[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Love Justice Podcast where we hear from different voices who are joining us in the fight against modern day slavery. Please welcome today's guest, Al Lopez.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Welcome to the Love Justice Podcast. Today we have the privilege of welcoming Al Lopez, the co founder and former CEO of the Best Christian Workplaces Institute, an organization dedicated to helping Christian ministries and nonprofits build flourishing workplace cultures. Al has spent years guiding organizations in creating environments where employees can thrive and align with their mission and vision. In this episode, we'll dive into the importance of workplace culture, explore key factors that lead to flourishing Christian organization, and discuss Love Justice's own journey with Best Christian Workplaces. Welcome to the podcast, Al.
[00:00:53] Speaker C: It's Rick. Great to be with you. Thanks so much for including me in your, in your podcast. This is really a pleasure.
[00:01:01] Speaker D: We're glad to have you. And we're grateful, great. Grateful for Best Christian Workplaces. So thankful for the work you guys do.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: Well, we're also thankful for the work that you do. Love justice is just what you do is so important in this world.
[00:01:17] Speaker D: Well, let's jump in right there. Right. Like you, we happen to be listed among the best Christian workplaces, which we're very thankful for and proud of. And, and part of that is, are the services that you guys provide. So let's kind of start there. Like, like tell our listeners who is Al and. And then what is. Or what. What does Best Christian Workplaces really do? Like what, what, what, what, what are you guys up to?
[00:01:44] Speaker C: Well, I really have a vision that Christian workplaces set the standard as the best, most effective places to work in the world. So with the scriptures, with the Holy Spirit, with all that God has taught us and teaches us, you know, I believe that yes, Christian workplaces should set the standard as the best, most effective places to work in the world. And we go about doing that by assessing the health of workplace cultures with our employee engagement survey. And that's really to help leaders build flourishing workplace culture. Because, you know, most people work, you know, if they're working 40 hours a week, and it's one of the key amount of time that people spend in their lives working with their cohorts and they're, you know, doing purposeful work. And I believe God has created each of us to have purposeful work, so shouldn't that workplace experience be a positive one? So we help assess the health of organizations like yours. And we serve over 400, close to 500 different Christian led workplaces with our employee engagement survey. And then we also help assess leadership effectiveness with our Leadership360 survey. And we couple that with stakeholder coaching and also coaching on how to create flourishing workplaces. So that's how we go about doing it.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Al, you already touched on a little bit of the mission and that why you're. Why you're passionate about it and believe strongly about it. Can you maybe tell us a little bit about how BCW Best Christian Workplace came to be? How did you get the vision for it? You know, when did you start it? What was that journey like?
[00:03:35] Speaker C: Oh, that's a great, great story. And to keep it short, I kind of described that divine providence called and I answered the phone.
And prior to starting Best Christian Workplaces, I worked with a large human resource consulting firm and in the Pacific Northwest up here, I live in the Seattle area. I was managing this large office of. At the time, it was called Watson Wyatt. It's now Willis Towers Watson. And we worked with the local business magazine in the state of Washington, and then we also did this in the state of Oregon to determine who the best companies were to work for. And I found that to be fascina.
And then it was. I was coming up to an early retirement age at age 50. And just before I walked out the door and I felt like God was saying, okay, Al, I'm going to have a new chapter for you. Just as I was walking out the door, I got a call from Christianity Today magazine that said, we want to determine who the best Christian places to work are, but we don't know how. And I think you might know. And so based on all of my experience working with the best companies in Washington and Oregon, we had employee engagement survey with our firm.
We had the technology and the capability in that regard, and it just seemed like a natural thing. So we created a questionnaire that included, and it was focused on Christian nonprofits that included Christian culture questions in addition to other questions that might have an impact on the culture of an organization and to measure it. And that's what got us started. In April of 2003, we were on the COVID page. It was the COVID story of Christianity Today magazine and that launched Best Christian Workplaces to where we are today.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Wow. I don't think I realized you guys have been around that long.
