaps Amy Edmondson and what she has written about psychological safety. She has been able to show direct connection between the environment in which somebody works and does somebody have the psychological safety to articulate something and outcome?
14:34
Matt Alder
We’ll be back to the interview in just a second. Before we do though, I want to tell you about HR Tech Europe, which is taking place on the 22nd and 23rd of April at the Rye in Amsterdam. It’s an event designed with HR leaders for HR leaders, bringing together our community to explore how technology is shaping the future of work. You’ll hear from senior leaders at organizations like Cisco, Marriott, H and M and Pandora, sharing what’s working in practice. There are also smaller peer based sessions like the HR Tech Intensives focused on working through challenges together. You can explore the agenda and sign up to attend@hrtechnologyeurope.com that’s HR technology Europe. I’m looking forward to seeing you there.
15:27
Eric Knauf
Each one of the pillars that I have framed out as the framework for belonging actually can be measured. I sought to do it in aggregate in a way that we can actually create a maturity model on top of it on those five pillars. So we can actually go into an organization and assess the level of inclusion or the level of connection as it connects to outcomes. We can measure that. We measure that through data that is provided from erps. We measure that through sentiment. And by the way, my goal was how do we create a framework that is not driven solely by do you feel like you belong?
16:20
Matt Alder
Yes.
16:21
Eric Knauf
How does it, how does it show up? How does it manifest itself in. In financials? How does it manifest itself on the OKRs themselves? So you can, and there are surveys. You. I mean it could be as simple as you can ask the question do you feel like you have these five things? I would argue, however, that you should probably take the time to go a little bit deeper and understand if in fact that is the case. Once you go through assessing the outcomes as it relates to each one of the pillars, or at the very least a survey of the organization, you know where your strengths and weaknesses are.
17:01
Eric Knauf
And I would argue that you drill down not only to what does the corporate number look like, what does the enterprise number look like but drill down all the way to the manager level. And I explained some of that in the book if folks are interested. Once you know that though, you know what you need to address within the organization to improve bipillar down to the manager level, to ultimately raise those levels of belonging. When you know what that is. Once you have that constructed, I would ask before you even build the evp, I would address workforce planning. First I would ask the question why are we hiring to begin with? So from a strategic perspective, let’s not put the cart before the horse. It’s fine and dandy to have an EVP, but why are we even hiring?
17:59
Eric Knauf
If you’re given $500 million by a venture capital firm, it’s not a gift. They’re making an investment for an outcome. That outcome is growth. And a CEO, a founder, will tell you we are seeking to do this to grow. But what does that mean? My question would be to what end do we invest those dollars? If we understand the nature of work, then we should understand how that works gets done down to the task level. We need to break all roles that we are all familiar with. Because we’ve worked those racks down to the task level and for our function, we’re in a unique position to be able to ask the question, is this something that can be done by technology? If so, perhaps it should be. Consider the building blocks of a role, what you have left.
19:02
Eric Knauf
It might be 72% of a role changes what you would expect or what you should be asking for when it comes to competencies, when you think about the skills. So it changes even how we take in how we do an intake for brand new requisition. If we’re carving out a chunk of them 30% because of technology, let’s double down on what that 70% consists of and that’s what we recruit for and tie it to the outcomes. And then if you could do that, it makes it easier then to craft what the EVP is. Because the fifth pillar, as I mentioned, is purpose. If you are recruiting for a role where the purpose is clear and articulated, it is easier to sell that than it is the administrative that comes along with that job.
20:06
Eric Knauf
If you could, and I would argue rather than companies hiring for all of those roles that they historically would have reinvest some of those dollars to enable those hires to be more successful. If you’re going to hire a human to do something crazy to hire them to be human. After all, that’s why you’re hiring them but to be human, they need the investment to be successful, they need the infrastructure to be successful. So strategically, I would say that’s where you have to start.
20:43
Matt Alder
The other piece for me here is that TA is looking at expanding its role. It’s looking at how it can bring more value to the business. It’s looking at how it can, you know, sit in this AI world differently and continue to thrive as a function. And I think what you’ve laid out there is a great example of how that can happen.
