Here's link to article in today's New York Times about role of chaplains in
businesses--several examples including one at a Tyson chicken processing
plant....
www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/business/04chaplain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Interesting to see the variety of functions the chaplain plays for people,
whether it's spirit-religious counsel or helping someone figure out how to
pay the mortgage. This multi-functionality is expected, of course, but it
was striking for me to see how this translates in the business context.
Makes me wonder: To what extent can the benefits of an organization's
internal HR/OD functions be enhanced if beneficiaries explicitly associate
them with Spirit?
More broadly, does it help if an organization's culture consistently
associates the presence of Spirit in all gestures of
kindness/care/connectedness (among staff, customers, and stakeholders)?
If this association is helpful, under what conditions does the chaplain role
make a positive contribution?
I realize there's much active research on all this. (Though given my
layperson status here, not sure which issues covered!) In any case,
wondering what questions an exec would ask after reading the article....
A few excerpts from the article below:
* * *
Companies tailor the chaplaincy program to their culture. Cardone
Industries, a Philadelphia company that refurbishes auto parts for resale,
draws its chaplains, almost all lay people, from its employees. Other
corporations, like American LubeFast and Herr Foods, contract with an
outside company like Marketplace Chaplains to provide chaplains. Some, like
Tyson Foods, which started its program in 1999, have their own chaplains,
127 of them at about 250 of the company's more than 300 plants in North
America, said Allen Tyson, the company's head chaplain, who is not related
to the founders of the company.
* * *
Employees come to him [company chaplain] because they feel uncomfortable
seeing a counselor or social worker. Some have no church of their own.
Others may feel too embarrassed about their problems to go to their own
pastors. Or it may simply be because he is there, right by the entrance, and
willing to help.
"That's my understanding of the pastoral role," Mr. Willis said, after
taking a phone call from an employee in the hospital asking him to bring her
paycheck. "I treat everyone the same, and my hope is that they will see in
me the love of God."
* * *
Turnover is down sharply at Glen Allen, which, like about half of Tyson
plants, is unionized. But it is unclear how much of the decline can be
attributed to the chaplaincy program, managers there said. ...
One morning, Mary Jones sat by Mr. Willis's desk and cried softly. She had
lost her car and was on the verge of losing her house, her job and her grip
on a life that had taken so long to build. Mr. Willis helped her secure her
house and then found people to replace her leaky roof for free.
"No one never done anything like this for me before," she said, "what he
helped me to do."