Transcript: A Biblical Mandate for a Healthy Workplace Culture // David Emmert, Celebration Baptist Church

The Flourishing Culture Podcast Series

“A Biblical Mandate for a Healthy Workplace Culture“

February 10, 2020

David Emmert

Intro: Is there a biblical imperative to build and lead a flourishing workplace culture? As Christian leaders, why would we want to invest time, talent, and treasure into creating a flourishing workplace? Well, today we hear directly from a leader who shares his heart, including the why a flourishing workplace matters and how it has come about. Listen in to our conversation.

Female: This is the Flourishing Culture Podcast. Here’s your host, president of the Best Christian Workplaces Institute, Al Lopus.

Al Lopus: Welcome to another episode of the Flourishing Culture Podcast, where our goal is to equip and inspire you to build a flourishing workplace. We are here to help you eliminate workplace distrust, improve your employees’ experience, and grow your organization's impact. And before we meet our special guest today, I urge you to subscribe to this podcast. As a result, you’ll receive our action guide. It’s our gift to help you lead your organization’s culture to the next level. To subscribe, simply go to bcwinstitute.org/podcast. Hit the Subscribe button, and receive our free action guide.

Also, if you could share this podcast with others, and rate it, it would really mean a lot to me. Thank you.

And now, let's meet today's special guest.

David Emmert is lead pastor at Celebration Baptist Church in Tallahassee, Florida. Their workplace culture, for the most part, is thriving and flourishing. And under David's leadership, Celebration staff of 33 employees has achieved something truly remarkable, and that's 91 of their staff are engaged in their work. David, welcome to the Flourishing Culture Podcast.

David Emmert: Well, Al, I'm very glad to be with you guys today and have a chance to talk to you about flourishing workplaces. Also, I want to thank the part that you all have played in the health of our organization. You've made a huge contribution to our church, and we really appreciate Best Christian Workplaces.

Al: Thanks, David. And congratulations on having a flourishing workplace culture.

Over the past seven years, you've surveyed the health of your staff culture. And each time, your workplace culture ranks in the top 10 percent of churches in our database, now over 350 churches, and that's comparable to over the thousand organizations we've served. Why is having a flourishing culture important to you? because that data would say it is important to you, and you're intentional about creating it.

David: I think for us there's two reasons here why creating a great culture is important. First, as a church that serves in a capital city of a large state, I've got a number of people in our congregation that lead organizations or parts of organizations. So they’re department heads from government or they're leaders of vendors who serve the government. And many of them have departments or employee bases of dozens and some even hundreds of employees. And on an ongoing basis, throughout the years, I preach and as I teach, I’ll encourage them and challenge them to take what it means to be a Christ follower into their workplace. So there's not two of them. I tell people all the time, I can't keep up with two of me. I can barely keep up with one of me. So I want that one to be consistent. And so if you're going to be a Christian, be a Christian in a workplace, lead as a believer in the workplace. And if our culture here at Celebration is toxic, I don't have any credibility to encourage them to pursue excellence in their workplace.

And second of all, I would say this. I want to work in a great culture. I don't want to go to work every day and just dread it. When my wheels turn onto the parking lot of the church, I don't want to go, “Ugh, I’m here again.” I don't want that. I want to go to a place where I'm excited to go, where I'm around happy and motivated people. And I just think life is too short to settle for less, and so it's important to me personally for that reason.

Al: And boy, I relate to that as well. And many of the people listening oftentimes say that's the motivation they have is just for themselves to be fired up and want to come to work. But I love the first reason, basically, let's be witnesses of the way Christ would lead.

Is there a time when you really came to realize that having a flourishing workplace culture was worth working on? Was there a special point that you decided, “Yep, we’re going to do this”?

David: Oh, absolutely. When I first came to Celebration about 14 years ago, the church had been through a great deal of challenge. It had gone through an enormous transition in leadership, it had some substantial vacancies in the pastoral leadership, and the support staff in particular was very marginalized. It was just not a very good environment. And I'll never forget the first time, that very first Monday, that I came into the office, and I was going to meet with the support staff. And I did not know this group really at all. During the interview process, I’d spoken to some of the pastors and key lay leaders but had not gotten to know the support staff. So I wanted to meet these people.

So I set a meeting mid morning with all of them, about eight to 10 people, largely a group of women, a couple of guys sprinkled into the bunch. And I walked into the room and I said, “Good morning,” as happy and as chipper as I could possibly be. And everybody in the room just burst into tears. And I thought, well, welcome to Celebration. This is going to be a lot more difficult than I thought. But I knew I didn't want to work in that place forever. I didn't want to be around that forever. And so right then, at that moment, I thought, I've got to improve this culture. That's going to be job one.

Al: There's a transforming moment right there, yeah. And it gave you some motivation. That's a great story. Appreciate it.

As a seminary graduate and lead pastor, I'm really interested, from your perspective, maybe a theological perspective, maybe even a biblical mandate for what God desires in a healthy workplace culture. Have you thought about that very much?

