80% of the United States consider themselves spiritual or religious. Yet, spirituality in the workplace is something of a taboo subject. With only a sprinkling of spiritual aspects creeping in with wellness programs into workplaces, spiritual expression and development is it still largely ignored. So what are the potential costs of continuing to do so? Let's explore this here.

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Talking about spirituality or religion in the workplace has been like talking about politics - It's a topic to be avoided "if you want to remain friends".

I understand the hesitancy to have personal development or wellness programs that border on religious or spiritual ideas. There's the risk of offending someone, or making people feel uncomfortable.

This idea, by the way, is hilarious, because so many toxic work practices make people feel unheard, unseen, undervalued and uncomfortable! But it's continued to be done today because "it's the way it's always been done". But that's for another blog. Back to spirituality and religion!

According to a paper by Dik, Daniels, and Alayan (2024), in the United States up to 82% of people describe themselves as spiritual or religious

Spirituality (we'll use that term from now to include religion) is a lens of which people use to make sense of the world. For many it gives them comfort, access to wisdom that is beyond the ego (or you could say individualism), it provides a framework of how to navigate challenges, live a more fulfilling life and (for many, not all) create a more unified, humane world in which to thrive in. Once someone decides that they are spiritual, it often plays a big role in their lives and shapes how they see the world.

According to a paper by Dik, Daniels, and Alayan (2024), in the United States up to 82% of people describe themselves as spiritual or religious. In the west, 4 in 5 people describe themselves as religious.

They don't go into detail as to how many of these work in traditional workplaces, or corporate workplaces, but let's make the most extreme assumption that ALL of the 20% of the population that are not spiritual are ALL in the corporate workforce.

I got a few stats from ChatGPT to help me with this and the numbers were spat out as:

If we assume that all of the 20% of the U.S. population who don't consider themselves religious or spiritual are in corporate jobs, here's how we can calculate the number of people in corporate jobs who do consider themselves religious or spiritual:

Steps:

• Total U.S. Adult Population: 260 million.

• Non-Religious/Non-Spiritual Population (20%): 20% of 260 million = 52 million people.

• Assumption: All 52 million non-religious/non-spiritual people are in corporate jobs.

• Total Corporate Workforce: Still 104 million people (from the earlier estimate).

• Religious/Spiritual in Corporate Jobs: 104 million−52 million=52 million

Conclusion:

With the assumption that ALL 20% of the non-religious/non-spiritual population are in corporate jobs (52 million), 50% of people in corporate jobs would consider themselves religious or spiritual (52 million).

So, even with the most lenient assumption that ALL of the remaining 20% of people who do not consider themselves religious or spiritual are all in the corporate workforce, still 50% of people would consider themselves spiritual. That's still a significant number!

Even with the most lenient assumption that ALL of the remaining 20% of people who do not consider themselves religious or spiritual are all in the corporate workforce, still 50% of people would consider themselves spiritual.

As I've said before, and as Dik, Daniels and Alayan comment, the people of this population that work full time spend more time in the workplace than they do at home. So despite most people having some kind of spiritual affiliation and despite them spending more time at work than at home (based on a 40hr week), workplaces still continue to ignore this integral part of an employee's world-experience. But at what cost?

Despite most people having some kind of spiritual affiliation and despite them spending more time at work than at home...workplaces still continue to ignore this integral part of an employee's world-experience. But at what cost?

As the writers rightly said, these people start to wonder, "How can my work be meaningful and aligned with my spiritual beliefs?". Organisations need to consider "What role do religion and spirituality play in how people think about or experience their work, and vice versa? What role do (or should) religion and/or spirituality play within organizational life, especially in an increasingly diverse and pluralistic culture?".

Conscious Leadership Is Key For Uniting Diverse and Pluralistic Spirituality In Workplace Culture.

One of the concerns of bringing spirituality and religion into the workplace is the potential for conflict, division and exclusion. This is where Conscious Leaders can help (and by conscious I don't just mean the recycling, reuse, save the planet, kind of conscious. I mean spiritually awakened and aware. I explain this more fully in my blog here (scroll down near the bottom)).

