Spirituality in the Workplace
Growing spirituality in the workplace is “a trend that is about to become a megatrend,” futurist and author Patricia Aburdene has declared. And there’s nothing simple about this trend, which could have a large impact on employee relations and performance.
Defining spirituality is difficult in itself. Is it, for example, somehow different from religious faith? The U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts have backed definitions that do not differentiate between formal religion and other forms of spirituality. Researchers Karen C. Cash and George R. Gray state that distinctions among “religious beliefs, spiritual experiences, and strongly held, secular value-laden convictions are little more than semantic.”
If religious beliefs and spirituality are seen as largely interchangeable, then there’s considerable evidence that spirituality is becoming more important in the workplace. There has been an increase in the number of products and services “aimed at people who want to integrate their religious faith and their work lives, a market segment that could not exist without a commensurate demand,” writes Theodore Kinni in Across the Board magazine. He points, for example, to a proliferation of faith-based books dealing with management subjects, especially leadership.
Even more compelling is the reported increase in the number of religion-based employee affinity groups. “We see a lot of activity in companies like P&G, Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and others,” said David Miller, executive director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Other corporate programs include meditation rooms, company-sponsored classes and even faith-based employee assistance programs (EAPs). Such EAPs have been growing among U.S. companies, where an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 corporate chaplains now minister to workers.
But some scholars make an important conceptual distinction between spirituality and religion. Ian Mitroff, a professor at University of Southern California business school and coauthor of the book A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America, studied the viewpoints of executives and managers. “Religion,” he writes, “is seen as dividing people through dogma and its emphasis on formal structure.... Spirituality, on the other hand, is viewed as both personal and universal.” The latter tends to mean “a total sense of connectedness in the universe; belief in a deity, and in a moral obligation to do good in the world.”
Others see workplace spirituality as having less to do with religious faith than with a desire to bring a different set of values into the work environment. From this perspective, workplace spirituality becomes more about espousing and managing value systems than about creating diversity programs for people with traditional religious beliefs. Carole Jurkiewicz of Louisiana State University and Robert Giacalone of the University of North Carolina identify a set of ten values associated with such spirituality: benevolence, integrity, justice, mutuality, receptivity, respect, responsibility, trust, generativity (i.e., concern with future generations), and humanism (i.e., seeking to bring about the greater good of humanity). They argue such a framework could be used for measuring workplace spirituality and its impact on organizational performance.
“Spirituality could be the ultimate competitive advantage,” Prof. Mitroff suggests. His work indicates that people working for “spiritual” companies “are less fearful, less likely to compromise their values, and more able to throw themselves into their jobs,” reports BusinessWeek. Well over half of the people (60%) that Mitroff and his colleagues surveyed said they think that spirituality benefits the work environment.
Even so, Mitroff doesn’t believe this has become a major trend. “Even though you can show that those organizations with a spiritual orientation outperform others, even on the profit side, only a tiny percentage of business leaders ‘get it.’” He also believes that it can be dangerous for companies to promote a specific religion in their desire to bring about a more spiritual workplace.
People who express their spiritual beliefs at work too forcefully or in the wrong context can sometimes seem to be proselytizing, especially when they’re in leadership positions. And some employees may consider this to be a sign of religious bias. “If history is any guide,” writes Theodore Zinni, “the expression of religious beliefs at work will likely lead companies into a minefield of interpersonal and legal issues.”
As employees’ spiritual needs are increasingly recognized, HR professionals and other managers will need to become adept at navigating such minefields. They must manage religious diversity and perhaps even encourage some types of workplace spirituality while avoiding acrimonious and divisive charges of religious discrimination.
The Association for Spirit at Work can be found at http://www.spiritat work.org
The article “A New Spirit at Work” can be found at http://www.christianscie ncemonitor.com/2003/1117/p14s03-wmgn.html
A portion of the article “The Many Delicate Issues of Spirituality in the Office” can be found at http://pewforum.org/new s/display.php?Ne wsID=3822
The article “Religion in the Workplace” can be found at http://www.busine ssweek.com/199 9/99_44/b3653001.htm
The article “Program Has Business Leaders Examine How They Could Employ Spirituality in the Working World” can be found by clicking here.
The article “Mixing Business with ... Spirituality,” which is about spirituality in India , can be found by clicking here .
More information about A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America can be found by clicking here.
The following sources were used in the writing of this TrendWatcher:
Cash, Karen C. and George R. Gray. “A Framework for Accommodating Religion and Spirituality in the Workplace.” Academy of Management Executive . ProQuest. August 2000, pp. 124-134.
Dolbee, Sandi. “Work Ethics: Program Has Business Leaders Examine How They Could Employ Spirituality in the Working World.” The San Diego Union-Tribune. LexisNexis. April 22, 2004 , p. E-1.
Harder, Joseph, Peter J. Robertson, and Hayden Woodward. “The Spirit of the New Workplace: Breathing Life into Organizations.” Organization Development Journal. ProQuest. Summer 2004, p. 79.
Johnson, Heather. “Taboo No More.” Training. ProQuest. April 2004, p. 22.
Jurkiewicz, Carole L. and Robert A Giacalone. “A Values Framework for Measuring the Impact of Workplace Spirituality on Organizational Performance.” Journal of Business Ethics. ProQuest. January 2004, p. 129.
Kanchier, Carole. “Finding a Place for Spirituality on the Job.” Vancouver Sun. LexisNexis. October 4, 2003 , p. D12.
Kinni, Theodore. “Faith at Work.” Across the Board. ProQuest. November/December 2003, p. 14.