[00:05:35] Speaker C: Yeah, it started, you know, in the fall. We started our first survey in the fall of 2002. So. Yeah, that's 20. I'm sorry. Yeah, 22 years.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:05:46] Speaker D: It's amazing. And so obviously you've learned over the decade, over the two decades that it's been going along with your previous work that you described what it looks like to have a flourishing workplace. Right. So talk about that. Like, what is a flourishing workplace? And how do you help organizations to create flourishing workplaces?
[00:06:10] Speaker C: Yeah. And so our mission is to equip and inspire Christian leaders to create engaged, flourishing workplaces. And so over the years, I mean, years and years, we've been modifying our employee survey questionnaire. We have been analyzing, okay, so what creates a flourishing workplace in. And we're the only ones that have really focused on the Christian world, whether it's Christian nonprofits, schools, colleges, or even Christian led businesses in. And we've taken hundreds of thousands of employee surveys and we said, okay, so what creates an engaged workplace? And we found that through factor analysis, through statistics, we've been able to identify clearly eight drivers or eight keys that build employee engagement in Christian workplaces. And we call it the Flourish model. It's.
And when we began to discover what those eight keys were, I thought, well, you know, we're working with a Christian audience here and they know what it means that it's got to preach. And so we said, okay, so what acronym can we put to this? And we thought, well, as we went through it, Flourish seemed to make a lot of sense. You know, the factor analysis created a factor where it showed that, well, you know, the way we hire people, the way we recruit people, the way we attract and retain people, the way we develop people, well, that's a, that's a factor. Okay, well, we call that outstanding talent. And then, oh yeah, teamwork. You know, we're, we're teams work together. And whether good teamwork across departments or when there's good conflict resolution skills. Oh, those are. That's teamwork. Well, okay, that's fantastic. Team. So all of a sudden these letters started to come out and we created the acronym Flourish. So again, it's not based on what Al Opus thinks creates a flourishing workplace. It's what the statistics say create flourishing workplaces in Christian workplaces.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Wow. I mean, being on the other. So being on the other side of that, having heard one of your colleagues kind of break it down for our team at Love justice, it's fun to hear the background of this and the context and the history of it. Al and can you just share a little bit about why you believe it's so important for Christian organizations to focus on workplace culture and employee engagement?
[00:08:48] Speaker C: You know, again, I have this vision that Christian workplaces should set the standard as the best, most effective places to work in the world. And I also have the vision that comes out of the vision that, well, human beings are created to flourish in God's creation and we're created in the image of God and that Jesus came that we might have life and life to the full or an abundant life as he promises in John 10:10. So I've got this image to start with. And yet as I've experienced different workplaces, both Christian led workplaces and ones in the marketplace, I've personally experienced toxic, unhealthy workplaces, you know, where, you know, at the same time I've also seen and experienced now doing this work, many flourishing, you know, healthy workplaces where experience or people experience joy as they do the work that they, they are called to do. So it just hurts me, it hurts me when I see Krishna workplaces that are toxic, you know, where people are at each other's throats, where there's no trust, where people want to undermine others, where, you know, they want to undermine leadership, you know, where, where there's high levels of frustration. I don't know if anybody on the listening to this might have experienced this in their workplace at one time or another, but I just don't believe that's the way God intended it. So, so, you know, and you know, in the church particularly, who are, whose purpose is to bring people to faith and to discipleship and discipline and bring, help them grow in their faith to become disciples.
Toxic workplaces don't attract people to Christ in the first place. They actually, I believe people are repelled by toxic Christian workplaces. So where people aren't flourishing, it's not a good witness. Just did a podcast recently with Rich Stearns who is the 20 year President of World Vision and he had stenciled, stenciled across his office that we're to be ambassadors for Christ. And so to be an ambassador, we need to reflect who God intended us to be. I think a flourishing people. So yes, I believe Christian workplaces should be the ones to set the standard as the best, most effective places in the world. World. Yeah. So that's my holy discontent when I see Christian workplaces that just are toxic.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: And I think you'd probably agree that it's fair to say the cost of not putting value and attention on this is impacted fruit. No matter what industry or no matter what industry you're connected with, whether it's Christian business, church, education, nonprofit, when you don't have people in the workplace that are flourishing, the ultimate cost of that is those that you're seeking to serve.
