Belonging—to have positive and enduring social connections with others—is an innate human need that plays an important role in work motivation, job satisfaction and constructive interpersonal behaviors at work. While prior research suggests that positive social interactions with coworkers build strong social connection and ultimately satisfy needs for belonging, such social interactions may be difficult to achieve for members of minoritized social groups, especially in environments in which they have a low likelihood of social fit. We investigate technical workers’ sense of belonging in a qualitative interview study of 33 Black and 32 White full-time workers in 63 technology companies in the U.S. Existing research has emphasized work versus non-work-based social interaction as a source of belonging. Our findings extend and enrich this research, showing that it is not only the context in which the interaction occurs that matters to belonging, but whether those interactions are interpreted by the participants as “safe.” Using a grounded theory approach, we find that White workers more often use personally-centered cues (being friendly, being similar) while Black workers, who have a lower likelihood of social fit as technical workers, more often use collaboratively-centered cues (being in sync, being supported) when assessing their social connection to their coworkers. Our study challenges the assumption that belonging needs at work may be satisfied in the same ways for non-minoritized and minoritized workers and suggests that interpersonal safety cues, both personally-centered and collaboratively-centered, may guide how these social interactions interact with workers’ sense of belonging.
