We spend most of our adult lives at work. Undoubtedly, you hear mixed reviews from your friends and loved ones about their work experiences. Some may love their careers; while others complain of cultures that fail to foster meaningful relationships that extend beyond the job at hand.

So, what creates a positive associate experience? Perhaps it’s pay, meaningful work, and work/life balance—all important things—but I believe a big factor in whether you enjoy your work is having a community. Currently, only 39% of U.S. workers‡ feel strongly that someone at work cares about them as a person.

Building a community at work can be hard and feel unnatural. Striking up a conversation in an elevator rarely leads to a lifelong friendship—we typically need the opportunity for more meaningful interactions.

UMB’s focus on relationships is the foundation of our business, building our past, present, and future. For more than 10 years, our Business Resource Groups (BRGs) have been enhancing the associate experience – setting a tone of inclusion and community-building across our organization. Our BRGs celebrate the diversity of our associates and customers and allow us to keep evolving to meet their needs.

While the value our BRGs bring to UMB is ample, I’ve narrowed down five ways these groups bring value to UMB:

  1. Lasting relationships: The best part about the BRGs is that any associate can join any group: Abilities, Asian American, B-EPIC (Blacks for Empowering People Through Inclusion & Collaboration), Pride, SOMOS (Hispanic/Latino), VET (Veteran’s Engagement Taskforce), Women’s, and Young Professionals. Associates join these groups regardless of whether they personally identify with the group’s focus. This has led to UMB’s inclusive culture, incredible growth, collaboration and long friendships across our business.
  2. Nurturing leaders: The BRGs facilitate many leadership development opportunities for members, including one-on-one mentorship between our executives and BRG leaders. The BRGs host several speaker series, panels and insights to help associates maximize their leadership potential.
  3. Attracting and retaining top talent: Our BRGs are richly diverse, spanning many backgrounds, races/ethnicities, generations, and more. It’s important to us that potential UMB talent knows all can be successful here – and can see that success in action. Members of UMB’s BRGs enhance our ability to attract and retain the best talent by serving as ambassadors for the organization, telling their stories, and representing UMB at career events, educational workshops, and community involvement.
  4. Business insights: UMB’s lines of business can leverage the diverse knowledge of our BRG members as our leaders make business decisions that best serve our customers and communities. In the past, this has included BRGs partnering with the business on bilingual customer materials, accessible office layouts and training for communicating with all family types and abilities.
  5. Community impact: Volunteerism and supporting nonprofit organizations are a significant part of our associates’ involvement in the BRGs. In 2024, BRGs volunteered nearly 300 hours across our communities. These associates have built lasting relationships across our communities, leading to their service as board members, regular volunteers, event sponsors and more.

Our BRGs provide the opportunity for associates to forge new relationships, learn about different areas of the business, engage in our communities – and to be exposed to new people and topics they wouldn’t have otherwise. As we embrace the unique value each of us brings to UMB, we learn an important lesson: We have more in common than we might think, and each has something to offer.

To learn more about UMB and our connections to the communities we serve, visit our community involvement page and follow us on Facebook‡ and LinkedIn ‡.

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