[00:12:00] Speaker C: Yeah, no doubt. And Doug Waldo, who I know you work with, has found this research where it costs about $16,000 per employee per year if they're not fully engaged in work. And he probably shared that with you. So taking, you know, you've got, I know it, you've got a high percentage of your employees who are, who are fully engaged in their work. So the cost of being neutral or disengaged, which are a couple of different categories that we have, is huge. If people aren't engaged. I've worked with workplaces where, you know, only 40% of their employees are engaged.
You're almost opposite that.
And when you got 60%, you know, multiply $16,000 times the number of employees who are not fully engaged and it's a costly outcome. There's no question.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:01] Speaker D: It's not just essential. Right. Like, I mean, it's, it really, if you really are honest about it, it becomes crucial and maybe even critical to the mission, to the impact. Right. So you want your workplace to be flourishing. I mean, what, what are some of the key factors that contribute to that, that help workplaces to flourish?
[00:13:21] Speaker C: So again, I mentioned the flourish model and I thought, oh, I hope they give me a chance to actually identify what those factors are. So thanks for that question.
So, yeah, again, using the flourish word. So you know, having fantastic teams where people experience life giving work, where organizations hire outstanding talent, where people experience development with uplifting growth, where they receive rewarding compensation for the work that they're doing, where leaders in the organization provide inspirational leadership with an organization, where they have a sustainable strategy and where there's healthy communication. So those are the eight statistically proven factors that drive employee engagement in Christian workplaces.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. We definitely want to talk more about it. I think. Al, just thinking about the listeners of the Love justice podcast, it's all over the board and you might be talking to someone who is in this space with us and wanting to learn how to be effective at their work in fighting the world's greatest injustices. And so I think being able to share more about the work that you guys do is only going to be for the best for the Kingdom, all things considered. Right? Not just Love Justice. And we're just excited to share about how it's impacted us as an organization. But I'm really excited for the one person listening, thinking, man, I need to reach out to, to BCW and I need to like think about how to have a flourishing, a flourishing workplace.
And maybe in the, maybe the opposite vein of the question that Jason just asked, what are some common challenges Christian organizations face in creating a healthy workplace culture. And what are some of the unintended consequences of leaving those challenges unaddressed?
[00:15:22] Speaker C: Yeah, well, first of all, you know, leaders really impact the culture of their workplace. So the health of the culture rests largely on leaders. Now, everybody has a role in the health of their workplace culture, that's for sure. But again, leaders are intentionally the way they set culture or unintentionally the way they let culture develop in their organizations. So, you know, I've quoted oftentimes the first Peter 5 to shepherd the flock. You know, where Peter is saying, you know, the first head of the church after Jesus, shepherd the flock that Christ has given to you. So, and what happens in many Christian ministries is that is that leaders become so focused on actually serving the customers that they overlook their staff.
And you can see it over and over again.
Picture a senior pastor who sees the flock that he's supposed to shepherd is the congregation. But if he's got, or she's got several staff members that are being overlooked and not encouraged, not developed, not, then that being overlooked creates dysfunction in the staff.
And actually leaders, one of the problems that they oftentimes, they don't understand that when the staff, when they delegate to the staff to actually serve on the front line of the ministry's work, when their frontline people are positioned to serve most effectively, that's when the organization is most effective. So that's one thing I've seen in the past. And when people who have read the book Road to Flourishing, they oftentimes tell me the best chapter, the chapter that really makes a difference for them is rewarding compensation. And, you know, nobody comes into a Christian ministry expecting to make a lot of money. There's no question. But oftentimes compensation is just overlooked by leaders, and it's not competitive. And it doesn't provide a sense of recognition that people actually deserve. So I describe in the book I worked with a ministry who, who had worked with us over the years and had really gone from a not so healthy to a very healthy workplace. And yet they always scored low on rewarding compensation. They just didn't bite the bullet that said, yep, we need to pay our people more. And in fact, you know, and this is a large ministry in a compensation analyst, they're there in human resources, did a gap analysis, discovered there's a 3 million gap between what, what competitive would be with other nonprofits and what they were paying. And they just wouldn't address that. And, you know, they've gone through a period where they've lost A lot of their best people. And so the ministry is not thriving, not flourishing the way it could. So that's an example.
