Workplace

Alongside work itself, workplaces are undergoing significant changes today. There was a time, as during the biblical and classical periods, when work was largely undertaken in the field or open country, home or street, in small-scale factories or fishing enterprises. By late medieval and early modern times, open markets and guild-based businesses became more important. In the wake of the revolutions in industry and technology large mechanized factories and bureaucratized offices came into being, and even farming, ranching and fishing became big business. Now the context in which work takes places is changing substantially again.

In considering the workplace, I am thinking of the architecture and layout, the conditions and procedures, the dynamics and ethos, of the spaces in which we work. This whole environment should receive as much thoughtful Christian attention as what we do in it. Yet if work itself has often received little Christian reflection, this is even truer of the workplace. A main reason for this is that in many forms of Christianity, there is a dualistic tendency that separates the spiritual and the material, persons and structures, the relational and cultural. Since the workplace is in part a physical context, in part a set of structures and in part an institutional culture, it easily falls victim to this dualistic way of looking at reality. Yet the total environment of the workplace is important, partly because as a human creation it tells us something about ourselves, our attitudes and values and partly because our workplaces shape us, the work we do and the relationships we form at work.

The Changing Nature of the Workplace

Among the changes occurring in workplaces today, three-quarters of which are still small businesses, the following are particularly noteworthy. The majority of workplaces are becoming technologized. Nearly three-quarters of all jobs today require at least some elementary word-processing skills. Increasingly office work, retail work and even factory work are being mechanized and computerized. Though this replaces some monotonous jobs, it also tends to reduce the personal element in the workplace and creates a new class of mechanized workers who require special training or reeducation.

Another noticeable trend is the integration of smaller business enterprises into larger ones, or the more intentional collaboration of large and small businesses. The first is taking place even as many firms downsize and large public corporations are being broken up into more competitive units: this means we now have blended workplaces as well as blended families.

In most places the workplace is rapidly becoming more multicultural and international. While affirmative-action practices have had their impact, the growing pluralism in modern societies has generated its own organic changes. In some sectors of the marketplace, links or business between firms in different countries is also forcing their work forces to be more cross-cultural.

With the breakdown in family life and neighborhood community, workplaces have increasingly assumed some of the character of both. As a number of television sitcoms illustrate, many people now look to their workplaces for a sense of belonging, for quality relationships and for the experience of community. Sadly, sometimes Christians encounter these more in their workplaces than in their churches. At the same time, workplaces have become more volatile contexts with respect to charges of sexual harassment and personal discrimination. Anxiety has also increased about the incidence of workers with AIDS. Violence is also increasing as highly disgruntled and disturbed individuals are taking out their frustrations and pathologies on others in the workplace. Concern about injury, assault and even murder in the workplace is growing.

Other changes can be mentioned. For example, for a small but growing proportion of people, the home is once again becoming their workplace, largely because of the personal computer. In some cases this allows people to work in a different state or part of the country from where their company or firm is located. At present, approximately 4 percent of the population already work from home, and some predict that this will ultimately rise to around 20 percent. Others challenge this, arguing that most people will not want to give up the social benefits of working with others and that many jobs will require a mix of home- and office-based activity.

A Christian Perspective on the Workplace

All environments, whether human or divine, appealing or appalling, shape us in some degree or other. They affect what we are seeking to do and how we do it, our personal reactions and our relationships with others. We are built by the Creator in such a way that we are influenced not only by our bodies but by our physical surroundings. Because of this, we should become more aware of the changes that are occurring in the workplace. The more responsible our position, the more obligation we have to know and interpret such changes to others around us. But we need to evaluate as well as understand the changes in our workplaces. What are their positive and negative effects? How do we decide what has the character of one and what has the character of the other? We can look at these under the headings of architecture and layout, conditions and procedures, ethos and culture.

