Author: Amber Tuttle

If you are like most company leaders, you spend much of your time solving problems. Your days can be absorbed in fixing revenue shortfalls, rebalancing company priorities, or dealing with customer or investor issues.

You tinker with everything from employee compensation and benefits to complaints about the 3-month-old sandwiches in the company fridge. Show us a leader, and we’ll show you an expert in fixing broken things. 

But fixing a workplace is much different than fixing a workforce.

Your workers are called “Human Resources” for a reason. They are human. And just because they are faithful and show up day after day, it doesn’t mean they’ve left their worries at home. Sometimes, your workers need “fixing” because their personal lives and issues can create a distraction, crowding out the focus necessary for them to be productive, successful employees.

Add in the impact of a personal crisis or family trauma, health or financial issues, and the burden on employees can be overwhelming. Even if they seem to be coping, the stress gets leveraged against their work capacity. Today, many employees are simply treading water.

Employees aren’t the only ones who suffer during a crisis. Time after time, employers admit they have inadequate workplace support programs to meet their employees’ personal needs. The average worker spends approximately 90,000 hours at work in their lifetime.

For executives, studies show that as many as 30,000 of those hours are spent responding to crises. Corporate chaplains help carry these burdens and lighten the impact by helping company owners and leaders shape a culture of care.

Another indirect cost of lackluster company culture is poor employee retention. According to a recent report from the Work Institute, the replacement cost of an employee earning $45,000 a year is $15,000.  A recent SHRM survey discovered that almost half of HR leaders surveyed said employee retention and turnover is their top challenge.

According to the 2020 State of Talent Optimization from The Predictive Index, 47 percent of high-performing employees indicate they left their company because of inadequate employer engagement. It is no mystery then that businesses lose over $300 billion each year due to the voluntary departure of unhappy employees. Businesses with good company culture consistently retain great employees, have less turnover, and outperform their competitors. The importance of building a solid company culture can’t be overstated.

So how does a corporate chaplain influence the culture of your company?

What is a Corporate Chaplain?

The days of a chaplain as a “white-collared, weird-speaking preacher” are long gone. Today’s chaplains are trained to blend in, reflecting the dress and culture of the staff. Corporate chaplains provide life-changing care and only talk about spirituality when the employee grants permission, and it’s appropriate to do so.

Chaplains are perceived as a peer and a member of your workforce who voluntarily engages members of your workforce to establish close relationships with employees, giving them an ally when they need a confidential partner to walk with them through difficult life situations.

A chaplain is an impartial listener who brings a compassionate heart and a discerning ear. This “ministry of presence” provides workers with a place to turn when life gets hard and situations begin to impact their work.

What does a Corporate Chaplain Do?

A corporate chaplain is responsible for delivering care to employees and their loved ones as an extension of the care of the employer. A corporate chaplain’s goal is to provide “purpose-driven” CEOs and business owners a valuable tool to address employees’ essential emotional and spiritual needs.

Corporate chaplains are community resource networkers and connectors who are a resource for employees struggling with life’s many issues. But just as significant, chaplains positively impact the organization as a whole by fostering employee-centric work environments, which directly affect the organization’s culture and, ultimately, the company’s bottom line. 

Through the process of making weekly on-site visits, being available for extended conversations with employees, and providing 24/7 crisis care, a corporate chaplain is a catalyst for healthy empathy and life-giving compassion in the workplace. Corporate chaplains engage where care is needed most and where it makes a meaningful difference. Employees, in the care of a corporate chaplain, discover a trusted, objective friend and confidant who quickly becomes a reliable resource for them when they can’t bear their burdens alone.

What’s the Payoff of Having a Chaplain in Your Company

• Lower turnover rate
• Increased job satisfaction
• Decrease in tardiness
• Higher employee productivity
• Less money spent on employee training
• Lower absenteeism

Why Corporate Chaplains of America is a Trusted Partner

Corporate Chaplains of America employs primarily full-time, relationship-driven chaplains who combine workplace experience with professional chaplaincy training. Our proven process incorporates quality management principles to provide practical employee support and create capacity for the CEO/business owner. Corporate Chaplains of America offers:

• Seamless integration of chaplaincy into companies large and small, public and private
• Full-time administrative staff dedicated to chaplain recruitment and support
• Branded uniform clothing consistent with a workplace environment
• Continuing education training
• Sound financial management and accountability
• Trusted, proven, confidential support for all employees
• Generalized monthly reporting to the employee for ongoing employee engagement benchmarking

At Corporate Chaplains of America, we support the deepest needs of every human – to live life with greater purpose and be deeply valued. While we specialize in dealing with emotional and spiritual needs, we respect the faith boundaries of every employee and adhere to the standards and expectations for a permission-based, secular workplace ministry.

