Faith and work
Posted on Sunday, November 4, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Business/206702/
SPRINGDALE — Sister Francis Rivers, 71, had been a nun for more than a halfcentury when Tyson Foods Inc. asked her to walk the production lines at its Monett, Mo., plants. But she hadn’t been on the job long when a Tyson employee died in a car crash, along with her daughter, sister and unborn child.
Immersed in this multicultural, multifaith and multilingual community, Rivers developed a “rose ceremony” so the grieving could pay tribute to their fellow worker. Now when tragedy strikes, workers request that Rivers conduct the rose ceremony.
“It’s very touching,” Rivers said Tuesday, between sessions at a conference of Tyson chaplains in Springdale. “And now they invite the families, and they put a candle where the team member sat.”
Many U. S. companies are adding chaplains to their ranks, as executives recognize the operational benefits of providing emotional and spiritual support to employees, particularly in times of tragedy and stress.
About 120 chaplains walk the production lines and office corridors at 239 Tyson facilities — including food plants, distribution centers, feed mills and truck shops — reaching out to tens of thousands of employees.
Founded in October 2000 by Chairman John Tyson, the Springdale company’s chaplaincy program is the largest in-house program in the country, multiple industry players confirmed.
Seventy-five chaplains were in Springdale last week for training, just a week after the Connecticut-based International Center for Spirit at Work honored Tyson Foods, the world’s largest meat producer, and six others for fostering “faith-friendly” environments.
Topics at the conference included best practices for building credibility, dealing with trauma, prayer requirements for Muslims, and integrating faith in the workplace in a tolerant way. The chaplains interviewed for this story were quick to say they don’t proselytize in the workplace, and allow workers to broach issues of faith.
TYSON’S PROGRAM Manuel Cruz ministers at plants in Omaha, Neb. Cruz said workers come to him for help with everything from spiritual matters to immigration issues. He said most workers don’t care about the chaplain’s particular faith; they just want help. “If I was in the desert dying of thirst, and someone brought me something to drink, I would take it, because it is a need I have,” Cruz said. At one time, Tyson employed a Muslim imam at its Goodlettsville, Tenn., plant, but now all the chaplains are Christians, from more than 30 faith groups. Tyson still contracts with an imam from Minneapolis for special needs in its Muslim work force, which is a growing segment. Tyson has never employed a rabbi, officials said, because there aren’t many Jewish workers at its plants.
Alan Tyson (no relation to the company founders ) is the director of chaplain services at Tyson Foods. He has 23 years’ experience as an active-duty Army chaplain. He was director of pastoral care at St. Mary’s Hospital in Rogers, and spent five years as corporate chaplain for Hudson Foods.
About 42 percent of Tyson’s chaplains can speak more than one language, Alan Tyson said, an important consideration because the company employs so many immigrants.
Worldwide, Tyson employs 104, 000 workers. Languages spoken by its chaplains include Spanish, French, Laotian, Vietnamese and Mandarin. Workers needing to learn English are often aided by the chaplains, who take them to English classes in the community, several chaplains said.
South of the border, Tyson started another chaplaincy program to support its large foodservice operation in Mexico. With facilities in Gomez Palacio, Durango state, Tyson de Mexico is among the top producers of certain kinds of chicken for retail and food-service customers in Mexico.
The company hired Francisco Malacara, a Baptist pastor from Mexico, three years ago to minister to its 5, 300 workers at its Mexico operations. Malacara told a story of a young girl — a daughter of an employee — who was considering suicide. He went to speak with her at home one evening and persuaded her to give up the idea.
“Right now she is a student and she has a brand new life,” Malacara said.
Pilgrim’s Pride of Pittsburg, Texas, the nation’s largest poultry producer, has established a chaplain corps in Mexico and Puerto Rico, but like many companies, Pilgrim’s contracts with a Dallas-based nonprofit called Marketplace Chaplains USA for its chaplain needs. CONTRACTS FOR CHAPLAINS
Founded in 1984, Marketplace is the largest chaplain contract organization in the country, with 2, 100 chaplains in 550 cities. With a $ 12 million annual budget, Marketplace provides chaplains for 313 companies — everything from large banks and accounting firms to car maintenance shops and country clubs.
Its largest accounts include McLane Co. Inc., a logistics company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and a large Taco Bell franchisee with 65 restaurants. Marketplace is about to launch a major chaplain program at Omni Hotels across the country, and it already provides about 400 contract chaplains for the Pilgrim’s Pride’s operations, including some in Arkansas.
Gil Stricklin, founder of Marketplace Chaplains, said a company of 100 workers will pay about $ 9. 75 per worker per month for Marketplace’s services. There are discounts for volume, even in the contract chaplaincy business. A company of 50, 000 would pay about $ 4. 50 per worker per month.
At Marketplace and at Tyson, chaplains often find themselves helping families and other members of the community outside the company. Most of Tyson’s chaplains are ministers in their communities.
J. J. White, a chaplain at Tyson’s Lexington, Neb., beef plant, said his ministry often spills outside the plant doors. Other chaplains agreed, citing weddings, funerals and other events in the community they have presided over.
“Tyson has opened the door,” White said, “and the community has said, ‘ It’s not fair that Tyson gets a chaplain and we don’t. ’”
After-hours emergencies also require action. On one occasion, while driving his family to a cookout at a lake, White spotted a Somali Tyson employee having car troubles. He stopped to assist, calling a wrecker out and driving the employee back to town for the evening. “We never did make it to our event,” White said. Dwayne Reece is vice president of field development for Corporate Chaplains of America, a Wake Forest, N. C., nonprofit that contracts with businesses that want chaplains. Reece said chaplains help fill a void in modern society, which he said is fragmented and leaves many without a family or church community where they live. “When they don’t have a support structure in place, they turn to the employees around them, which can have an adverse effect on productivity in the workplace,” Reece said Monday.
A NEW BUSINESS TOOL There is little research on the effect of chaplain programs on business operations, although most involved in the industry agree that chaplains can help increase employee retention rates. Chris Cooper, chief operating officer for Birmingham-based Boyd Bros. Transportation, said turnover at his company has fallen from 115 percent two years ago to 73 percent this year, in part because of a new chaplaincy program. Some researchers at Baylor University, a Baptist school in Waco, Texas, are looking at the effect of faith in the workplace. Mitchell Neubert, a professor who studies Christian ethics at Baylor’s business school, said “servant leadership” — the practice of serving employee needs on the job — improves business efficiency. “The values of leaders and how they behave does shape how members of the organizations perform,” Neubert said Wednesday. “For example, my research with working adults has shown that servant leadership, in comparison to traditional task-oriented leadership, contributes to employees being more creative and indicating a greater willingness to step out and help a fellow employee or a customer.” Other large companies also have chaplaincy programs, such as Interstate Batteries in Dallas. Henry Rogers, the head corporate chaplain at Interstate Batteries, heads up a staff of four chaplains that ministers to more than a thousand workers. “Most people like being in a place that cares about more than just the bottom line,” Rogers said. “When you are exposed to that, I think it does [affect ] how you interact with people.”
To contact this reporter: dirvin@arkansasonline. com