How This Helps

Every year, conflict in the workplace costs employers an estimated $1 Billion (see Corporate Chaplains of America). ViaCordis Chaplains help employers reduce the costs associated with conflict management, turnover, training of replacement employees, and helps to increase retention as documented by a growing number of sociological studies (e.g. Duchon & Ploman 2005; Fry 2008).  

The marginal cost of adding chaplains is easily more than offset by increases in productivity and the reduction of other overhead costs. They have a direct impact to costs associated with turnover and lost productivity. Furthermore, healthcare and safety costs are also reduced when employees are able to work through their problems with the help of a spiritual counselor.  

Workplace spirituality is associated with conscientiousness (Jardesty and Westerman, 2009), fitting with leaders’ perception that employees would be able to pay more attention to their jobs if/when they had avenues for dealing with life issues. In jobs requiring manual labor, chaplaincies can also reduce costs and lost productivity due to workplace injuries and accidents. Productivity can be improved by reducing the costs associated with stress-related illnesses, mental health, and physical health.

Problems at home result in problems at work; employees who are stressed out are more likely to be unproductive, or even a safety risk to themselves and to others. Employees frequently face problems in their home life such as teenage truancy, drug and alcohol abuse, spousal abuse, lack of childcare, and marital distress, each of which impact their productivity at work. ViaCordis chaplains are able to provide the resources and referrals that employees need to deal with life crises and challenges. While chaplains don’t necessarily replace other company-provided services, such as an Employee Assistance Programs (EAP), they complement and enhance them, increasing employee engagement of other employee benefits. By taking this proactive approach, ViaCordis chaplains help to improve employee wellbeing, which then contributes to the organization’s bottom line (Fry, 2005). Improved wellbeing is also associated with higher levels of job satisfaction (Robert, Young, & Kelly, 2006).

The spiritually centered or welcoming organizational culture that includes the values of care, concern, community calling, joy, fulfillment through work, and altruistic love, all contribute to employees who are more engaged and committed to their organizations. Chaplains have a profoundly positive impact on these values / variables, each of which contributes to organizational productivity (Benefiel 2005; Duchon and Ploman 2005; Fry and Slocum 2008; Poole, 2009; Saks 2011).

ViaCordis chaplains can help foster an environment where organizational members experience a sense of calling, contributing to their life’s meaning and difference-making. They also help foster a social/organizational culture based on altruistic love whereby leaders and followers experience genuine care, concern and appreciation for self and others, thereby producing a sense of membership and a sense of feeling understood and appreciated.

Traditional sources of community in America have disintegrated, resulting in a rather disconnected and lonely society. Employees, by implication, are increasingly isolated, alienated, and less active in social support groups. Thus, the workplace has become the primary, and in some cases only, community for many employees. As a result, it becomes necessary for employers to provide resources to cover the gap of missing social support networks that would have traditionally been available through outside organizations, such as the church, the family or other civic communities.  

As people become more lonely and isolated (Harvard Business Review 2017, “Work and the Loneliness Epidemic”), companies are turning to chaplaincy services to support, encourage and care for their staff in a personal, human-to-human, way. Through them, employees experience authentic care, which creates a deepening sense of community in the workplace, contributing to employee engagement, which in turn contributes to organizational commitment and an overall positive organizational climate. Employees are more satisfied, engaged, productive and healthy.   Spiritual / Theological Imperative  

The average person spends more than 90,000 hours at work in their lifetime. We believe it is our moral obligation to demonstrate the love of Christ right where people “live” and pledge to follow Jesus’ purpose in empowering people to live life to the full (see John 10:10).

We believe that caring for employees is a business and spiritual imperative and is supported by current socio-cultural conditions of alienation and insufficient social support systems. Caring about employees’ holistic needs fulfills a mandate of spiritual leadership which includes the elements of hope/faith and altruistic love, and contributes to employees feeling understood and appreciated, in turn contributing to positive individual and organizational outcomes. Caring for employees results in them feeling understood and appreciated contributes to creating a positive, spiritually centered organizational culture and a sense of community. That may also have the added benefit of connecting with younger employees entering the marketplace, resonating with attributes often associated with generational research into Millennials.

The New Testament commands Christ-followers to love one’s neighbors. Arguably an organization’s employees are among those labeled as “neighbors,” regardless of the employees’ faith tradition.