While our orientation and mission are Christian at their core, our chaplains are trained to seek permission before responding from a biblical worldview. We stand on our reputation and our 25-year track record of integrity in caring well for employees and helping bring life-changing care to company cultures in 44 states.

If you would like to further explore how Corporate Chaplains of America can help you improve your company’s culture, we welcome the conversation!

Job Satisfaction Continues To Grow

Workload, performance reviews, work/life balance, recognition, and potential for growth are all some of the most important factors when it comes to job satisfaction for employees. 

While job satisfaction continues to grow in a very tight labor market, the satisfaction level for these components is well below average. That being said, 53.7 percent of workers described themselves as satisfied overall, and they’re particularly content with their commute, their workmates, the work itself, the physical environment, and their perception of their job security according to research done by The Conference Board.

So if only half of workers are satisfied overall with their jobs, why should it matter to the CEO and employers? How does employee satisfaction directly affect the CEO and what can they do to improve it for all of their employees? 

Benefits of Employee Satisfaction

Engaged employees are the heart and soul of modern business, but employee engagement isn’t about happiness. 

An employee could be happy in their position and still be unproductive. Engaged and happy employees are 18% more productive and out-perform and out-produce non-engaged employees by 202%. All of this essentially boils down to less absenteeism and better customer service and loyalty. 

Lower Turnover Rate

When an employee loves their job, they stay. It is cheaper to retain an employee than it is to hire new ones. It can cost up to 25 percent of an employee’s annual compensation to replace someone when they leave your organization, and this is not including the indirect cost of lost productivity while you look for a replacement or the lower-quality work from the new-comer while they are being trained.

Higher Productivity

CEO’s will see an increase in work and the quality of the work when an employee loves their job. They will also see employees step up and help others because they want to see everyone succeed in their position. 

Increased Profits

Increased profitability is directly linked to higher productivity. When more work is being done and the quality of work is better, the company will see an increase in profit. Keeping employees safe and satisfied can lead to more sales, lower costs, and a stronger bottom line. 

Less Absenteeism

When an employee is happy in their job, they enjoy showing up to work, which results in work getting done on time and deadlines being met. 

Loyalty

If an employee feels like their needs are being met and the employer has their best interest at heart, they often support the company’s mission and support its objectives. Loyalty falls directly in line with lower turnover rate as well. Happier employees will stay with a company longer. 

Keeping an employee happy should be HR’s #1 job. If you look at all the factors, it really doesn’t take much to keep an employee happy. 

Employees want to feel respected and trusted while working in a safe environment with good pay and opportunities for growth and development. When your company develops ways to offer these important factors, it can satisfy employees, and help build a stronger, more stable future for your company. 

Ways To Increase Employee Satisfaction

Think about all of the hardest things that have to be done as a CEO? Now think of increasing employee satisfaction as the easiest task out of all of them. 

Happier employees ultimately make happier CEO’s and more successful companies in the long run, and the steps to get there are more simple than one would think. 

Provide A Positive Work Environment

CEO’s and employers have to find what energizes their employees. They need to find what makes it worth the employee’s time to continue to show up to work every single day.

A motivating work environment requires going above and beyond the “call of duty” and providing the needs of the employee to keep them happy.

Reward and Recognition

Mark Twain once said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” Personal recognition can be a small, but powerful tool when it comes to building morale in the workplace. Something as small as a personal note or a pat on the back from a peer or supervisor can do wonders. 

Let your employee know you see how hard they are working and how appreciative you are of the work they are doing. Small informal events are better than larger quarterly meetings. 

Develop Workers Skills and Potential

Invest in your employees. When CEO’s provide the time and the resources for employees to further their training and education, they become more productive and innovative. 

