CHAPTER 5: Promoting the Career Well-Being of Religiously/Spiritually Oriented Employees by Supporting Their Emotional Resilience and Spiritual Fitness

What makes North-Carolina-based retail company Replacements, Ltd. an award-winning, psychologically healthy workplace? According to the American Psychological Association’s Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program (http://www.phwa.org), it is that this dinnerware retail-company demonstrates exemplary performance along all five healthy-workplacepractice domains: (a) employee involvement, (b) health and safety, (c) employee growth and development, (d) work-life balance, and (e) employee recognition. For instance, to promote employee growth and development, Replacements, Ltd. funds quarterly executive coaching for each senior staff member, supervisor, and manager. In addition, at a leadership-development seminar, each of these senior leaders is also asked to craft a personal mission statement.

This chapter is about employees whose (typically unarticulated) personal mission statement includes a substantive religious/spiritual component. We will describe such individuals as religiously/spiritually oriented (RSO), given that religion and/or spirituality substantially informs their worldview and thereby plays a significant role in orienting their perceptions, experiences, and choices. Well over 50% of the adult American population may reasonably be described as RSO, given that, according to the nationally representative U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 56% of adult Americans claim that religion is very important in their life and 26% claim that it is somewhat important (Pew Research Center, 2008, p. 23).