Conscious Leaders can help to shape organisations to cater for the majority of their people, who are spiritual, so that they may find meaning and alignment in their workplace.

Conscious leadership... is not necessarily aligning to a religion or one particular spiritual philosophy or teachings. It is, at its core, an openness for all points of views.

An important aspect of Conscious leadership is that it is not necessarily aligning to a religion or one particular spiritual philosophy or teachings. It is, at its core, an openness and acceptance for all points of views and a role modelling of practices that create more human-thriving business and systems (I say human- thriving, because many existing systems aren't damaging necessarily, but neither do they give way for people to thrive within and outside of the workplace).

In very simplified terms you could say, instead of affiliating to one set of religious or spiritual ideals, Conscious Leaders practice the core message of most religions and spiritual philosophies. That being:

• Be a good person

• Help others thrive

• Think collective gain instead of personal gain

The manifesto of Conscious Leaders (and in its wake, Conscious Organisations) is a desire to create systems and cultures that empower individuals and help them to thrive. This is not only so far as to fulfil a company's goals, but to see individuals reaching their full potential, within and beyond the organisation.

The manifesto of Conscious Leaders (and in its wake, Conscious Organisations) is a desire to create systems and cultures that empower individuals... to see {them reach} their full potential, within and beyond the organisation.

Conscious Leadership is a way of which leaders can start to create businesses that are spiritually-friendly without the potential divisiveness of a spiritual leader that adheres to one single philosophy.

And this kind of leadership, has proven to have a positive effect on employees and organisations as a whole.

Creating a Spiritual-Friendly Workplace: Benefits & Costs to an Organisation

Dik, Daniels and Alayan (2024) cite many papers that have seen that spiritual-friendly work environments have great benefits for organisations including:

• Increased pro-social behaviours

• Decreased counterproductive work behaviour

Spiritually minded leaders (which we could equate to Conscious Leadership) in particular showed:

• Increase in employees voluntarily helping and supporting their peers and/or helping the organisation run as a smooth unit as a whole

• An increase in employees viewing work as a calling (or perhaps seeing their work as part of a bigger vision)

• An increase in employees feeling that they belong that is, feeling a sense of membership or affiliation to leaders and organisations

• An increase in pro-environmental behaviour, that is actions that seek to reduce a person's impact on the natural and built world (like power-saving, recycling etc).

So what are the costs and benefits of creating a spiritually-aware and friendly organisation?

I'm going to assume a few things here, but based on the above, an organisation can expect to see:

• Increased staff satisfaction and fulfilment = workplace happiness = increased productivity

• More loyalty and less staff turnover = more money saved on recruitment and training

• Creation of a positive and productive workplace culture = attraction of more top talent.

Assuming that those are the outcomes of a Conscious Leadership team creating empowering (and spiritually friendly) workplaces, then the cost of not doing that would be:

• Same or increase in staff dissatisfaction and feelings of fulfilment = same or less workplace happiness = same or decreased productivity

• Same/less loyalty and same/increased staff turnover = same/more money wasted on recruitment and training

• Unchanged or increase of negative and unproductive workplace culture = no change or less attraction of top talent.

Of course how big an impact a Conscious Leader can have is based on how they create empowering, spiritually-friendly spaces, and the buy-in of the other key leaders in an organisation.

I advocate for personal and spiritual development of leaders first, so that they can become the Conscious Leaders that role model the (empowering) culture being created. Systemic change can occur closely thereafter. But it is important that key leaders are fully behind this and not undermining efforts to create positive change.

Answering the Authors' Two Key Questions...

Dik, Daniels, and Alayan asked two key questions:

"What role do religion and spirituality play in how people think about or experience their work, and vice versa?"

And

"What role do (or should) religion and/or spirituality play within organizational life, especially in an increasingly diverse and pluralistic culture?".

Q1: What role do religion and spirituality play in how people think about or experience their work, and vice versa?

This one is a tough nut to untangle. But I would say that it depends on the individual. Is the person a fanatic? Is the person simply dabbling?