Well trained employees are more capable and willing to take more responsibility over their jobs and need less supervision. This eventually frees supervisors for other tasks. 

Involve and Engage Your Employees

Your employees are showing up to work, but are they engaged and productive? 

Employees tend to be more engaged when there is a process in place that allows them to contribute their ideas. When employees are able to contribute, it gives them a sense of pride and ownership in their work. 

Reduce Micro-Managing

As a CEO, you have to trust your employees know their job and they know how to do it well. You hired them for a reason. Give them the space and the freedom to do their jobs, and they will follow with good quality work and high productivity. 

Reduce Time Stress

Deadlines have shown to be a major stress factor in employees’ lives. From a CEO standpoint, try scheduling work projects out further in advance so employees have more time to work and less time to stress. 

Remember, your employees have other projects to work on, and they need time to breathe.

Work/Life Balance

If there is one thing that will really make your employees happy, it’s having a work life balance. Let your employees leave their work at work and not have to worry about taking it home with them every night or on the weekends. Encourage your employees to use their time off and to take breaks. This means more energized and productive workers in the long run.

Evaluate and Measure Job Satisfaction

The primary purpose of evaluation is to measure progress and determine what needs improving. Continuous evaluation includes, but is not limited to, the measurement of attitudes, morale, and motivation of the workforce. 

It is imperative for CEO’s to continually evaluate the satisfaction of their employees for the success of their business, but also for the happiness of their employees. When CEO’s create happy employees, they create an environment built for a productive and profitable future. 

Why Corporate Chaplains Helps

At Corporate Chaplains of America, we understand that employees are your greatest asset. We’re available to give your employees the care and assistance they need above and beyond what an employer can provide. Providing your company with a Chaplain is an investment in your company’s culture and future, and most importantly your employee’s happiness. 

Contact Corporate Chaplains of America today to learn more. 

Improving employee morale and motivation can seem like a daunting task but with the right mindset, it can be easily achieved.

You may be wondering: why should I put in the time, effort, and money into improving my team’s morale and motivation. 

The answer is simple. A happy and motivated team will be more likely to put forth their best effort to advance the goals of the business! It’s been said time and time again that a team with high morale is more productive, motivated and harder working. 

Create Healthy Relationships with Management

Improving your employees’ morale and motivation starts at the top. For an employee to care about the success of your company, you need to make sure they respect and care about the people leading them. 

This can be achieved by ensuring your management team is supportive, open, and respectful to the employees. Nothing says high turnover rate like bad relationships with management. 

How do you show your employees that management is supportive, open, and respectful? It’s easy enough and we go into that in detail below!

Supportive

Supporting your employees is crucial to ensuring they have a healthy relationship with management. Showing them that you support them can help them be independent and more confident in their work. 

Supporting your employees can look like giving them verbal praise, having an open door policy where they’re welcome to bring their concerns, and even just listening to them intently.

Open

Managers who are open with their employees tend to have better communication and more trust. Openness doesn’t mean spilling your guts about your personal life with your employees. It means being transparent about the company and its affairs. 

Put this into practice by having reports or meetings talking about the company’s goals, ideas, plans, and wins for your team. Publish your reports or have meetings frequently (monthly, quarterly, etc) so that the company’s goals and employee’s concerns or ideas can stay top of mind.

Respectful

Showing your employees respect is one of the best ways to improve morale. Employees who are respected are more likely to put in the extra effort in their workdays and are more devoted to meeting the company’s goals.

If your management is new to the team, it’s important they understand the skills and duties of each team member. By doing this, management can be sure to utilize each employee’s strengths. 

If management has been around, it’s smart to talk to the team to find out what they think could be improved for a healthier relationship.

Empower Employees

Empowering your employees in doing the best job they can do is a great motivation booster. If you know their strengths you can emphasize them and entrust your employees to do their best work. 

Give your employees room to make mistakes and then forgive them! Making mistakes is a part of life. If you hold your employees to the unrealistic standards of never making a mistake then they’ll walk on eggshells. They won’t take risks that could improve the business. 

Praising your employees’ efforts opens the door for them to do their best work.

