Looking for an unusual employee benefit? Some companies offer workplace chaplains

Jason Humble tries to meet with every Ohio Gratings employee each week to see how they are doing — all 600 of them.

But he's not the company president or owner.

He's not the human resources director.

He's the company chaplain.

"I wanted this job," said Humble, who joined the family-owned Ohio Gratings in Perry Township in 2019 after years of serving as a pastor at churches. "I wanted this opportunity to share with men and women outside the church walls, where they're at, not to make them come to me and fit a mold inside the church. I was given that opportunity and I'm thankful for it and relish it every day."

Humble is part of a little-known employee benefit called a workplace chaplain. There are an estimated 9,220 chaplains in the U.S. today, with 71% most likely working at private companies rather than in the government sector, according to the career website Zippia.

While many companies with chaplains have an overtly faith-based identity such as Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby — or they work in settings where death and dying is commonplace such as hospitals — they also include Tyson Foods, General Motors, Ford and Coca-Cola Consolidated, the largest independent Coca-Coca bottler in the U.S., with 16,000 employees and 88 chaplains on staff.

The chaplains aren't tasked with recruiting people to church, pushing a religious agenda or having workers confess their sins. Instead, they are there to listen and help employees with daily struggles.

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In the case of Ohio Gratings, which specializes in metal bar grating design and custom fabrication services, owners John and Karen Bartley wanted to provide an extra benefit by which employees can find encouragement and safely share their concerns and challenges.

"We all have to work and work isn't necessarily always a fun thing, and we have life, which happens," Karen Bartley said. "We've been deliberate and intentional in how we go about that. The vision and mission is to give hope and joy, and how do we go about doing that in the marketplace?"

The Rev. Jason Humble: 'They have invested in me so that men and women don't have to walk alone.'

John Bartley, who serves as CEO of Ohio Gratings, had the idea of adding a workplace chaplain in the early 1990s. Shaun Eller, who's now chief business officer, became the first chaplain because he was working at Ohio Gratings while pastoring a church.

For Humble, a 2001 Perry High School graduate and an alumnus of Malone University and Asbury Theological Seminary, it was a homecoming. Prior to Ohio Gratings, he pastored mainline Protestant churches in Mount Vernon, Strasburg and Chardon, but frequent reassignments were becoming a strain on his young family. He remains an ordained minister on leave from active ministry.

Humble said upon meeting the Bartleys in 2019, they told him about the chaplaincy program and their dream for all associates to be cared for.

"That was exciting to me," he said.

Humble walks through buildings and departments on a daily basis, and also does individual meetings with employees.

"John and Karen have graciously given 20 to 30 minutes to every associate who needs a private setting," Humble said. "What do I have to offer associates, the men and women who work here except space, and listening and care? ... They have invested in me so that men and women don't have to walk alone."

Humble said it did take a bit of "bridge-building" when he first arrived. He recalled that during his job interview, the Bartleys asked him if he knew how to be a chaplain.

"I'd spent 10 years as a pastor," he said. "The joke around here is that I'm 117-4: 117 funerals and four weddings in 10 years of ministry. I got here, and I walked out on the production floor, and everybody has a job to do, they have things they need to get done. I don't make grating. I had to figure out, how do I serve these men and women and build that bridge to be able to offer care? It wasn't so much a hesitancy as much as, how does the chaplain fit in?"

He doesn't serve as the pastor at Ohio Gratings

Humble stressed that he doesn't function as a pastor.

"A pastor has the spiritual authority and obligation to lead people to Jesus," he explained. "I am a resource of care first. You build that bridge so someone is cared for, but I'm not a spiritual authority and I'm not working under that directive."

Humble, who has cerebral palsy, said his own challenges have helped him to understand what it means for a person to have a good, steady job.

"I get to be here under leaders who have a mission in mind to be not just a first-class organization in product and service and to be an industry leader, I get to walk with associates when they have those moments in time when things either here or things outside of here make life difficult," he said.

He said he refers associates to professional services when necessary.

"... I can't fix most things for people but I can serve in ministry of presence," he said. "When you come to Ohio Grating, you're going to know you matter here. That's the most rewarding thing."

Karen Bartley said the company is blessed to have Humble on staff.

"His level of caring is evident in what he does daily," she said. "It's not just during the work hours. He takes calls 24 hours a day when someone in crisis or need."

Workplace chaplains are 'that human connection, that friend, that sympathetic and empathetic ear.'

