Workplace Spirituality: Why & How it Works Like a Charm

Workplace Spirituality Definitions

Let’s add a few definitions, to more fully grasp what is workplace spirituality and how understandings of it may vary.

What these definitions have in common is that they involve feelings of something as ‘greater’ than us – an encompassing feeling that provides us meaning. Workplace spirituality is further talked of in terms of dimensions of spirituality to come closer to ways of assessing the degree to which organizations practice workplace spirituality. Dimensions of spirituality are, for example, spiritual well-being, spiritual transcendence, spiritual development, spiritual wellness, spiritual distress, spiritual intelligence, spiritual self-consciousness, spiritual growth and spiritual health (Giacalone & Jurkiewicz 2010: 8).

Workplace Spirituality – The Benefits

To go on, workplace spirituality is also shown to reduce staff turnover rates. One of the explanations is that leaders having spiritual values are as leaders judged as more effective.

Evidence reveals that workplace spirituality programs have many benefits. While they lead to positive personal human health and psychological wellbeing, spin-offs are improved employee commitment, productivity, and reduced absenteeism (staying away from work)(van de Walt & De Klerk 2014). Moreover, workplace spirituality is recognized to increase integrity (also called spiritual integrity), motivation, job satisfaction and workers performance in general (Cavanaugh & Bandsuch 2002; Pawar 2009). To go on, workplace spirituality is also shown to reduce staff turnover rates. One of the explanations is that leaders having spiritual values are as leaders judged as more effective. Studies of leaders judged as more effective show that they increase work satisfaction, motivation, productivity, and profits – as mentioned before.

The above are the main benefits of workplace spirituality as confirmed again and again through different types of research methods. After looking into how to encourage and implement a culture of spirituality in the workplace, we shall return to explain benefits in more detail.

Spiritual Developments: How to Encourage Workplace Spirituality

The following are some tips, tools, guidelines and background understandings for actually encouraging a workplace spirituality culture in practice.

• Work with your purpose and turn it into a brand agenda, which is about what you support your clients, customers, students or alike in doing. To do this you must be clear on your mission (how you are going to enable clients to do it) and vision (what the world looks like when this has come to be).

• Make your purpose greater than the individual. Be deliberate about engaging a vision of betterment of mankind or the planet, or similar.

• Avoid actions, at all levels and at all costs, that to your knowledge hurt people, organizations or the planet. Obviously, we cannot fully engage ourselves in things that create a negative impact. Instead, step by step, turn your organization into one which employees can be proud of. One which they want to show-off.

• Ensure that all managers are on board. We all know the old watercooler story when organizations spent millions of dollars building open offices to encourage communication across departments. The first time the floor manager looked sharply at the people talking by the watercooler and said: ‘don’t you have better things to do? – these millions were wasted.

• Know your employees and what triggers them. There is no other simple way than just asking them. This will spin-off many other great things, and your people will feel recognized and praise you for your concern.

• Recruit people that buy into your purpose… your brand agenda, mission, and vision statements. You don’t want Paul aboard if Paul is completely indifferent about the purpose, which you have spent time, money, and effort into making the center that all else spins around. Surprisingly I hear none talk about this. It is to be on top of all purpose-oriented organizations’ agenda. Recruit in accordance with company purpose.

• Accept that people are at different levels in terms of both spirituality and awareness. Accept also that some will welcome workplace spirituality efforts warmer than others. This way you avoid for it to be another mask to wear because the leaders seem to like it that way.

• Be consistent. Make sure that the purpose and your approach runs through the entire organization. If you want compassion and consideration to signify your organization, it will confuse employees if, for example, customer support is known to not work by these principles. It will moreover signal a lack of genuineness.

• Encourage employees to explore their creative abilities and provide them the resources they need for it. When we are creative we typically feel enthusiastic about our creativity and at these moments we pour consciousness and ‘Being’ into what we do. This is a spiritually awake moment.

• Cultivate an environment of inclusion. Don’t worry so much about fancy CVs and papers promising abilities. Look instead for true and genuine character and skills. To cultivate an environment of inclusion, cultivate an environment of listening and curiosity. When we listen and are genuinely curious as to why another person thinks the way he/she does – then we understand and feel connected with this person rather than disconnected. Moreover, inclusion is also about creating a mix of employees that represent the mix we see when looking at the population. If the board room, the line up of executives, and leaders, in general, are all men – then inclusion is still only words on a piece of paper looking to be implemented in practice. Again – it undermines genuineness.

• Educate your leaders and managers in the skills of life-leadership. I cannot emphasize this enough. Leaders must know their values, live accordingly, and signal trustworthiness and true self-worth. Some call this self-leadership, yet I’ve recently started calling it life-leadership to emphasize it is not intended as an alternative to being lead by a superior. It literally refers to the ability to lead one’s own life with success. We find it natural to conceptualize and employ strategies in organizations, yet overlook the necessities of life-strategies to avoid floating around like a leaf in the wind in our own lives.

• Encourage self-awareness. It is a skill of life-leadership, yet it is so fundamental to the success of all of the above that I chose to make it stand out. When you are aware – and recognize the common acts of ego – in yourself and others, which all people are guilty of at times – then it is possible to leave ego acts behind you, and show strength, for instance, by daring to be vulnerable rather than diminishing others.
• Allow all to employees to have mindful moments of stillness. It may contradict your common sense of time evaluation, yet allowing people to do nothing increases their performance. Moreover, it increases awareness, job satisfaction, creativity, and general well-being. This way stillness and mindfulness also reduce stress, burnout, and stress-related illnesses, which means more people show up at work each day. Why? Because they enjoy coming to work and look forward to it.