Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Tyson chaplains lift workers’ spirits
Melissa Brannan splits her time between the pressed khakis and dress shirts of Tyson Foods’ corporate headquarters and the rubber boots and gloves of the company’s plants dotted across the state.
“It’s the same issues,” she said. “There are deaths, there are celebrations, there are losses. You are still dealing with people.”
Brannan is part of a chaplain program that serves 250 Tyson plants and locations. Tyson has the largest private-sector corporate chaplaincy program in the country, according to a Princeton University study.
She counsels Tyson employees through marital problems, dealing with sick children, coping with the death of a family member, and helping with paperwork and visa issues.
Mike Tarvin, director of chaplain services for Tyson, said corporate chaplaincy is a growing field as CEOs look to help their employees mesh their personal lives with the workplace.
“At a certain point, the leaders of the company said they wanted a culture where people can bring their faith to work instead of leaving it at the door,” he said. “We think there are tangible results.”
Tarvin spent more than 30 years as a chaplain in the military.
“It wasn’t something on my scope,” he said of the Tyson job. “I thought I’d work at a hospital.”
Other companies have started hiring corporate chaplains as an extension of their human resources departments, or outsourcing the work to umbrella companies. PBS will release a documentary on one of its national channels Monday that features Brannan and other chaplains who work for organizations such as NASCAR and Tyson.
Texas-based Marketplace Chaplains, which employs
more than 2,800 chaplains, is growing rapidly.
Jason Brown, vice president of marketing for Marketplace Chaplains, said the company has doubled in size in about five years.
“You can’t separate the spiritual being of someone when they walk through the doors,” he said. “Employers are realizing people are more and more disconnected, and they have a lot of personal problems that are brought to work.”
Brown said chaplains provide personal care beyond what a human resources office or co-worker can do.
“A marital problem, a teenage child rebelling, problems with a boss — these aren’t atheist, Muslim or Christian problems,” he said. “They are person problems.”
Tyson is one of the few publicly traded companies that have their own chaplain program.
“Being in- house means that it’s a face that they’ve already had a conversation with,” Brannan said of employees. “We’re not strangers.”
At Tyson, all employees are able to use the chaplains, regardless of their religious beliefs. All conversations the chaplains have with employees are confidential — unless the employee is a danger to themselves, to someone else, is being harassed or is doing something illegal that could put the company at risk.
Most companies offer employees a way to handle issues outside of work. A 2008 study by the Families and Work Institute found that more than 97 percent of companies with more than 5,000 employees offer assistance programs with anonymous counseling.
David Miller and Faith Ngunjiri of Princeton University’s Faith & Work Initiative found that employees are more likely to turn to a chaplain than to mental health services or other outlets provided by companies.
In a paper published in 2013, Miller and Ngunjiri found that business leaders were convinced that if employees were facing problems in their home lives, those problems would drag down productivity at work. Most business leaders interviewed thought that having a chaplain at the workplace helps reduce turnover.
Miller and Ngunjiri wrote that there are concerns about discrimination, harassment and spiritual manipulation associated with bringing religion into a workplace.
Tarvin explains the chaplain program to all new hires. He tells them Tyson is a faith-friendly company, but not a faith-based one.
“We train the chaplains to make sure their faith belief doesn’t stop them from serving everybody,” he said.
All Tyson chaplains represent denominations of Christianity. About 18 percent are female, but Tarvin said the company is trying to hire more women for the program.
“We would hire other faith groups if they applied and met the criteria,” he said. “We want them to have some sort of pastoral experience.”
Sometimes chaplains have to help people with problems or issues that clash with the chaplains’ religious beliefs. Brannan said she has counseled women through decisions to have abortions, or people questioning their sexual identity.
“My beliefs are inconsequential at the moment,” she said, adding she is a Christian but didn’t reveal her denomination. “I can connect as a human being if I share their beliefs or not. I am there to guide them, not make decisions.”
Tyson scored an 85 out of 100 for its treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees in the Corporate Equality Index compiled by the Human Rights Campaign. The company was docked points for having no transgender-inclusive health coverage.
“If we take care of the team members, the business will take care of itself,” Brannan said.