The Big Problem facing Corporate Management Today

Something has happened in the last few decades that Fortune 500 Corporations like Coco Cola and Tyson Foods have woken up to, but most of the rest of Corporations in the Western World have missed.

How many man hours are lost every year to employees missing work? How many of your employees are sick with chronic or terminal conditions? How many have serious family problems that always seem to interfere with productivity?

Especially in the United States, there has always been a corporate cultural rule that says to employees, “Leave your personal life at the door.” However, in the real world it isn’t possible. Take a look around the typical office on any given day and you’ll find considerable lost time every year due to “informal counseling sessions,” where on employee discusses his/her problems with another. Employers have bought into the belief that there needs to be a “separation of church and business,” just as the media, politicians with a social agenda, and propaganda specialists have sold the myth of a “separation of church and state,” concerning government.

It has left employees languishing in a literal no-man’s land of separation. Separation from those they spend most of their time with—other employees—because at work they shouldn’t take time to speak with their fellow employees.

With Employee Care (employee benefits), taking such a large chunk of a corporation’s budget every year, in a addition to lost man-hours due to on-the-job conversations and missed work, what are employers to do?

Many have gone down the road of employee and management training and found it lacking. Many larger companies now have contracted with outside counseling services that provide crises lines and referrals.

These really are just band-aids, however.

What The Coco Cola Company and Tyson Foods realized was this: Most people no longer attend religious services. These same employees are very spiritual and find most of their social network in the workplace, whereas previous generations found their social networks and support at church, or in their communities.

They decided to tackle to problem and provide employees with something usually associated with the military. They provided employees the ability to speak with people at work whom they had little time to speak with outside of work: Ministers

You did read that right. They outsourced to ministers who were invited into their companies to spend time with employees. It became an Employee Benefit. On-site employee care that turned out to be the best thing they ever did.

Employee loyalty suddenly went up. Workers began knocking on their doors wanting to get in, turnover rates dropped. Why?

They, like many other companies today discovered a need. Employees need social interaction at deeper levels and they found a way to meet a fundamental, basic need. They provided Chaplains.