Spirituality in the Workplace

Have we finally reached that point in global consciousness where we are ready to tackle the biggest transformation of all - bringing consciousness to business and government? And if that is the task at hand, what is our individual role in it?

What is "Spirituality in the Workplace?"

Each calling is individual. At some point in your life, your "calling" may lead you out of Corporate life into entrepreneurship or a service profession. At another point, the calling may lead you back into Corporate. You must listen inside yourself and discern your call and that will lead to "meaningful work" for you.

Right from when we are born, we start creating this persona of who we think the world wants us to be and not who we are. We build layers around us to protect the vulnerability of our true identity so that we will not be "made wrong" for showing that who we are is different from who you are. The next step in Spirituality in the Workplace is to find out who you are and BE IT! You have unique needs, values, standards, beliefs, gifts, knowledge, creativity, intuition, vision, mission, and purpose. When you focus on these and achieve personal clarity your world will transform around you. Being the authentic YOU puts you on purpose, relieves stress, and allows for greater personal creativity, which is more rewarding personally and in your employment.

More and more corporations are allowing people to be fully creative, not constrained by a corporate "way of being" or by patriarchal systems that decree acceptable actions and behaviors or by the past or by hierarchical position. New methodologies, transformational technologies, are being invented that allow true corporate transformations, paradigm shifts, creative solutions, quantum leap results, open space. Corporations are creating partnerships with leading transformational leaders to encourage new belief systems and possibility thinking, to teach new language for powerful communications, to reward actions that are forward-thinking, outrageous, not "normal". These companies are being evaluated as "Learning Organizations", "Leading Edge", adaptive to change and are being rewarded by attracting our most creative people as employees leading to strong human and financial results.

Both large companies and small entrepreneurial shops are realizing that a healthy employee is a more effective employee and that health is not just physical, that much physical illness comes from the environment, and from emotional and spiritual deprivation. So a healthy environment can include: allowing you to decorate your own workspace with rugs, colours, artifacts that uplift your spirit; having healthy food in the cafeterias and coffee shops; having quiet "nature" spaces where people can go to reflect, meditate, and "listen to their intuition"; bringing in light, sun, fresh air to the workplace; having massage, reiki and other "energy" treatments available for employees during the day; understanding that there is "no separation" between self, family and work and that if an employee is having a crisis at home, this needs to be acknowledged, supported, and not punished by the work environment. The Chinese energy balancing technique of Feng Shui is being used to set up the overall environment, or special meetings, or a workspace. An example of a corporation that has incorporated all of the above is Nortel Networks in their Head Office in Brampton. They even have special prayer rooms for those of differing ethnic and religious backgrounds. All of this, creates your workplace as a community, a place where people come to relate to each other and do "meaningful work".

We now live in several "communities" and the workplace is one. In pioneer days, our work, life, and religious communities were all the same. Now we have choices and they are all equally important to our "spiritual" well-being. When we no longer accept "separation" of our work and our life then we start to get the feeling of oneness that helps us contribute to a "spiritual workplace". When work is no longer "a job", where we go to "do" something for money, but instead a part of us, a choice, where we go to be ourselves, to make our maximum contribution, to be fulfilled, then we are moving towards "Spirituality in the Workplace". You have a specific role to play. Not everyone has the same mission, the same skills. In a community there is a banker, a leader(mayor), a blacksmith, a seamstress, a farmer, a carpenter. Not everyone can be the leader. Some are meant to be in service. Who are you? Be who you are and allow others to be who they are. This is called acceptance, non-judgment. Then the workplace community is effective - a team.