[00:19:06] Speaker D: Yeah, that's significant. Yeah. You know, we, I think we keep hitting on it. And even for the, the focus of this podcast, it's so important that people understand you can't engage in the mission that you think matters most if you aren't flourishing. Right. And, and so, so leaders want their organization, they should, let's put it that way, leaders should want their culture and their organizations and their people to flourish so that their mission can flourish in the way that it's having impact.
How do you measure that? Right. Like how does BCW measure the success of an organization's workplace? The whether they're flourishing or not? Or how do they measure if they're not flourishing? Right. What are, what are those metrics look like?
[00:19:55] Speaker C: So, so great question because and you use the magic word and that is measure. And the beauty is you can measure it. You know, if we've all heard culture eats strategy for breakfast and well, how do we know if we've got a good culture? Oftentimes you can measure the effectiveness of the strategy different ways. But, but it's through the employee engagement survey that we've developed and honed and tested and modified over the years. That is the way that we can measure it. And you know, with, with great accuracy.
We've done a thorough statistical analysis. In fact, we do this every year to make sure that, that the questions that we ask actually relate to and highly correlate with our bottom line definitions of engagement. And you know, we want, you know, we define engagement where people actually have an emotional connection between themselves and the organization they're working with. And you know, I know, I'm sure in what the survey says at Love justice is that, yeah, people are connected to the work that you're doing, they love the work, they find that you're doing effective work and they want to be part of it. And isn't that what we all want? You know, that's life giving work where we are able to connect the work we do with the mission and goals of the organization. How that makes us feel like we're providing a valuable service to the world. And so measuring the health of your culture using a verified third party type of a survey like you've done is the only and best way to do it.
A lot of your listeners are saying, well, I can create my own survey. And I'm going to say, well, it never will be as effective as having a third party that's got a tested proof survey for sure.
[00:22:04] Speaker D: Yeah. One that's been refined the way you guys have refined it over the years. One that's been, you know, and you've got, it's almost like in science and even in, you know, medicine, where you've got gold standard testing versus internal testing. Right. And I think that's what you're, what you're referring to. And that kind of evaluation is super informative and, and can be incredibly culture shaping. So I love that.
[00:22:33] Speaker C: Yeah. It's one of the things oftentimes, you know, when you do your own internal survey while you sort the responses high to low, and there's no benchmarks to really compare with. And you know, what's always going to happen is the compensation competitiveness question will usually be the lowest scoring question.
Well, but it may not be actually a low score when you, when, because of just the topic of compensation. You know, when I, when I was with my previous firm, that always came the question, compensation question came up and I'd say, well, you know, I really feel like I'm fairly paid, but do I want them to know that?
And so. Well, it's just natural that score is going to be a loader a little lower. I'm going to say, yeah, well, neutral. Yeah, but so does a neutral score mean that it's really a low score? Because the benchmark actually will say, well, it's the lowest score anyway. So really it's the gap. It's the difference between your score and what others in your marketplace might score, as an example. Yeah. So having that benchmark data and in your case with other Christian mission types of organizations is really helpful.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Al, I have a little bit of a nuts and bolts type of question for you because we've been in meetings with Doug talking and analyzing just the results of our own workplace. And the level of insight and connections that he makes between questions and results is fascinating and very in depth because even us looking at the results versus Doug looking at the results and their relationship. Relationships and the connections that he's able to make. I'm just curious, how did you guys develop that element of your assessments? And you know, what kind of backgrounds do these guys have? Do you have data scientists? You have organizational psychologists? Like, what, what does this world look like behind the scenes?
