Sense of Belonging at Work: Why it Drives Retention
You can match salary, offer flexibility, and still lose good people. What’s often missing is a sense of belonging.
In 2025, 55% of workers said they'd quit a job if they didn't feel a sense of belonging (up sharply from 37% the year before), according to Randstad's global Workmonitor survey. Belonging is one of the strongest predictors of retention available to HR teams today, and it shows up in workforce data well before it appears in a resignation.
What does ‘sense of belonging’ actually mean at work?
Belonging is different from fitting in. Fitting in implies ‘conforming,’ where people have a tendency to soften the parts of themselves that don’t match the energy in the room. Belonging, however, is being accepted, and valued for your contribution, without having to modify aspects of yourself in the first place.
Belonging connects directly to a well-established concept in organisational psychology: psychological safety. Harvard Business School's Amy Edmondson, whose 1999 study introduced the concept to organisational research, defines it as 'a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking' — the confidence to speak up, ask for help, or get something wrong without fear of humiliation.
Author and researcher Timothy R. Clark's widely used four-stage model of psychological safety builds directly on this, and treats belonging as the starting point rather than a by-product. His first stage, Inclusion Safety, describes the sense of being accepted for who you are before you've contributed anything at all. As Clark puts it, “the need to be accepted precedes the need to be heard.” Everything that follows (learning, contributing, challenging), is built on that foundation.
Is belonging really linked to staff retention?
Yes! And unlike most retention levers, this one is moving fast. In just twelve months, the share of workers who'd quit over a lack of belonging jumped from 37% to 55%, per Randstad's Workmonitor. Whatever's driving that shift, it means a majority of your workforce now names belonging as a dealbreaker.
Which raises the real challenge for HR and people teams: belonging isn't something you can wait to notice is missing. The usual warning signs, such as reduced input in meetings, fewer ideas offered, a job search quietly underway, tend to lag well behind the actual decision to leave. So by the time the signs are visible, there's rarely much room left to change the outcome. Building belonging has to happen ahead of that curve, in the everyday mechanics of how a team runs: whose ideas get credited in a meeting, who gets pulled into decisions and who doesn't, who gets checked in on and who gets overlooked. Get that right early, and the disengagement pattern most managers only notice in hindsight rarely gets the chance to start.
How do I build a sense of belonging at work?
Belonging is built through small, consistent actions rather than a single culture initiative. Five that make the most difference:
Name contributions specifically. “Good work this week” lands differently to “The way you handled that client call on Tuesday made the difference.”
In meetings, ask people directly for their view instead of waiting for someone to jump in. Quieter team members often have plenty to contribute, but need to feel comfortable enough to speak up.
Create low-stakes moments of connection, not just scheduled 'culture' events — the real ones tend to happen unplanned, like a morning chat at the coffee machine.
Check in when someone's gone quiet. Withdrawal is one of the earliest, most reliable signs that someone doesn't feel like they belong, and it can be easy to miss.
Model as a manager that people can bring their full selves, visibly. Use inclusive language and correct any exclusionary comments in the room.
The business case: belonging is a performance issue, not just a cultural one
Fostering a sense of belonging isn’t only about being a good place to work, though that matters too.
BetterUp surveyed 1,789 employees, and found that a high sense of belonging is linked to a 56% increase in job performance, a 50% reduction in turnover risk, and 75% fewer sick days. Run those numbers against your own recruitment and absenteeism costs and the business case builds itself.
Belonging as a psychosocial protective factor
Under SafeWork Australia’s model WHS laws, poor workplace relationships, lack of support and exclusion are recognised psychosocial hazards — meaning a lack of belonging isn't just a morale issue, it's something PCBUs have a duty to manage. Belonging works as the flip side: build it deliberately, and it becomes a protective factor that reduces psychosocial risk exposure across the team, not just a nicer place to come to work.
If you're not sure where your organisation currently stands, our free Psychosocial Safety Readiness Check covers connection and inclusion as one of the 7 hazard categories under the WHS Code of Practice, so you can identify at a high level what’s already working and what needs attention. Be Buoyant, our psychosocial safety training program, includes a module built around this exact territory for teams ready to go further.
The bottom line
Belonging isn't built through a new initiative or a bigger budget, but through habits a team already has — noticing people, hearing them out, checking in. HR and leadership teams have an opportunity to build those well, and the payoff shows up where it counts: stronger retention, better performance, healthier teams.
