Pastors on the Payroll - corporate chaplains - Brief Article

Training & Development, Dec, 2000 by Haidee E. Allerton

More U.S. companies are hiring clergy as a way to let employees know that their bosses do care about them.

Workers have usually had hot lines, Employee Assistance Programs, and the like to go to with work or family issues, but in-house chaplains offer the added dimension of being able to place problems in a spiritual context. In fact, this trend seems to be parallel with people's overall interest in finding more personal and even spiritual fulfillment in their jobs and work lives.

"Businesses are finding that chaplains can improve their bottom dollar when they see that a happier workforce can be a more productive workforce," says George Schurman, with the American Association for Ministry in the Workplace. "Chaplains can not only address emotional concerns, but are also trained and specialize in talking about spiritual concerns."

The rising incidence of workplace violence has also spurred employers to put pastors on the payroll. Marketplace Ministries is a Dallas company that has provided more than 800 Christian chaplains to organizations in 26 states. Family problems remain the focus, but there has been an increasing interest in helping workers cope with emotional problems before "reaching the boiling-over point."

Corporate chaplains deal with everything from job-related stress to marital problems to illness to thoughts of suicide.

To accommodate employees of different faiths, many of the Christian corporate chaplains know how to find a rabbi, an iman, a Buddhist monk, or representative of other denominations. And it appears that employee fears of Bible-thumping are unfounded. The corporate clergy also pledge strict confidentiality so managers don't know who seeks help for what reason.

This is actually not that new. Company chaplains go as far back as the building of the Hoover Dam in the 1920s, when they helped support those workers doing dangerous labor. Current estimates by the Houston-based National Institute of Business and Industrial Chaplains put the number of workplace chaplains in U.S. companies at 4,000.

Source the Washington Post

Info burst See T101 in this issue, "Can You Train People to Be Spiritual?"