Are We Conflating Comfort and Belonging at Work?
Understanding the Difference and The Relationship
“I don’t think I belong here.” “I don’t feel comfortable here.” Both of these statements at their core signal something isn’t right, but is the sentiment and need the same? And in a work environment, which statement signals a cultural problem? Can they both?
The differences and overlap between comfort and belonging can cause confusion, especially when problem-solving and addressing harm within work environments. This is because for many, these concepts feel very similar; we’ve learned to associate them with each other in many cases, even though they are different.
If we were to play a word association game for the term ‘comfort’ my list of words would be something along the lines of: Relaxation, Space, Hugs, Cushion, Southern Food, Warmth
And for ‘belonging’: Connection, Visibility, Authenticity, Celebration
Comfort and belonging can be related like hugs and connection in my lists above or southern food and celebration, but they are not the same. Avenues to comfort are usually easy to identify. We know how to make ourselves comfortable because it is centered on the being, individual preference and personal needs. Even when we can’t access comfort, we usually know exactly what would be more comfortable.
Belonging can be a bit more elusive because it isn’t just dependent on the individual. We can identify what it feels like to catch moments of it, but what does it mean to experience environments where we consistently belong? Can you belong and be uncomfortable or be comfortable in a culture where people do not belong?
Work environments can be uncomfortable for positive and negative reasons and simultaneously be places where only some people feel they belong or the majority feel like they belong. To help clarify, here’s a breakdown of what the intersections in comfort and belonging can look like inside a place of work:
Centering Belonging Even Over Comfort
The main difference between comfort and belonging is that comfort centers the individual while belonging centers a collective or community. People and organizations might move through phases of any combination in the chart above depending on their personal orientation to comfort and organizational efforts to create belonging. Organizations may be limited in how they impact individuals’ levels of comfort, but they can do several things to create cultures where people belong. If we think of belonging as being determined by conditions that are foundational yet evolutionary and comfort as personal conditions informed by but not solely a result of conditions of belonging, we can see a path for organizations to make cultural changes with belonging as a north star, even through discomfort.
Both of these concepts are important in our day to day lives but it's important that organizations center belonging even over comfort as an organizational priority. Centering comfort can get in the way of serving collective needs, and depending on the situation, some discomfort can actually be healthy and needed in order to truly center belonging or stretch minds just enough to explore new possibilities. Additionally, several variables that influence comfort are not within organizations’ spheres of influence.
Imagine observing and tracking shifts in team members’ comfort at work. The influencers can be as varied as an individual’s ability to complete their own routine before coming to/ logging onto work to external conversations with family and friends about what work can look like to actual issues of belonging like hearing anti-queer jokes for example. All of these are valid reasons to be uncomfortable, but organizations have limited to no influence over the first two spheres. Tracking comfort wouldn’t tell you much about where and how to make meaningful cultural changes.
Let’s dig into the last factor a bit, hearing anti-queer jokes at work, an issue of both comfort and belonging. This type of behavior can and does make people uncomfortable but it also divides and others, affecting everyone’s sense of belonging even those creating harm (None of us are free until we’re all free!). Addressing it as inappropriate can make the oppressing person or group uncomfortable but centering the oppressing group’s comfort is clearly dangerous, problematic and inappropriate. Comfort isn’t, can’t be, the focus here.
Though this is a clear example of when comfort isn’t a priority, it shows that there is often the possibility of getting trapped here that organizations sometimes fall victim to if issues of comfort are actually signaling issues of belonging. Sometimes we get stuck solving for comfort first. Centering comfort, even when it’s not so clearly problematic, can at times diminish the gravity of large issues, individualize them and limit the ways that they can be addressed. Addressing issues through a lens of belonging first, however, elevates them, makes them communal, and ultimately creates better conditions for the collective that will inevitably create comfort where it is needed. Yes, there is a possibility that those creating harm may no longer feel they belong, but in reality they do; their behavior just doesn’t, and that’s ok.
Belonging at work can be more elusive in comparison to comfort, but that doesn’t make it impossible. Centering belonging requires a collective understanding of what conditions are hindrances to true acceptance and commitment to consistently removing them. It also requires us to collectively define what belonging feels like and creatively chart paths towards it, revisiting the map often. There is no one definition for what belonging at work is. Centering belonging is organizational, systemic and institutional; it’s questioning and addressing the covert and overt ways that people are made to not belong and designing systems and environments differently. And when issues of comfort arise, it’s slowing down long enough to understand the differences and connections between the two so that quick fixes for individualized needs aren’t favored over opportunities to make work better for all.
