The new approach to spirituality at workplaces

NYAKWAR BARA
Correspondent | Friday July 11, 2008 00:00

Everything seems in place in the glass-panelled room. Behind his desk are hosts of ornaments, which he uses to perform a Catholic ritual before he starts work every morning.

He says the ritual, which involves lighting smoke incense and muttering incarnations invoking God and Guardian Angels, protects and brings him good luck throughout the day.

'It is a way to commune with the gods and seek their blessings before I embark on work every morning,' says Mokobi, a director at one of Batswana's largest wholesale companies.

Spiritual events like these are not confined to exclusive enclaves. For the past few years, employees at a local engineering firm - from the managing director to the subordinates - have participated in monthly prayer meetings as part of the company's project to instil spirituality in its workers.

Alone with nothing more than their Bibles and Hymn books in the office, the workers have communed with God, seeking inspiration and guidance about growing the company into greater heights.

'I find the sessions very useful because every time we pray together we come out stronger and with better resolve to work'. They also enhance cohesion and bring a sense of team spirit', says the company's managing director Samuel Mossama. He also uses his religious beliefs to guide business decisions and, in some instances, company policy.

Because consultancy service is such a bulwark of Aggrey's faith, all employees at his company get time off to go to church.

For Paul Bagwasi, chief executive officer at an Internet cafe in Main Mall, it's the Jehovah's Witness', the Bible holy text that offers the best lessons for steering business out of trouble.

'It's fine to think about forces larger than you and to tap into them as an intuitive source of creative analytical power,' he says. If any of Botswana's chief executive officers had tried any of these five years ago, they probably would have inspired ridicule and maybe even ostracism.

But today, a spiritual revival is sweeping across the corporate scene as executives of all races mix management with religion and import lessons, usually doled out in churches, temples, and mosques, into office corridors.

People are becoming more open about spirituality. More than half of Batswana say they believe in God or a universal spirit, and majority say they go to church according to a random sampling survey, which was executed by the writer early this week. It would, therefore, make sense that, along with their briefcases and laptops, people would start bring their faith to work.

Gone is the old taboo against talking about God (or to God) at work. In its place is the new spirituality, evident in the prayer groups in different companies. 'We find the prayer session useful because they act as emotional outlets', says Patience Mmuputing, a manager at an Internet cafe.

'Ordinarily it would be difficult for employees to sort out personal problems that arise out of work - related matters but the meetings are helping to understand each other better. We take longer to get angry at one another and can easily sort out our problems.'

Although spiritual thinking in the corporate world may seem out of place, the warp speed of today's business life is buckling rigid thinking and hard line ways of management are also becoming unpopular.

Unlike the marketplace of say, a decade ago, today's information and service - dominated economy, according to Mmuputing, is all about instantaneous decision-making and building relationships with partners and employees.

Spiritual approaches, he says, can be used to subdue 'aggressive' workers and help people get better at the long - neglected people side of the equation.

On their side, human resources people say they have discovered that a majority of workers want a deeper sense of meaning and fulfilment on the job even more than they want money and time off.

That is why companies could soon find themselves trying to offer scarce talent any perks, including religious programmes that will see them through the door.

Henricky Hussein Otieno, a Maru-a-Pula Open Baptist pastor, says spirituality at work is becoming a trend. 'People are working more today than they did a few years ago', he says.

'No surprise, then, that the workplace and not churches or homes is where Botswana's phenomena are showing up first. More and more people eat, exercise, date and even marry at the office.'

He says spirituality is very much part of the overall equation and companies that want the best have to offer spiritual nourishment as part of the employment package.

Explains Otieno: 'That is why we found it prudent to introduce spirituality at workplaces in our church where workers from various companies come for induction courses. It is popular and is attended by whoever wants to have quiet time with God. Somehow it is working for us because the rate(s) of people annoyed and absenteeism have drastically reduced', he says.

The largest driver of this trend, according to Otieno, is the mounting evidence that spirituality minded programmes in the workplace not only soothe workers' psyches but also deliver improved productivity.

Although no research has been done locally to establish the truth of this assertion, a recently completed research project by Mckinsey & Company in Australia shows that when companies engage in programmes that use spiritual techniques for their employees, productivity improves and turn over is greatly reduced.

Says the projects co-investigator, Professor Ian Mitroff from the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business: 'Spirituality could be the ultimate competitive advantage.'

In a research thesis titled 'It Works', Prof Ian asserts that 60 percent of those polled for the study said they believe in the beneficial effects of spirituality in the workplace.

Locally, the level of spiritual intervention at work could be hard to qualify, but examples from elsewhere illustrate just how useful spirituality can be to a business.

According to information on the Xerox company website, 300 Xerox Corp. employees had been participating in exclusive prayer meetings christened 'Vision quests' for the past ten years as part of its multi - billion ventures to revolutionalise product development.

Alone for 24 hours with only their sleeping bags and water jugs in New York's Catskill Mountains, the workers had been communing with nature, seeking inspiration and guidance about building their company's first digital copier - fax - printer. A growing number of Muslims are also taking to rolling out their mats right in the office and nobody is complaining.

But even in an era that is more accepting of spirituality, the prospect of religion seeping into secular institutions, especially corporate ones, has made some people uneasy. At the fringes, some businesses are running up against the bizarre.

For example, there is a tale about an administrative assistant working for a beverage manufacturer in Gaborone, who routinely drops to her knees in the office to speak in tongues.

But that is no deterrent to spiritually - minded CEOs. Seizing the moment, spiritual gurus like a GWM, Broadhurst - based evangelist, Henricky Hussein Otieno have begun advising corporate chiefs about how they could tie the new secular spirituality into their management techniques.

Every morning, he hosts prayers for local workers. One has to attend the programme, where workers are taught how to approach work from the Bible.

However, the overreaching lesson is his instruction to the managers on how to retrieve from their inner depths their 'power animal', who would guide their companies in 21st century success.

That's not to mention the thousand of Gideon International Bibles and prayer groups in workplaces that he has inspired to meet regularly at the workplace.

The numbers of related books hitting the store shelves in the West are also on the rise.
The latest is the Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, which is a new business best seller.

Generally, employers are compelled to make reasonable accommodations to employees with religious needs, just as they are required to do for the disabled and most have been doing so.

But somewhere in between are skeptics who think spirituality is a management fad to exploit people's faith to make money.