The Belonging Shift Audit
Most leaders and organisations believe they value and champion “belonging” in their work. This 5-minute free self-audit will show you how you are actually tracking against a belonging mindset.
This is not about compliance or ticking a box on diversity, inclusion or engagement. If you are looking for that then this is not the tool for that.
This is about understanding belonging as a leadership mindset and as an organisational outcome and how this impacts participation, trust, and business impact.
A belonging mindset will help create the conditions that go beyond compliance.
What is belonging?
“Belonging is when you fairly create opportunities for everyone to belong, so that they can feel safe, welcomed, and can thrive - in the community and in your organisation.”
“When you do that, everyone benefits - everyone participates with high trust and feels more connected. There is a better business impact”
How to do the Belonging Shift Self Audit?
Think about a specific situation (e.g., area of work, project, program, service).
For that situation, answer each of the 7 audit questions honestly based on the scale below.
0 — Not on our radar
1 — We've talked about it
2 — We try, but inconsistently
3 — It's part of how we work
4 — It's visible and accountable
5 — Others learn from us
Guide to interpreting your scores is at the end of this page. Recommend not looking there first.
1. Vision - Is belonging clearly named as an outcome in your work?
To what extent does your program, service, place, strategy, or organisation clearly define belonging as an organisational outcome (for the community) and an outcome for the people doing the work (employees) — beyond broad language about diversity, inclusion or engagement?
Maturity signal: Belonging is named, understood, and used to guide decisions. People are not only present, but they can participate, influence decisions, contribute, and thrive with fairness and equal opportunity.
2. Leadership accountability - Are leaders actively talking about belonging and creating the conditions for belonging?
To what extent do leaders listen deeply to people across difference, and people different from them, and then, based on that, are willing to share power and shift their thinking and actions?
Maturity signal: Belonging is not delegated to one team, one staff member or one community group. Leaders own it as part of their role. Leaders recognise and challenge their own mindset barriers.
3. Community and social cohesion - Do you understand who this work is for and design with their strengths and barriers in mind?
To what extent have you identified the diverse communities, cultures, identities, and lived experiences of people who will receive or experience your work, and designed it with both their strengths and barriers in mind.
Maturity signal: You are not designing for 'the community' as one homogenous group. You understand that people are not only employees, clients or stakeholders — they are communities shaped by culture, identity, place and lived experience. You design solutions and services with their strengths and barriers in mind.
4. Place - Does this place, service or experience actually feel welcoming and safe for everyone irrespective of their background?
To what extent have you considered whether people feel welcome, respected, culturally safe and are able to participate in the physical and digital spaces your work occupies.
Maturity signal: Belonging is experienced in real moments — how people enter, are greeted, move through, speak up and feel seen.
5. Lived Experience - Does lived experience shape the work?
To what extent are people with lived experience involved early enough and meaningfully enough to shape the design, priorities, delivery and evaluation of this work. To what extent is lived experience considered expertise and knolwedge.
Maturity signal: Lived experience is not used as feedback after decisions are made. It influences what gets designed, funded and changed. Difference between information sharing, consultation and co-design is understood.
6. Systems - are your systems helping or blocking belonging?
To what extent have you reviewed the systems and structures (e.g. policies, processes, funding, governance, data, communication, recruitment, partnerships) to assess if they may be creating barriers to belonging?
Maturity signal: The focus shifts beyond events, statements, good intentions and interpersonal analysis — into the systems and structural barriers that shape people's actual experience. So, it asks, if all the people involved in the situation were replaced with a totally new set of people, would the issues and barriers still remain.
7. Outcomes and impact - Can you show what has changed because of this work?
To what extent do you measure whether people feel more welcome, connected, valued, influential and able to contribute — and use that evidence to improve decisions?
Maturity signal: Belonging becomes visible through outcomes, not just activity. You can show what shifted, who benefited and what still needs to change. Evidence is not just numbers — it includes stories, patterns and community voice.
Interpreting your scores
Below are some ways to interpret your scores:
The belonging deficit model — Scores of 2 or below across the board indicate that belonging is not a priority.
The Aspirational Gap — high vision scores (3 and above) and low systems score (2 and below), shows that there is a gap between commitment and embedding change in the system.
The Delegation Trap — low leadership accountability score (2 and below) and reasonable scores elsewhere (3 and above) show that we understand belonging but leaders are not accountable for it, they delegate it to others.
The Consultation Loop — low lived experience score (2 and below), despite decent community and place understanding (3 and above), shows that we understand who the community is, but don’t design with them in an empowering way.
The Activity Trap — low outcomes and impact score (2 and below) despite mid-range scores (3 and above) in other areas shows that there is a lot happening, but nothing is evidenced.
The Belonging champions — Scores of 4 or above across the board indicate that belonging is a priority. Well done.
NEXT STEPS
If you want to go deeper to understand your scores, book a FREE discovery conversation.
Work with Belonging Co to design and deliver a custom Belonging Shift Audit for your organisation, project, program or place. It will show you exactly where the gaps are and what to do about them.
Book a belonging shift training or workshop, which draws on the audit and the Belonging Co framework to improve awareness of leaders on the importance of building a belonging mindset.
The importance of a belonging mindset
Mantej Singh, Founder Belonging Co and Belonging Shift Podcast
Why belonging is the work underneath the work
There's no shortage of commitment to diversity, inclusion and social responsibility in organisations today. Leaders are signing pledges, launching strategies, showing up on panel discussions, and publishing annual reports full of targets and metrics.
And yet, ask the communities - employees or public - on the receiving end of this work whether they feel like they truly belong — whether they genuinely feel safe, seen, valued, and able to influence what happens to them and the answer in most cases will be: no or not yet.
The issue is that there are two layers of this work.
1) Visible layer, above the surface
Most organisations are investing heavily in the visible layer of this work. The policies. The statements. The events. The diversity data. The community engagement activities. The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports. These things matter. They signal intent but they don't, on their own, create the conditions for belonging.
2) Invisible layer, below the surface
Belonging lives in a different layer — an invisible one below all this work.
Belonging is an intersectional mindset, across all diversity and disadvantage dimensions, that asks:
Who belongs and who does not? Why?
What can we do about it?
Who decides?
If you do not investigate your approach to belonging, a lot of your work will remain at the surface level. It will look busy, it will meet different compliance requirements in parts, but it will not drive sustainable systems change.
To learn more about belonging
Listen to the Belonging Shift Podcast - conversations about community, place, leadership, and the future of belonging.
www.belongingco.com.au/belongingshift