[00:24:38] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks. And let me, let me tell you a little bit about Doug. You know, Doug actually interviewed with us for a different job, and a year later, he didn't get the job. He's really good at what he does. It didn't fit the first job we were looking at. And yet a year later, he called me and he said, al, he said, ever since we talked and I learned about what you guys do and how you do it, I wake up in the morning and I want to do what you are doing.
How can I do that?
And he had started. He had his own company before that. He was using psychometric tools, and he's a PhD in basically industrial organizational psychology.
And I said, well, Doug, we'd love to have you consider a job with this, no question. And so it was, you know, he just, it was a calling from God in a lot of ways where he just would wake up in the morning and say, I want to do that, you know. And so that's how we connected. And he's one of several consultants that we have that have a. Have come. Usually they've worked in a ministry and they have an orientation of not only leadership, but have that technical background of understanding data. And a lot of people in ministry are very relational focused. And we're relational focused. That's one of our core values, but also data focused. And so as we've.
It's often a case of. And I remember saying to a ministry, well, you know, the one area I'd really focus on is your. The focus that you have in a certain part of the country. You know, that's not going so well. And the leader will look at me and say, how do you know? You know, because they know that that's not working so well in that part of the country. But, you know, the data will tell us. So.
Yeah, the data and understanding the data and looking at it in the context of what good organizations results are can be very insightful into a workplace situation. For example, I was just looking at your results and you're on a real upswing. Well, you could say, well, how do I know that you're in a real upswing? Well, the question that went up the most in the most recent survey is over the past year, Love justice has changed for the better. Well, like, it was pretty good before, but now it's even better. So I'd say, yeah, you guys are. You've got momentum and, and so keep up the. Whatever you're doing to keep that momentum as you grow and serve more in the critical ministry that you've got.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Al. You're. You're jumping ahead just a little bit because I do want to get into some of the aspects of Love Justice's workplace results. But before we do, I want to talk about just the trends that you're seeing in workplace culture within Christian organizations today. And if I'm not mistaken, you guys are getting ready to release potentially for the first time, a PDF or a report that kind of shows some of the findings that you guys have been seeing over the years. And we would love to direct listeners to that report, whether that's through your website or, you know, whatever we can link in the podcast notes. But I think that that information is so valuable and so I'm just curious to hear from you, like, what trends are you seeing and how can people learn more about those trends?
[00:28:36] Speaker C: Well, you're talking to a report that is out called the State of the Christian Workplace. And so if you go to our website, www.Workplaces.org, it'll pop right up and, and you can put in your email and get a copy of the State of the Christian Workplace and we look at it by sector. So Love justice, you're a Christian mission organization and we're looking at trends for those of you in that sector. While we also have, as I mentioned, Christian schools, Christian higher education, rescue missions, Christian led businesses. So we've got a section for each of those key sectors. One of the things that came out of this report and what we're seeing actually the level of engagement in Christian workplaces declined in the last year. And so that's a, we've seen tremendous improvements over the last 10 years, year after year after year. But, but we're seeing perhaps a decline and we don't know exactly why that is, but it is a bit of a concern for us. And it could be that, you know, we're kind of in this post Covid era and the labor market has gotten a little softer, not a lot softer. And so the pressure of being able to attract and retain your best people for fear that they might find another job very easily has kind of caused people to leaders, I believe, to not focus on engagement as much. But as I mentioned earlier, if people start slipping into this neutral or disengaged category, it's going to really be costly. So that's one of the key things that we've seen.
[00:30:35] Speaker D: I love it. So, so you. I think, I think what's, what I dig about what you just said is you're in some ways raising the red flag. Right. And saying, hey, we, you know, we, we have now not just a hunch, right. We've.
[00:30:52] Speaker C: Right.
[00:30:53] Speaker D: We've got the data.
[00:30:54] Speaker C: Right.