Maybe what is best is to answer this from my own experience. Spirituality has played such an important role in my life that it has changed what I seek in work and in workplaces. I would not settle for work that is not meaningful and/or doesn't give me joy in the process. I wouldn't settle working for a company that was unethical or wasn't doing something to help people reach their potential. I don't put up with toxic workplaces and wouldn't consider working for a company that kept up such a culture.

At the same time, working for such places (which I have done in the past), has at times, made me question the conviction of my spiritual beliefs. Are all people really deep down, loving on the inside? It has at times made me act outside of my spiritual beliefs - with rashness and harshness and bitchiness! This has made my faith in being a good person, waver... Am I really that different from everyone else? Do I really make a difference? Is it worth it? Fortunately for me, I keep coming back to "yes, it is worth it!" That's my experience.

Another person's experience of work or the role that work has on their spirituality, would be highly individual. It would be influenced by such things like how committed they are to their spiritual practices and ideas, their identity, their culture and their (influential) friends, families and colleagues, for example.

As we talked about before, one of the ways we can overcome the huge spectrum of 1) The level of commitment to spiritual practices and ideas and 2) an individuals' experience, is to adopt Conscious Leadership practices and create Conscious systems around the core idea of "being a good person and wanting people to thrive".

One of the ways we can overcome the huge spectrum of 1) The level of commitment to spiritual practices and ideas and 2) an individuals' experience, is to adopt Conscious Leadership practices

Q2: What role do (or should) religion and/or spirituality play within organizational life, especially in an increasingly diverse and pluralistic culture?

The role that spirituality plays within organisational life is as inherent as a person is to an organisation. So the level of which spirituality plays a role in an organisation, then comes down to the level of which the organisation sees people as important. So if an organisation doesn't view their people as important, then spirituality will likely not be present in an organisation or be deemed as necessary. On the flipside, if an organisation views their people as important contributors to an organisation, spirituality will likely play (or should play) a key part in the workplace culture.

The level of which spirituality plays a role in an organisation...comes down to the level of which the organisation sees people as important.

So this question of what role do (or should) spirituality play within organisational life, is one that only each leader and organisation can ask of themselves. The following questions could be used as an indicator to see whether your organisation should embrace spirituality or not:

• Do we see our employees as more than just workers?

• Do we treasure them as human beings?

• Do we want to make a positive mark on their lives?

• Do we want them to thrive beyond the workplace?

This is a question that only each leader and organisation can ask of themselves: Do we want to make a positive mark on their lives? Do we want them to thrive beyond the workplace?

If the answer is no, then perhaps spirituality shouldn't play a part in organisational life. It would be nice if the answer was yes across the board, but that's not realistic. There will always be people and organisations that don't care for their people. We can't force anything on an organisation that doesn't want to empower their people. If we did, it would likely be tokenistic and riddled with covert toxic practices, which is perhaps, even more damaging.

Having said this, it sometimes takes just one leader, to put up their hand and say "things have to change". This is what a Conscious Leader does - they decide to be the rudder that changes the course of an organisation. So, even if ONE leader says "yes" then change is possible!

{If} just one leader says "yes" then change is possible!

So if the answer is yes (hooray!) then spirituality should play a key role in organisational life. As I offered before, Conscious Leadership is a way of creating this spiritually-friendly environment while avoiding potential division, conflict or exclusion. Plus you'll likely see more traditional benefits of more productivity, money saving and so on as we talked about above!

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So is it time for your organisation to create a spiritual friendly space?

If you are a leader who knows that this is the way your organisation should go, then yes it is time for spirituality to have a place in your workspace. Conscious Leadership is your key for doing this.

When you become a Conscious Leader and create a Conscious Organisation, you empower your people to live more fulfilled lives. You accept them more fully and enrich their lives, so they may reach their full potential. You are the start of a giant wave of positive change that creates positive impact from within your workplace and has effects outside in the rest of the world.

As always, I'm here for your constant evolution.

Arohanui,

Nik Chung

PS. Want to chat about how your organisation could make this change? Send me a DM or email me on nicola@nikchung.com

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Want to read the full paper I referred to in this article? You can read it : Religion, Spirituality, and the Workplace: A Review and Critique.