Spiritual Beliefs Blend into Work
Ann Meyer (Chicago Tribune, 3 January 2005) link

As the new year rings in, making more money is on the agenda for many small-business owners. But some have higher goals as well.

Bringing peace to contentious people is one of attorney Faustin Pipal’s goals. As a litigator at Pipal & Berg in Chicago, he has seen the destructive side of personal injury and employment cases.

“When it’s over, the winners don’t feel like winners. It leaves scars,” said Pipal, who goes by the nickname “Frosty.”

Pipal’s spiritual side lured him to mediation work, where he now spends about 25 percent of his time. Helping people negotiate an out-of-court settlement is “very satisfying and gratifying,” he said. “I do think there’s a spiritual element, a peacemaking element. When the day is out, I really feel like I’ve done good for people.”

Spirituality in the workplace is on the rise as people search for meaning in their work, said Laura Matthews, managing editor of Spirituality.com. “It’s that yearning to make a difference, to have your work life count for something beyond your own paycheck or wealth.”

Small-business owners often are well-situated to combine their spiritual beliefs with their work, experts say. Unlike public company executives driven to think first about shareholder value, most small-business owners have the option of giving up profits here and there to make a bigger difference.

“They can say, ‘I’m going to do what I think is right,’” said David Miller, who teaches business ethics at Yale University and is executive director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture in New Haven, Conn.

Miller has seen plenty of small-business owners who recognize “a higher calling,” he said. “It’s not just about making the most money. It’s about taking care of people, doing the unnecessary or from-the-heart acts of generosity.”

Helping people who are down on their luck is all in a day’s work for David Ransom Jr., owner of D&R Press in Chicago. He’s not afraid to hire those who most need a lucky break.

He has pulled employees out of bars and sobered them up. He let one who had no other place to stay sleep under a table in his print shop. He paid for an attorney to get another out of jail. And he has offered restaurant vouchers to a worker who was overextended on credit card bills.

“It’s my upbringing,” said Ransom, who describes himself as a born-again Christian. “I can’t see someone starving in this country.”

A business owner’s spirituality often influences the way he or she reacts to circumstances, experts said.

Jon Talty, president of OKW Architects in Chicago, once gave a young associate a $4,000 advance on his year-end bonus because he needed the money to buy a house. The young man didn’t approach Talty for the money, but when Talty asked how his house hunt was going and learned of his disappointment at being short a few thousand dollars, he found a way to help him out.

“I told him, ‘I’ll give you the money right now,’” Talty said. The man was thrilled, but more than that, the act of kindness conveyed the firm’s confidence in the man, Talty recalled.

Talty, who belongs to a Chicago-area group called Business Executives for Excellence, Ethics and Justice, said he learned about the importance of community while a student at Notre Dame University.

“It was a place where people kept an eye out for one another,” he said, adding he wants his firm to have that sense of community and collaboration as well.

Through the business group, Talty meets with other executives to discuss how to incorporate their spiritual beliefs with business issues like wages, workplace benefits and even terminations.

While religious beliefs often are underlying, creating a spiritual workplace rarely involves praying or preaching on the job, experts say. It has more to do with the mind-set of the top executives and the environment they create for their workers.

“Most people are not interested in overly overt piety in the workplace, but underneath is the idea of what motivates people to work and run a business,” said Gregory F.A. Pierce, president of ACTA Publications in Chicago and author of “Spirituality@Work.”

“A lot of people very quietly go about their work in a way that is very much shaped by religious beliefs and spiritual practices,” Pierce said.

Upbringing often plays an important role.

Walter E. Smithe III runs the furniture stores that his grandfather started with the same values the elder imparted.

“My grandfather, he always told us, ‘If you treat your employees well, they’re going to treat your clients well. Walk a mile in their moccasins,’” said Smithe, president.

Without proselytizing, Smithe hopes to convey to his 500 employees that every one of them has an important job.

He said he emphasizes “the value of work—having it be a meaningful kind of work and not something that you’re just doing.”

Pierce suggested that a good work ethic, exhibited by low absenteeism and a more congenial workplace, is one of the benefits of a spiritual workplace. He has seen first-hand how spirituality affects his nine-employee publishing firm.

“By trying to run our company with a spirituality that says ‘God is present’ in the midst of the hustle and bustle of what we do, if we can tap into that, we’ll be a lot happier and do better work,” he said.