[00:30:55] Speaker D: That demonstrates that this is something we've got to be paying attention to and that's something we really value. About you guys like the way that we work with you. We are so data driven in our own work and we're so focused on impact and metrics, measurable impact, proven impact, you know, that you can, you can not just again tell a story of, but show the data behind. And so we really love what you guys doing that and how you do it. So as you've worked with us, right, I think it's been three years now.
This year we certified healthy. We're right, right on the edge of flourishing and we're really hoping to be in that flourishing space soon.
But from your perspective, like what makes us unique in terms of a workplace culture and you know, mission, vision, strategy or you know, any of the other elements of what we're working on. But what, what makes who we are a little bit unique based on what you see in the data and maybe even if you have a hunch.
[00:32:05] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, let me just say again, congratulations. You know, when we looked at the level of engagement of your employees, you're, you're above the sector average. You know, that's, that's fantastic. And as you say, you're a step away from being flourishing. Again, we measure that on our five point scale at a 4.25 and above.
And you've made some great as you're working on. In fact, I haven't mentioned yet that inspirational leadership is the most important driver of the eight. And as I look at how you're working as an organization, you've got several improvements in the inspirational leader area. I mentioned the one where you've changed for the better over the past year. Another one is the sense of the level of excellence in your processes has improved. That's the question that your love justice is well managed. And another one where you're seeing higher levels of trust between leaders and, and employees and that you're keeping a focus and putting Christ first in daily decision making. You don't have a bunch of me first leaders working in the organization. So you're seeing great improvements. But when I look at your strengths relative to others in your sector, clearly you've got a sustainable strategy where there's clear consensus on goals. People, this is so exciting where people are all about the goals that you have as an organization. They're like arrows moving in the same direction.
And also that people believe that what you're doing really is making a difference.
You're meeting the needs of those that you're serving. And at the same time they would recommend, this is so important in Christian organization, they'd recommend that Their family and friends actually support what you do. You know, you rely on donations. And I can't tell you how many times people in a ministry wouldn't even recommend that their friends support the work that they're doing. But at Love justice, that's what you're doing. And then at the same time, I'll say that your communication is just really strong. And what your leaders are doing is they're seeking the suggestions of your staff and your employees on the front line. And because that's where the act, where the action is. And if an organization is going to stay effective and meaningful, they need to be close to those that are actually doing the frontline work.
And while you're seeking their suggestions, you're also encouraging them to experiment because, you know, you're on the. You're trying to do something that's new and unique. And you need to have a culture where there's. Where people are encouraged to experiment, be innovative. And also, I'll just say that you explain reasons behind major decisions. You involve staff and decisions that affect them. Those are all key to really. And the strengths that you've got as an organization. So those are. Yeah, those are really, really important.
[00:35:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Al, I would just say, you know, just echoing what you had said earlier in the podcast around having that third party coming in and making those recommendations, I 100% agree with you. And when you say Love justice is growing for the better and on the upswing, it's. I personally think it's because of our work with bcw. And there's been a tangible, palpable difference, in my opinion, kind of before BCW and after bcw.
And I'm also just really thankful and will affirm just the leadership of Love justice of. It takes a very humble leader to invite that level of insight into. To the organization. 1. But not only that, but act on it. And the leadership at Love justice has been so intentional with listening to what you guys are saying, listening to the recommendations that you're making, and actually doing something about it. And I think that you can see the year by year by year comparison in our results, because if they weren't, then those results wouldn't. It wouldn't show up in the results. And so Love Justice, I think, is where we're at today because of you guys.
And what's really interesting are maybe some connections that I'm making. So you can correct me if I'm off base here, Al, I want you to, if this is the case. But what's interesting is you're seeing this Maybe upswing from your side of looking at the employee engagement results simultaneously. What you might not know and what a lot of people are still learning about love justice is we're in a season of exponential growth.
Our impact is the number of intercepts that we have on a given month. So intercepting people to prevent them from being trafficked. And we about two, three years ago, one of our data scientists on staff said, hey, the rate at which we're growing in impact is on an exponential growth curve. This is something you guys should be watching out for. It actually probably was right after our first BCW survey.