Knighton, Ryan. “Wanted: Spirited Leadership.” The Gazette ( Montreal ) . LexisNexis. September 25, 2004 , p. H8.
Defining spirituality is difficult in itself. Is it, for example, somehow different from religious faith? The U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts have backed definitions that do not differentiate between formal religion and other forms of spirituality. Researchers Karen C. Cash and George R. Gray state that distinctions among “religious beliefs, spiritual experiences, and strongly held, secular value-laden convictions are little more than semantic.”
If religious beliefs and spirituality are seen as largely interchangeable, then there’s considerable evidence that spirituality is becoming more important in the workplace. There has been an increase in the number of products and services “aimed at people who want to integrate their religious faith and their work lives, a market segment that could not exist without a commensurate demand,” writes Theodore Kinni in Across the Board magazine. He points, for example, to a proliferation of faith-based books dealing with management subjects, especially leadership.
Even more compelling is the reported increase in the number of religion-based employee affinity groups. “We see a lot of activity in companies like P&G, Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and others,” said David Miller, executive director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Other corporate programs include meditation rooms, company-sponsored classes and even faith-based employee assistance programs (EAPs). Such EAPs have been growing among U.S. companies, where an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 corporate chaplains now minister to workers.
But some scholars make an important conceptual distinction between spirituality and religion. Ian Mitroff, a professor at University of Southern California business school and coauthor of the book A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America, studied the viewpoints of executives and managers. “Religion,” he writes, “is seen as dividing people through dogma and its emphasis on formal structure.... Spirituality, on the other hand, is viewed as both personal and universal.” The latter tends to mean “a total sense of connectedness in the universe; belief in a deity, and in a moral obligation to do good in the world.”
Others see workplace spirituality as having less to do with religious faith than with a desire to bring a different set of values into the work environment. From this perspective, workplace spirituality becomes more about espousing and managing value systems than about creating diversity programs for people with traditional religious beliefs. Carole Jurkiewicz of Louisiana State University and Robert Giacalone of the University of North Carolina identify a set of ten values associated with such spirituality: benevolence, integrity, justice, mutuality, receptivity, respect, responsibility, trust, generativity (i.e., concern with future generations), and humanism (i.e., seeking to bring about the greater good of humanity). They argue such a framework could be used for measuring workplace spirituality and its impact on organizational performance.
“Spirituality could be the ultimate competitive advantage,” Prof. Mitroff suggests. His work indicates that people working for “spiritual” companies “are less fearful, less likely to compromise their values, and more able to throw themselves into their jobs,” reports BusinessWeek. Well over half of the people (60%) that Mitroff and his colleagues surveyed said they think that spirituality benefits the work environment.
Even so, Mitroff doesn’t believe this has become a major trend. “Even though you can show that those organizations with a spiritual orientation outperform others, even on the profit side, only a tiny percentage of business leaders ‘get it.’” He also believes that it can be dangerous for companies to promote a specific religion in their desire to bring about a more spiritual workplace.
People who express their spiritual beliefs at work too forcefully or in the wrong context can sometimes seem to be proselytizing, especially when they’re in leadership positions. And some employees may consider this to be a sign of religious bias. “If history is any guide,” writes Theodore Zinni, “the expression of religious beliefs at work will likely lead companies into a minefield of interpersonal and legal issues.”
As employees’ spiritual needs are increasingly recognized, HR professionals and other managers will need to become adept at navigating such minefields. They must manage religious diversity and perhaps even encourage some types of workplace spirituality while avoiding acrimonious and divisive charges of religious discrimination.
The Association for Spirit at Work can be found at http://www.spiritat work.org
The article “A New Spirit at Work” can be found at http://www.christianscie ncemonitor.com/2003/1117/p14s03-wmgn.html
A portion of the article “The Many Delicate Issues of Spirituality in the Office” can be found at http://pewforum.org/new s/display.php?Ne wsID=3822
The article “Religion in the Workplace” can be found at http://www.busine ssweek.com/199 9/99_44/b3653001.htm
The article “Program Has Business Leaders Examine How They Could Employ Spirituality in the Working World” can be found by clicking here.
The article “Mixing Business with ... Spirituality,” which is about spirituality in India , can be found by clicking here .
More information about A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America can be found by clicking here.
The following sources were used in the writing of this TrendWatcher:
Cash, Karen C. and George R. Gray. “A Framework for Accommodating Religion and Spirituality in the Workplace.” Academy of Management Executive . ProQuest. August 2000, pp. 124-134.
Dolbee, Sandi. “Work Ethics: Program Has Business Leaders Examine How They Could Employ Spirituality in the Working World.” The San Diego Union-Tribune. LexisNexis. April 22, 2004 , p. E-1.
Harder, Joseph, Peter J. Robertson, and Hayden Woodward. “The Spirit of the New Workplace: Breathing Life into Organizations.” Organization Development Journal. ProQuest. Summer 2004, p. 79.
Johnson, Heather. “Taboo No More.” Training. ProQuest. April 2004, p. 22.
Jurkiewicz, Carole L. and Robert A Giacalone. “A Values Framework for Measuring the Impact of Workplace Spirituality on Organizational Performance.” Journal of Business Ethics. ProQuest. January 2004, p. 129.
Kanchier, Carole. “Finding a Place for Spirituality on the Job.” Vancouver Sun. LexisNexis. October 4, 2003 , p. D12.
Kinni, Theodore. “Faith at Work.” Across the Board. ProQuest. November/December 2003, p. 14.
Knighton, Ryan. “Wanted: Spirited Leadership.” The Gazette ( Montreal ) . LexisNexis. September 25, 2004 , p. H8.