Treat Employees Fairly

Many employers think that treating employees fairly means giving people with similar roles the same treatment and compensation. Imagine if employee A goes above and beyond with their work but employee B does the bare minimum. Do you think employee A will be motivated to continue their current output?

Probably not. Over time Employee A will likely grow resentment and no longer put in the same effort they used to. 

To avoid losing a hardworking employee, make sure you’ve implemented a benefit and compensation system that fairly rewards employees for their hard work. This can be implemented by having annual reviews with a chance for a raise or bonus. 

Prioritize Team Building Activities

Team building activities help you learn the strengths of each employee. They can also teach your team learn how to work more effectively together. Team building exercises should be fun and not feel like an extension of work. Make sure you pick activities that will have your employees working together while having fun. 

Put thought into the team building activities you do. Forcing employees to participate in an activity they find mundane would be a setback to improving their morale. 

How to Further Motivate Employees

Motivation and morale go hand in hand. When you improve an employee’s motivation, you can improve their morale. Some simple ways to motivate your employees is to offer them a reason to stick around and work hard. You can do this by offering above-average compensation and worthwhile fringe benefits.

Offer Above Industry Average Compensation

Money is a motivator for everyone involved in your business. Just like you want to make a profit and run a successful business, your employees want to be adequately compensated. 

Offering below-average compensation won’t attract talented employees and will leave your current employees looking for new work, especially if the business doesn’t do much else to improve employee morale. 

Do your research to find out what the average compensation would be and, if possible, try to offer above average. If above average is not possible, make sure to at least offer average but not below!

Fringe Benefits

Fringe benefits are benefits offered to employees in addition to their compensation. There are benefits required by law like health insurance, workers compensation, and medical leave. Then, there are non-required benefits like free meals, bonuses, paid time off, stock options, and assistance programs (adoption, education, dependent care, etc). The latter are not required but can be an added perk to attract and keep hard-working, talented workers.

When deciding what kind of benefits to offer your employees, offer some that find a balance between affordability and coverage.

Whether you’re a small business with a limited budget or a long-established business with a larger budget, you can still attract and keep good employees with benefits like awards or bonuses, free meals, paid holidays or paid time off, and a number of other morale-boosting programs. 

Summary

Improving employee morale and motivation is not rocket science and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Find what works best for your business. Keep an open mind and don’t be afraid of change!

If you’re struggling with finding where to start, then invest in a Corporate Chaplain for your team! Our Chaplains are a great resource for gauging employee happiness and gaining the trust needed to find out how to motivate your employees! 

While conversations your employees have with Chaplains are confidential, our Chaplains can help lead you down the path to increasing employee morale!

Creating a culture for your company is difficult in the best of scenarios so it can be even more challenging in a remote working environment. With the right tools, policies, and team, you can build a remote company culture that will help lead your company to success. 

Why is company culture so important?

A strong and effective culture can enable your company to recruit and keep the best talent, relieve stress points, and it turns your employees into a successful team. Studies show that companies that invest in their culture and the morale of their employees have lower turnover and higher productivity.

Create a Vision of What You Want and Expect from Your Remote Team

Whether your team started out remote or they’re transitioning from the office to working from home, it’s important to figure out what your vision for culture and what expectations you have for your team.

Start with asking yourself and team some questions like: 

• How do you prefer to communicate with each other and how often?
• How will you communicate during urgent situations? 
• Will you have weekly or daily check-ins?
• How can remote employees get help when they’re overwhelmed, stressed, or unsure about how to do something?
• How should employees provide and receive feedback?
• When should employees be available? Will hours become more flexible in a remote environment or is there an expectation for employees to be working certain hours in the day?

Once you’ve answered the above questions and some you came up with yourself, it’s important to make sure that your team is clear on what’s expected from them. In addition to talking with them about your expectations in a remote environment, it’s best to put it in writing so that employees can reference as needed. 

Once your team has been working with your guidelines for a while, you should take notice of what’s working well for your team and what could use some tweaking. If over time your team grows or if certain policies don’t seem to be working anymore then don’t be afraid to create new policies or remove defunct ones.

Create Communication Guidelines

Communication is best done face to face but in a remote working environment it might be difficult to figure out how to have that sort of communication. Unfortunately, you can no longer pop into someone’s office to ask them for assistance or schedule a meeting in the conference room. New channels of communication need to be created and guidelines for when and how to communicate with people should be established. 

