Spiritual Health in the Workplace

Organizational Facilitation of Spiritual Health

Conversations about Spiritual Health with Individuals

Strategies 

There are a number of strategies an organisation can use to facilitate spiritual health in it’s individual staff/ members. 

• Make spiritual wellbeing a focus of the acceptance process (not just theological alignment)

• Talk to staff about their spiritual health

• Embed check-ins in operational reviews

• Include spiritual health in debriefs

Resilience

Resilience is not an innate personality trait, but rather a process that is both internal and external resulting from positive adaptation to adversity. Resilience is built when stress is applied and protective factors are accessed.

It is the ability to make the best of any situation.

“Resilience is the process of adapting to significant adversity through the use of assets and resources within the individual, their social networks and wider environment; a process which carries across the life course and is expressed in culturally meaningful ways.” 2016 – Duncan Watts of Interserve

Some staff or members may prefer to use a tool to think and reflect about how they are doing before they talk about it. We offer four options:

1. The Cerny Smith test (requires a trained facilitator)

2. Simplified Self-Directed tools- EHS Personal Assessment, Traci Smith Inventory & Spiritual Resilience Checklist. A list of other inventories can be found to the right.

3. Some people may prefer to use an external person as a “reflector” such as a spiritual director or coach or an accountability partner. 

4. Others may prefer to just talk with you. This Conversation Agenda is intended to provide some questions you can use to open up the conversation.

Preparing Staff to Hold Conversations about Spiritual Health

All of these strategies listed above require a conversation with a person about their spiritual health, One of the “road blocks” that may be encountered to holding conversations about a staff / members is that the member care staff or line managers may not feel equipped to hold such conversations. The training sessions below provide a framework for having this conversation, and to explore why they may not feel enabled and to equip them to try having these conversations. 

Other Helps:

• 3 point assessment – test

• Spiritual Life Inventory

• Support Checklist

• Wellbeing – Self Risk Assessment

• Life Satisfaction

• 182 Ideas for Spiritual Health Inventories