I wish I was kidding. It's actually uncanny the parallels with this to some extent and just said, be watching and see what happens. And sure enough, we've exceeded the exponential growth curve over the last two years back to back with our impact. And I can't help but sit here and wonder that has to be connected with also a flourishing workplace, right? Because it's out of the overflow of your staff and them flourishing that you then have this exponential flourishing impact.
[00:38:15] Speaker C: You've just described the value proposition that we bring to organizations. That is that culture having a flourishing workplace culture leads to high levels of employee engagement, which then leads to your ability to retain, not only well, attract, but also retain your top talent. Because they've figured out, as you figured out how to have more impact with trafficking and they become excellent in their job. So again, culture leads to engagement, leads to retaining top talent. That's really doing an excellent job. And then for your donors to see that impact, so you're providing satisfaction, not only that, you're intercepting traffic situations, I mean, that's tremendous. But then what your donors actually see that impact and that provides satisfaction not only for those that you're rescuing, but those that, that are helping to provide the resources to do that. And as you do that more and more over time, well, they become more loyal to the organization and saying, I'm getting great returns on my investment in what you're doing.
And when you have more and more people who experience that satisfaction, that builds into loyalty, then you're able to grow and therefore have more impact. I mean, that's the logical value stream of having a flourishing workplace culture. So flourishing workplace cultures lead to thriving organizations is the way I look at it. So, yeah, keep up the good work.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: Thanks, Hal. Okay, I have two maybe bonus questions to ask you that I did not send you ahead of time.
[00:40:10] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: One of them is, you guys probably do this survey in your own team. What is one thing that you're working on this year to make your workplace even more flourishing. I'm probably assuming that you're flourishing, but still, it doesn't mean, I think Doug also said, you know, we're not perfect either and we're also working on some of these things. I'm just curious, what's one thing VCW is working on?
[00:40:36] Speaker C: Yep. So first of all, let me say yes, we take our own medicine and we do our own engagement survey. We've been doing it for years. And for CEOs who are listening, who are like, I don't know that I really want to know because I might be afraid of what I find out.
I've been in that chair every year now Jay Bransford is in that chair and I'm the board chair. So. So I love it that he can report to me what those results were.
But yeah, so again, it's just highly important to me to create a flourishing workplace culture within Best Christian Workplaces. And it's on our board policy manual. That's something we do every year and that the board expects results above a certain level. So last year, in fact, we just finished our survey and we're going to have a debriefing. Jay is going to have a debriefing on it soon and he'll report the results to the board. But last year it was around innovation.
That's one of the strengths that you guys have.
We have a very flourishing workplace culture. And so, so some, we'll look at some of the questions that are lower than others relative to the benchmarks. And yeah, while that's still high, we work on it. And so innovation was something we did. The entire staff were involved in listening to a series of innovation programs, videos, and then a lot of discussion around, well, how do we actually innovate what we're doing? And we're actually now in this last year, we've completely rebuilt our 360 survey platform and improving that. And we're going to continue to innovate with using more of an easier to use executive summary that comes out faster. And then we're going to be working on our survey platform. So those are examples of.
We also thought we needed to improve our excellence in conflict amongst our staff. And so we've done conflict management work. I mean, so those are things that have come out of the survey that will end. You know, the beauty is when you work on those things, those survey responses go up. And that's true for us too.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Question number two.
The workplace has changed drastically since COVID Right. I think you've seen a lot more workplaces go remote. What is maybe one tip, trick suggestion and not trick, that's not the right word. But just your suggestion. And talking to people who are managing remote teams and thinking about how do I create a flourishing workplace that is not meeting in person, what would you say to that person?
