By Janus Boye
"Belonging is not the warm glow after a team lunch. It is a hardwired human need."
This was one among several notable quotes from Antonia Fedder during her energising recent members’ call on The Business of Belonging. Exclusion, she reminded us, registers in the same region of the brain where we process physical pain. The cost of ignoring this is profound for organisations, while the upside of taking belonging seriously is decisive.
Antonia, who is a Hamburg-based designer and an active member of our community, brings a rare combination of clarity and pragmatism. A little later in the conversation, it became clear why. Her work spans inclusion, product strategy and organisational design, giving her the ability to show leaders not just why belonging matters, but how it becomes a measurable performance lever rather than a cultural accessory.
For clarity, what follows is arranged differently from the recording, bringing the main themes together in a cohesive narrative. Towards the end, we have also embedded the full recording along with the slides.
The human truth powering our organisations
The science behind belonging is remarkably consistent. Humans crave social connection in the same neurological region associated with hunger, and exclusion triggers the same area responsible for registering physical pain. When people do not feel valued, recognised or safe to contribute, their engagement, creativity and stability erode almost immediately.
Antonia offered a definition that resonated strongly across our community: belonging is the feeling of being valued, recognised and safe to contribute. In her framing, inclusion is the invitation, but belonging is the emotional response that follows. It is the moment people stop asking “Do I fit here?” and instead feel, often instinctively, “This is a place where my presence makes sense”.
This distinction matters more than it may appear.
Inclusion can be engineered through policies, programmes and representation. Belonging emerges only when those efforts translate into lived experience. It shows up in everyday interactions: who speaks, who feels heard, who is remembered, who is trusted, who is encouraged, who is interrupted, who is given room to fail and who feels the psychological safety to bring forward ideas that challenge the status quo.
Antonia’s point was clear: most organisations focus on the mechanics of inclusion but neglect the deeper human outcomes. And it is those outcomes, felt, embodied and often unspoken, that drive retention, creativity and performance.
In many organisations, belonging remains accidental. Antonia’s challenge to us was to make it intentional.
Where business performance meets human need
One of the reasons leaders lean in when Antonia speaks is that she brings data that is difficult to ignore.
Internally, the business impact of belonging is striking:
56 % increase in job performance
50 % reduction in turnover risk
75 % fewer sick days
For a 10,000-person organisation, this equates to an estimated 52 million dollars in annual savings.
Externally, the customer opportunity is even larger.
The disability market represents 1.6 billion people and over 2.6 trillion dollars in disposable income across North America and Europe. When extended to include friends and family, it totals 18.3 trillion dollars globally. Yet 74 percent of companies admit they lose customers due to inaccessible or exclusionary experiences. Organisations that invest in accessibility see revenue increases of 38 percent and customer loyalty increases of 53 percent.
Belonging, then, is not just an internal culture strategy. It is a route to market access and competitive advantage.
Leadership for a neurodiverse and multicultural world
One of the strongest threads in the conversation was around neurodiversity. ADHD alone affects nearly 5 percent of German adults, yet most corporate structures are not designed with these employees in mind.
Antonia highlighted how organisations like SAP and Deutsche Telekom are redesigning processes with neurodivergent staff, reducing overstimulation, adjusting return to office policies and creating environments where focus and contribution can flourish. These examples demonstrate belonging as a leadership skill, not an HR initiative.
We widened the lens even further.
Ethnocultural minorities, when more fully included in the workforce, could add 120 billion euros to Europe’s annual GDP while addressing critical talent gaps. This economic perspective sparked discussion across our community.
Our Spanish community member Daniel Serrano from Griddo raised a related but often overlooked issue: age-based exclusion. In many markets, especially Spain, older professionals feel the constant need to re-prove their value. Antonia acknowledged how common, and how costly, this dynamic is.
And then came a moment that brought a smile to many faces. We explored the parallels between belonging and fan culture. As noted during the call, brands like Apple and Taylor Swift do not simply attract customers, they create emotional membership. It is a reminder that belonging scales far beyond HR or design thinking. It is the heart of loyalty.
Designing products and organisations that signal belonging
The most practical moment in the session was when Antonia introduced the Product Inclusion Checklist (PDF) inspired by Google. It offers a structured way to ensure teams build inclusion into their product development process, from early discovery to post-launch review. It encourages teams to test under real-world conditions, involve diverse users, consider accessibility from the start and treat inclusion as a fundamental requirement rather than an afterthought.
Alongside the checklist, Antonia shared three strategic moves:
Invest in inclusion beyond compliance
Build with, not for
Measure belonging alongside business KPIs
She summed it up like this: Belonging is measurable, profitable and essential.
Antonia closed the call with three simple but transformative questions. They have stayed with many of us since:
What helps people feel they belong in your workplace?
How might your organisation signal belonging or exclusion to customers?
Where would an investment in belonging make the biggest impact?
These are not HR questions. They are strategic leadership questions. They remind us that belonging is not a warm sentiment. It is a design choice. And increasingly, it is a competitive edge.
Learn more about belonging
If you would like to explore the themes of belonging, loyalty and inclusive design in more depth, the following resources offer useful perspectives for our wider community.
First three good books:
• Fan Culture by Matt Hills. A foundational look at how and why people form deep emotional attachments to communities, brands and shared identities. It offers a helpful lens for understanding how belonging shapes loyalty and how organisations can learn from fandom dynamics.
• Building for Everyone by Annie Jean-Baptiste. Written by the leader behind Google’s product inclusion work, this book expands on the ideas reflected in the Product Inclusion Checklist. It outlines practical ways to embed inclusion into product development and demonstrates how inclusive design opens new markets.
• The Art of Community by Jono Bacon. A practical guide to building and sustaining communities. It explores how belonging is fostered through shared values, consistent practices and inclusive leadership.
And as a personal bonus, I also enjoy Fans by Michael Bond. A lively, accessible look at why humans form devoted groups and collective identities. It offers broader psychological context for why belonging matters across society.
You can also learn more in these blog posts:
• Decoding Bias: Navigating the Digital Landscape Towards Inclusivity - A previous members’ call featuring Antonia Fedder that explores bias, inclusive design and accessible digital products. A natural companion to this session.
• Introducing digital product equity. A look at how equitable product design expands access, improves user experience and supports more inclusive digital ecosystems.
The conversation naturally continues in our peer groups at conferences in Europe and North America. Why not join us and be a part of it?
Finally, you can also download the slides (PDF) and even lean back and enjoy the entire recording below.