The Rev. Matthew Tweddle, director of Akron Children's Hospital's chaplaincy program since 2016, said most people don't understand what chaplains do.

"As chaplains we provide spiritual and emotional support, and for some people that includes their religious needs as well," he said. "But not everybody is religious, and so sometimes a chapel is just kind of that human connection, that friend, that sympathetic and empathetic ear."

Tweddle, who joined the staff in 2010, oversees four chaplains at the hospital's campuses in Akron and Mahoning County.

"As a chaplain, as the person who's actually giving the care, I see the role — this isn't my term, and I can't credit it to the right person — but like a 'dream capturer,'" he said. "The person that just hears the story; the person that can allow a person to be themselves and to be heard and understood."

It can be challenging, he said.

"If I can be perfectly honest, I do think that it's easier to identify the challenges because the first thing that comes to mind is, as a pediatric chaplain, there can be some sadness," Tweddle said. "There are times where we feel deep sorrow. And yet the other side of that is the meaning and purpose of the work that we do."

A native of Upper Arlington, Tweddle attended Northwestern University where he majored in engineering with plans of becoming a business consultant. But after volunteering with a local church's youth program there, he found his life heading in a different direction.

"For much of my life, I really wasn't aware of chaplaincy as a profession or knew it could be a career option," he said. "I think it just allows me to use skills that feel really natural to me. I enjoy just just listening and getting to know people and hearing their stories and what makes them who they are. ... As a chaplain, I think the patient or the family, or the staff person sets the agenda. Within the context of their spiritual or religious tradition, the staff is almost a mirror to reflect and support."

Millwood: A faith-forward company

Steve Miller, founding president and CEO of Gnadenhutten-based Millwood Lumber, which has 35 locations, said having workplace chaplains is in keeping with its mission as "faith forward" company.

Miller also is a co-founder of The Lookout, a new faith-based outreach to encourage business owners and other community leaders to invest in practical missions, in partnership with the Hall of Fame Village.

Miller said Millwood added chaplains in 2000 because the company's rapid growth necessitated it, and because they wanted their employees to understand that their jobs are not more important than their needs.

"When you're a small company with 10 employees, you're everything," he said. "You're the drug counselor, the marriage counselor, the banker, all those things. We had to have ways to separate ourselves and create an atmosphere where team members felt like they are more important than their function. That's really the message that we try to convey to all the new team members as they come in."

Millwood's chaplains are integrated with the human resource department.

"So, they do recruiting, they do orientation," Miller said. "They've got an excuse for being in the workplace rather than just being a chaplain. We just found that people were more standoffish, you couldn't build a relationship; they were like, 'No, I don't want to talk to no chaplain.'

"So it was creating that environment where they they had a relationship, and then when life comes at them, you know, a son or a daughter that's addicted, or they themselves have an addiction or marriage trouble, or sickness in the family, or deaths in the family, those kind of things, just having somebody that walks alongside them. Once that happens, they know that we care about them as an individual versus just their function."

Miller said about half of their chaplains work full time, while some others have their own churches.

"We look for people that are already out there on the streets doing something in the local community," he said. "Those are the guys that we try to reach out to partner with us because they have that mindset to reach their community, which is exactly what we want to do as well."

Marketplace Chaplains

One of the pioneers of workplace chaplaincy is Marketplace Chaplains of Dallas. Founded in 1984, it is the oldest and largest nonprofit dedicated to providing 2,200 chaplains to businesses and organizations.

Marketplace Chaplains hires people from a variety of backgrounds. One former Marketplace Chaplain is the Rev. Luke Witte, a retired NBA basketball star and Marlboro Township native who served in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Chaplaincy candidates go through a training academy before being assigned to companies, which cover the cost of their services. They also participate in continuing education programs.

"People go through struggles every day," Marketplace Chaplains spokesman Jason Burns said. "Most of them have no one in their life that they can turn to for help. ... So, people go to work with problems that they have no one to talk about that, they feel like there's no repercussions from that discussion. Most businesses aren't able to provide someone in a business context, and so the average employee goes to work every day with challenges."

Burns said the issue also puts human resources departments and supervisors at a disadvantage.

"They just go through the day just trusting that everybody can cope with their own problems," he said. "Chaplains go into the workplace every week, and build relationships to where that individual knows that there's someone they can turn to; someone that can provide care for them and their family."

Reach Charita at 330-580-8313 or charita.goshay@cantonrep.com.

On Twitter: @cgoshayREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Workplace chaplains are an unusual company benefit for employees