[00:43:44] Speaker C: Two things. I would say, first of all, measure it. You know, you don't know unless you measure it. And we've already talked about that. And the second thing is, again, so frontline managers are more important than ever in my mind. And having effective one on ones, connecting leadership through the frontline manager to the frontline staff through one on ones. And I just encourage all organizations to have one on ones where managers are meeting with employees on an individual basis every week or every other week for a short period of time. And whether it's informal or whether there's formal questions, sometimes formal questions that you know, you expect, you know, well, what did I accomplish last week? What am I working on this week? How can you manage or remove barriers so I can be more effective? Might be good questions. But keeping that connection between the leadership, the strategy, the organization and that frontline employee through that frontline manager is key in a remote situation.
[00:44:59] Speaker D: Yeah, I have a follow up on that, if you don't mind.
If a team is working remote, like our stateside team, for example, and we know we need to be.
Well, we know that we trust each other and are unified and know how to collaborate and do collaborate on projects, but we want to be even more collaborative. We want a practice. Right. Or a habit that sets us up for success to collaborate better. Do you have any tips on that? Like, like is it standing meetings? Is it, you know what I'm saying? Like, is it, is it. What are the things you're saying to the, to these remote workplaces that's helping them to have that kind of collaboration?
[00:45:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I'd say also there's nothing that does replace on a, at least an annual basis where you are getting people together.
So we're completely remote. We get together, all staff get together for three or four days in the summertime when we have a kind of a slow period for us.
And it's a highly structured combination of work, but also team building in the same time.
But then we also have a clear rhythm for collaboration.
Our leadership team meets every week for an hour and a half and we use a process called EOS as an organization that gives. It's basically an operating system and that there's quarterly check ins there's quarterly goal setting, there's annual reviews. So as a clear defined process and then we have a defined process where departments will then follow up after that on a weekly basis to have regular team meetings. So having that discipline as an organization where everybody counts, everybody's involved, and then twice a year, at least once a year in a remote setting where you're actually getting together, you know, you're being developed, you're, you're building teamwork and collaboration, you're having some fun. I have fun at work is a question that we ask in our survey. As you know and you know, you're getting people to want to know each other so they can trust each other so they can work more effectively together.
[00:47:35] Speaker D: It's awesome.
[00:47:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: Well, Al, thank you so much for your time today this evening. Morning. We're all in different time zones right now, so it's hard to know which one to say. But yeah, I'll just really thankful for your insight, for your wisdom and just your generosity in sharing all of this really valuable information. And like I said, I hope that some of our listeners can take some good takeaways from this, but also explore what working with BCW could look like for them. And for anyone who's interested in learning more about the flourishing workplace of love justice, we have open positions on our website at.
[email protected] backslash careers. Check it out if there's any. Yeah. Part of you that's like, man, I love anti trafficking work. And this organization seems to be healthy. Let's check it out. And that's the place to go.
[00:48:33] Speaker C: And you're, you've got the seal of being a certified best Christian workplace. So yeah, if you're working in a toxic environment, you're finding it unhelpful, unsatisfying, Love justice.
[00:48:48] Speaker B: Thanks, Al. We did not pay Al to say that, by the way.
[00:48:51] Speaker D: No, we didn't send us his.
[00:48:58] Speaker C: But I know because I've, I've read the results of all of your employees and how they feel about the workplace. And, and it's a completely, that's another thing. It's a completely anonymous process. And, and so we, yeah, it's trustworthy data, no question.
[00:49:17] Speaker D: Yeah, I love it. We've loved this time with you out. It's been really, really special, really informative, very helpful. I hope our listeners recognize the meaning of why this matters. You know, that impact and mission accomplishment, mission objectives being reached is near impossible. Right. Without that flourishing culture. And so thank you big time.
[00:49:44] Speaker C: Thank you, Jason. It's really been a pleasure. Hannah. Thanks so much. It's really been fun. And thanks for inviting me.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: We are grateful for the generous support of the Love justice community. Please consider joining our family of donors. Learn more at lovejustice NGO Love Justice International has internship opportunities available. Visit our
[email protected] to learn more about each opportunity and submit your application. We're also looking for teachers for our dream school. Don't miss this opportunity to be a part of the solution. Join Love Justice International in our mission to bring about positive change. For more info, contact Careers at lovejustice ngo.