21:05
Eric Knauf
If TA can think about three drivers, I think it might help the conversation. One, what is the regrettable attrition in critical roles because they’re the ones that are destroying value? Two, what is the mis hire cost at senior levels? It’s massive. And one of the reasons for that is because of the nature of the infrastructure. We are hiring in some cases for the wrong competencies, sometimes the wrong skill sets. Three, the underutilized talent. Back to my days in lean land. The most expensive form of waste in an organization is the waste of untapped or unfulfilled human potential. People might be technically in a role, but psychologically they’re checked out. That is a massive hidden cost.
22:05
Eric Knauf
So if we start thinking about the nature of work through that lens, it changes the conversation with finance away from we filled X number of seats to an outcome driven conversation that makes perfect sense.
22:25
Matt Alder
And just to finish off by focusing on the future a little bit, how is the workforce going to develop? What do you know, we’re looking at the rise of agentic AI companies, huge amounts of investment going into AI. What’s the impact on the workplace? What’s the impact on things like belonging as things get shaken up even further?
22:46
Eric Knauf
I was speaking with a large consulting firm and the conversation at one point tapped into how do we actually manage agenic AI? If you recall, at the AT Unleashed, Peter Henson said that there was a tech CEO in the Bay Area that was asked, how many employees do you have? And his answer was 300, of which 30 are human. So to say, what does the future look like? The future is upon us now. That is why TA is in a unique position to actually be able to say on every single new wreck, is there a more effective way to allocate your resources for this hire? And if you could focus on those elements of the job that are indeed uniquely human, that is one shift that has to take place.
23:41
Eric Knauf
I think that if we could elevate the role of belonging within an organization, it might it mean fewer hires, but they become far more strategic hires. They become an investment closer to CapEx than OpEx. And because of that, if it is CapEx, you’re going to invest to maintain and enable and empower that CAPEX to be successful. So if we could raise the level of belonging within an organization, again, it might mean fewer heads on headcount sheet. On an organizational map, the work still is being done. It might be done by bots, it’s being done. But the humans that you choose intentionally hire because they are human, they are now being enabled as humans, which requires a different type of support and infrastructure.
24:41
Matt Alder
Absolutely. There’s a final question. There’s some big things here and I know people will be listening, thinking that there’s a lot to do to get to that point in their organization. What would your advice be on just getting started? What sort of practical things could people do straight away to move in this direction?
24:59
Eric Knauf
So TA actually is in a beautiful position because we are on the front end of the impact of this within the organization, but also outside the organization. So we serve as a conduit, we serve as the vehicle to communicate it and perhaps to put a lens on it. So within the organization, take a look at the life cycle that fills ta. What is the need all the way through to when they join and onboard? In the past I wrote about new hire trust credits. Up until somebody joins an organization, the company is making deposits in a trust bank with that candidate. Once they show up on day one, it is much harder for the company to build additional trust credits.
25:57
Eric Knauf
When that person comes back to work their second week and discover that half the team got together with other colleagues over the weekend and they were not invited, their inclusion drops immediately and it also impacts connection. When they discover that their voice that they cannot actually ask questions about concerns, their psychological safety evaporates. So every conversation we have with a candidate through the journey, it’s an opportunity to build up that trust. It’s an opportunity for us to instill the value that we place on belonging before somebody even shows up, encourage them to ask questions that historically recruiters might have found prickly once they’re on board. What is it that we can do with regards to pre boarding and onboarding to ensure that journey continues for them?
27:01
Eric Knauf
I would also suggest that we think about the language that we use in any posting on any website. Does it reflect an environment that actually embraces belonging? Does it somehow convey support? Does it convey connection? Does it convey purpose? Or is it just simply a post for an open role? This falls immediately into the employer branding seat. But even from the with regards to recruiting ops, how do we engage those candidates through the process? Sourcing changes we now can use, thanks to some tooling that’s out there, target organizations that are having a challenge when it comes to trust. When it comes to psychological safety, this is sometimes called out on Glassdoor, among other places. Those are opportunities because those individuals at those companies are hungry. They’re hurt. They are hurting for this.
28:09
Eric Knauf
So our targets can shift a little bit, but it also changes how we communicate and how we engage with that talent. So those are a few things that those of us in TA can do, starting right now, that don’t require investment.
28:24
Matt Alder
Absolutely. Eric, thank you very much for talking to me.
28:28
Eric Knauf
Matt, I appreciate you and thank you for having me.
28:32
Matt Alder
My thanks to Eric. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com or on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