For remote work communication, it’s best to find a balance between face-to-face communication through video calls and chat or email. A team doesn’t need to be calling about every little thing but days or weeks shouldn’t go by where team members haven’t had facetime with each other.

Utilize Communication Applications and Collaborative or Productivity Software

Keep your team talking and on track by implementing communication applications like Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, or Slack. Depending on the application you can create chats for specific conversations and for small teams or groups.

In addition to implementing a communication application, it’s important to find a collaboration or productivity software that works with your team’s needs. Software like Asana, Trello, and Monday are all great for getting your team working together. They also help with accountability, transparency, and ensuring that projects get done on time. Some even offer functions like virtual whiteboards so the team can work together to solve a problem.

Daily Huddles and Regular Check-Ins

Depending on the type of work you do, it might be in your team’s best interest to schedule a daily morning huddle and regular project check-ins.

The morning huddle can be a great place to see what’s on everyone’s plate for the day and to ensure that people are focused on the right tasks and projects. 

Regular (weekly, monthly, etc) check-ins for projects between team members and team leads can be beneficial to make sure everything is on track. They’re a great time to see if there are any project-specific concerns that need to be brought up and will allow your team to talk more in depth about a project than in the morning huddle. 

Virtual Hangouts and Events

If you want your team to be close, communicative, and successful then scheduling virtual hangouts and events are great for your culture and your team’s morale. 

It can be a time for people to just hangout and chat, or even an opportunity to participate in virtual team building activities. 

Some great ideas for virtual team building events and hangouts include:

• A virtual campfire where every team member is sent the ingredients to create their own s’mores (complete with marshmallows, chocolate, grahams and a candle to cook the marshmallows on!). Everyone can take turns playing songs or telling stories…just like a real campfire!
• Virtual lunches, or coffee breaks
• Games you can play virtually like trivia, pictionary, bingo etc.

Provide Trust and Safety

In a remote work environment, it can be difficult to gauge how employees are feeling about management and their jobs. Establishing trust and safety for your team from the beginning is important so that issues can be addressed before they turn into problems. 

You can do this by creating the precedent of transparency. If you’re open and honest with your team, then they will be open and honest with you. 

This can be accomplished by having monthly or quarterly company reports, which detail where the company is at. These reports are also great for highlighting company wins and shouting out hard workers or huge accomplishments. 

Another way you can provide your employees with an environment of trust and safety is to have someone they can talk to about work problems or home problems that can affect their work life. 

People that could fill this role include Chaplains. They can be there for the issues that your employees might be wary of coming to you with or just there as moral support or someone to talk to. 

Establish Productivity and Performance Measurement

It can be difficult to know if your work-from-home team is being productive and performing well at home, especially if you’re just now transitioning from in-office to remote. It can be tempting to micromanage every aspect of your team’s day but that would be harmful to morale because it establishes distrust in the team. 

There are ways to measure your team’s productivity and performance while giving them room to do their jobs. As mentioned earlier, adopting a productivity software and establishing clear rules for communication can help you make sure your team is remaining productive in a remote working environment.

In addition to productivity software, implementing regular (weekly, bi weekly, monthly) reports from team members can help you make sure everyone is on track. 

Define Roles and Chain of Command

Creating clear roles and a chain of command can help remove any confusion for your team members and enable them to get their questions and concerns solved in a timely manner. 

Without this structure, your team could likely lose time trying to navigate your company’s hierarchy. With clear roles and responsibilities, employees can navigate their work day without roadblocks, which will leave them with less frustration.

How to Maintain the Culture You’ve Built

Culture is always evolving and what once worked might not work anymore for your remote team. It’s essential to make sure your team knows you’re open to receiving feedback. If a policy isn’t working or if your team doesn’t seem to respond well then you should be open to suggestions and changes. 

Having a Chaplain who is there for your employees will help ease your team into communicating openly and honestly with you and each other. To be productive, your team needs support and Corporate Chaplains of America is prepared to be the support necessary for your company to succeed!

Contact us today to learn more about our corporate Chaplaincy program and how we can help you build a remote company culture!