The architecture and layout of a workplace raise questions about the atmosphere in which work is done, the comfort level of employees, the connection with the rhythms of the day or the natural world, the accessibility of leaders and the quality of communication with colleagues. It is important to create a setting that is as spacious and comfortable as possible. If, as is the case, most people are now spending more time at work than in any other activity, including sleep, they should perform their tasks in conditions that are as congenial and conducive as possible. It is also important to create a setting that enhances the capacity for spontaneous as well as organized contact to happen between people. This is especially important for people whose work would be enhanced by it or, because of the repetitive nature of their jobs, would simply be made more enjoyable and less monotonous. Both lead to greater productivity and loyalty. With workplaces becoming more technologized, care must be exercised lest they become as machine oriented as older mechanized factories did in the past. How to avoid the office becoming a kind of electronic assembly line is a real issue. Training people to use computers properly and exhibiting a concern for possible physical repercussions are useful as far as they go, but more attention needs to be given to the social consequences of the new technology and its effect upon people’s attitudes and general ways of thinking.

The conditions and procedures in workplaces are also important. It is still sadly the case that the majority of hours lost to the workplace is due to accidents—not to people taking illegitimate sick leave or wasting time on the job. Safety is still an important issue in the workplace, and we should have far more of it. Procedures also need to be developed to deal with the increasing possibility of violence in the workplace. Workers need to be informed about and prepared for the forms this takes, to learn how to handle it when it arises and to be helped to manage stress and debrief after it takes place. On a different note, while gains were made earlier in the century by applying time-and-motion-study techniques to the workplace, these did not always take into account the differences between humans and machines. The detailed timing of operations in some plants, financial institutions and fast-food outlets places workers under an extraordinary strain. After a while ongoing attempts to kaizan, that is, to increase time-and-motion efficiency of particular operations, become impractical or counterproductive. Too many workplaces are like a prison. This is not to say that everything should have a flexible character; ultimately that would be as frustrating and restrictive as its opposite.

While procedures for helping workplaces deal more responsibly with issues of harassment and discrimination are now fairly well in place, more organic ways of raising awareness and creating an inclusive culture still lag behind. So too does educating people into the differences between people of different ethnic groups or nationalities, so that, where appropriate, workplaces can develop a genuinely crosscultural way of operating. The dynamics and ethos of a workplace are crucial to its functioning well, mainly because they are vital to the well-being of its members. At work, as in all areas of life, being comes before doing, a fact that has often been forgotten. On the other hand, things can go too far in the opposite direction. Regarding the workplace as a surrogate family or community mistakes its proper purpose. If the workplace should never be an impersonal Fordian assembly line or Kafkaesque bureaucratic maze, nor should it be a kind of living room or community space. It is primarily a task-oriented, not person-oriented, affair. People are taken seriously because they are first and foremost persons, not functions, and because they perform tasks better when their personhood is respected, affirmed and developed. Some degree of community naturally arises as this is done, but it is not the main purpose of the workplace. The trick is to strike the right balance in the workplace between care for the task and care for the person.

A Christian perspective on the workplace cannot be summed up under any one phrase, such as enhancing its attractiveness or making it more congenial, improving its safety or bringing greater justice into it, making it more humane or helping it to become more caring and compassionate. Any of these may be relevant at one time or another, often one more than another, sometimes several at once. All are important and at different times may have priority. The main thing is to have a good understanding of the total environment in which we are operating, along with a sharp sense of what is the most pressing concern at the present.

» See also: Conflict, Workplace

» See also: Discrimination, Workplace

» See also: Loyalty, Workplace

» See also: Multiculturalism

» See also: Organizational Culture and Change

» See also: Stress, Workplace

» See also: Technology

» See also: Work

References and Resources

J. F. Coates, J. Jarratt and J. B. Mahaffie, Future Work: Seven Critical Forces Reshaping Work and the Workforce in North America (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990); R. Flannery, Violence in the Workplace (New York: Crossroad, 1995); J. Renesch, ed., New Traditions in Business: Spirit and Leadership in the 21st Century (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1992).

—Robert Banks