Corporate Chaplains Caring for Employees in San Joaquin Valley Businesses

Workforce Chaplaincy provides employees with spiritual, emotional, and crisis care services, helping to protect a company’s bottom-line

(PRWEB) January 9, 2006 -- Until recently, a company gym, a matching 401k plan, and an employee-of-the-month preferred parking stall were the best tools available for companies seeking to cultivate worker loyalty. But now some forward-thinking businesses in the San Joaquin Valley are looking at a new, non-traditional way to care for their employees’ personal needs—hiring a workplace chaplain to make regular onsite visits to mingle and meet with their employees.

Launched in August by Paul Gendron, a former pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Visalia, Workforce Chaplaincy was created to address the emotional and spiritual needs of employees at Valley businesses. The organization offers support to individuals facing a variety of common workplace issues as well as personal, marital or family related matters through its staff chaplains who provide confidential listening and guidance, crisis intervention and prayer when requested.

Workforce Chaplaincy also provides inspirational speaking on topics that address both work and life issues, and are available for training employees and supervisors on topics such as understanding the stages of grief, coping with stress and anger management. Through its services, Workforce Chaplaincy’s strives to create greater harmony in the workplace which often leads to increased productivity and a healthier bottom line.

“With Americans spending more waking hours at work than at home, and fewer attending a house of worship regularly, Workforce Chaplaincy brings skilled and compassionate help into peoples’ work day,” says Gendron, who serves as CEO of Workforce Chaplaincy. “Companies use our services to provide confidential emotional and spiritual care to their employees at work, at home, in the hospital, or wherever care is needed. As chaplains, our purpose is to build trusting relationships with employees so we can listen, support, and offer help with the problems they often keep to themselves.”

Outside of an employer’s walls, Workforce Chaplaincy can assist by planning, officiating or attending weddings of employees or immediate family members upon request and may provide pre-marital discussions and follow up contact with newlyweds. Workforce Chaplaincy can also help by planning, conducting or attending funerals of employees or immediate family members, with follow-up support and encouragement to family members during the grief period. Some Valley employers have already realized the benefits of these services.

“We started working with Workforce Chaplaincy soon after one of our top employees was involved in a tragic accident outside of work” says Ron Ludekens, Vice-President of the L.E. Cooke Company in Visalia, which grows and sells trees to nurseries throughout the United States. “Since then, our employees have really come to enjoy and trust in it. Some simply enjoy the pastor’s caring presence and friendly interaction, and others are being supported and helped through some serious issues. Some of our employees have already expressed their thanks and told me this is one of the best business decisions we have ever made.”

Nothing a worker tells their chaplain will ever end up in a company file. Gendron says one of the joys of his work is seeing the visible “lift” his clients experience as they unload their personal and work-related burdens.

“A law office is probably the last place you’d expect to find a Chaplain,” says Merl Ledford, a Visalia business litigation attorney. “But with the pressures my staff and I work under every day, having an office Chaplain helps us focus on the big picture for our clients. Staff morale is improved and, pragmatically, production is up about ten percent.”

More information about Workforce Chaplaincy is available by calling (559) 300-3200 or at

www.workforcechaplaincy.org.

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