Imagine this… You walk into the office and are immediately greeted by your manager and colleagues. Their warmth and support are genuine and show up just as strongly during high-pressure situations. Throughout the day, you engage in multiple tasks that enable you to use your spiritual gifts and talents, and you allow yourself to be absorbed by meaningful and important work. You believe in the work your church or organization does so much that you would recommend their services to your own family and friends. You are consistently involved in decision-making, and you are surrounded by people who encourage your development.

When conflict arises, you know that the people involved will stay focused on asking the right questions that are conducive to the overall mission of the organization, and together you will find a solution without blame.

All organizations can create a culture that is healthy and conducive to human and spiritual flourishing, regardless of where their culture starts. However, before an organizational entity can make a change, it is important to understand the current state of affairs, including specific strengths and areas for healing and reconciliation.

It’s easy to recognize a flourishing workplace. It is a culture of growing mutual trust, transparency, and unity. Top to bottom, it’s a culture where people look forward to coming to work every day because they feel so engaged. It’s a culture where everyone is working together because they not only believe in the organization’s mission; they also believe in each other. But determining what makes a healthy culture is not so easy, and creating one is even tougher. At the Best Christian Workplaces Institute, we believe that Christian organizations should set the standard as the best, most effective places to work in the world.

Through a dozen years of research, we have developed a model to statistically define the dimensions of a flourishing workplace and help organizations discover where they fall on the spectrum. Each of these eight essentials that spell out F-L-O-U-R-I-S-H has a quantifiable outcome. Objective measures of a healthy, flourishing culture are not only possible; they’re absolutely essential for any ministry organization that wants to be the best in their workplace, ministry effectiveness, and kingdom impact.

1. Fantastic Teams. Fantastic teams are those that are effective, engage in passionate dialogue around issues, resolve conflict, and strive for excellence in what they do. They are competent in their work areas and across department lines. Effective, cohesive teams remain the sustainable advantage, according to Patrick Lencioni.

2. Life-Giving Work. Work is inspirational when staff are devoted to their role, are able to utilize their skills and spiritual gifts to their fullest and, as a result, love working in the organization.

3. Outstanding Talent. Flourishing organizations recruit and retain high-quality talent, promote those who are most capable, and reward their top performers.

4. Uplifting Growth and Development. This element measures supervisory competence and compassion, the quality of performance feedback, recognition, and the opportunity to learn and grow.

5. Rewarding Compensation. This factor includes fair compensation and employee satisfaction with their medical, retirement, and paid-time-off benefits.

6. Inspirational Leadership. This dimension measures the authenticity of the leaders’ Christian faith in action. Leadership is seen as credible when leaders demonstrate the fruit of the Holy Spirit, live with integrity, exhibit humility and compassion, are transparent, and create high levels of trust in the organization.

7. Sustainable Strategy. These organizations have an effective or winning strategy for meeting the needs of those they serve in a high-quality way. There is consensus on the organization’s goals, and employees meet these goals while nourishing long-term loyal relationships. In fact, staff recommend their services to friends and family.

8. Healthy Communication. This is active communication and employee involvement. Communication is “real” when staff experience managers listening to their suggestions and acting on them. Where staff feel free to voice their opinions, diversity is evident, and they are encouraged to innovate. These organizations are well-run and achieve work/life balance.

Creating a flourishing culture takes time and effort.

Yet be encouraged: Each of these factors is accessible and attainable for every organization that seeks to be more effective, productive, and committed to being their best. In his letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul wrote, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters (3:23).” This instruction from Paul reflects the spirit of employee engagement, defined by the early engagement scholar William Kahn as, “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performances.” We would also add “spiritually” to this definition. Employee engagement is about authenticity; it is about bringing and investing oneself into work. This investment is not merely the giving of time and skills; it is not merely “showing up.” Engaged employees have high energy, great enthusiasm, strong commitment, and a passion for their work, their organization, and their reflection of Christ to the world.

Long before we came on the scene, King Solomon had a few words to say about this: “Know well the condition of your flocks and pay attention to your herds” (Prov. 27:23 NASB). Applying this wisdom to our workplaces means that we have a responsibility to pay attention to the people in our organizations and know what they need in order to flourish—as individuals and as teams.  Which factors are your organization’s strengths? What about your weaknesses? Are you ready to cultivate your flourishing culture? Let us show you how. Discover the health of your organization with our easy online Engagement Survey at bcwinstitute.org/surveys/.”

- Al Lopus

(Originally published in the MAY 2021 Magazine)