David: Absolutely. I think the Bible addresses it a whole lot. And so there's a number of passages that we as Christian leaders could and certainly should look at. One that might be a little obscure, but it's always been important to me, is found in Deuteronomy 15. The passage overall is about justice. It's about overcoming poverty. And the chapter begins with this discussion about every seven years canceling debt to ensure there's no poverty in the land. Then it goes in and it describes what someone who was locked into poverty could do. They could place themselves into indentured servitude for six years to pay off their debts. And then the seventh year they'd be set free. And so that's a big thing to think about. Just think about, wow, I could become someone's, effectively, slave for six years because I'm so indebted to them. Now, Deuteronomy 15 goes on to say that at the end of that time, they could choose to either be set free in year seven or they could choose to make their status as an indentured servant permanent. And I'm thinking, why would anybody want to do that? And the text tells us. It says, first, if the servant loves his master and doesn't want to leave, they can make that status permanent. And second, if they'd been treated so well financially, it doesn't make sense for them to move on. They could make that status permanent.

So if you bring that into our modern era, even though we don't have that kind of servitude, I think that speaks to the culture that we ought to try to create. We ought to try to create a culture where people are so well treated they don't want to leave. And they're also well-funded, they're well financed or well paid, so there's not this need for them to look for the next job immediately. I think that's the kind of culture we should work to create.

I love it when people say to me, I would work at Celebration for free. I know they don't mean that; they've got to feed their family. But I love the idea that they're enjoying where they are, they feel valued where they are, and they want to remain where they are, even if it wasn't financially essential for them to be there. I think that's the kind of Deuteronomy 15 culture that we ought to be trying to establish and trying to create in the workplace.

If you move on from there, the Bible's got a lot to say about the kind of workplace we should try to establish. Malachi 3 talks about judgment against those who don't pay well. Leviticus 19 talks about withholding a laborer’s wages. I worked at a church one time that if payday fell on a holiday, they would hold that paycheck for a couple or three days until the next business day. When I found out about that, it just crushed me. I thought, you can't do that. For folks who are living paycheck to paycheck, you're going to deprive them of their wages for two, three extra days? And I wasn't a decision maker there, but I was like, I want to be administrator. How can you do this? We can't hold someone's pay that way. And they changed that practice. I was very happy about it.

The Bible goes on and tells us more about that. 1 Corinthians 9 says those who declare the gospel ought to make their living by the gospel. I think that's important. Ephesians 4 tells us to be encouragers, not to have abusive language in our speech. Man, that speaks to workplace culture. James 2 warns us against favoritism. Luke 6, treat people the way that you would like to be treated. Philippians 2, look after those who are in need. Honor one another. Romans 12 and 1 Timothy 5, this one speaks very much to our modern context. Treat older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. A woman should always feel safe and valued in the workplace. And then one I think is really important to us here at Celebration, it’s just the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” And we've got those. If you walk into our office area, those, in huge font, are all the way around our open office area. It's a constant reminder of what we need to be striving for in our workplace. So I could keep going. Those are things that the Bible says, and I think they ought to inform our policies and practices.

Al: Oh, boy, that's great, David. I appreciate that. What a great list of scriptures. And again, that just shows you the intent of God over time, the way we should treat each other in the workplace and beyond.

At Celebration, your leadership team does a great job of involving staff in decisions that affect them. And I'm just going through a couple of your highlights here and really interested in your feedbacks. Give us a few ideas of how you do this, perhaps a memorable example of an approach that you use to get feedback to involve staff.

David: I think one of the things that we've succeeded with here is that we've built opportunities into our culture, into our rhythm, that gives people opportunities to be heard. So, for example, we've got a monthly calendar meeting where we discuss everything that's going on for the next three months, and it's mandatory for all staff. Doesn't matter if they're in maintenance. It doesn't matter if they're an administrator. Everybody is in that meeting. And we just sit there and talk through, okay, here's what we're doing. Here's where we're going. Here's how is going to impact this space, that space. Here's how it impacts the calendar. Here's how it impacts your world. And we expect everybody to contribute to that meeting. It doesn't matter your role. You've got something to say there in terms of what we do as an organization.

Another thing that we do is every single week we have a two-hour-long communications meeting, and that's a massive footprint of time. But in that, we talk about everything that we plan to communicate for the next six weeks. That's every announcement, every video, every slide, every information booth, every bulletin board, every sign, for every single ministry. And it's a required meeting for three or four different people there. I have to be there. Now, our worship and creative arts leader has to be there. Our communications director has to be there. This past week, for example, we had 14 people in that meeting because we open it to everybody. Everybody who wants to can come. And we make real decisions in that meeting that ultimately are going to affect the direction of our church because communication’s so critical to our church. And so the whole staff has a chance to participate, and the whole staff has the opportunity to be heard in that decision-making process every single week. And I think that just opens it up for us, for our folks to feel like they've got something to say and something to contribute.

Al: I like that. So a quarterly meeting where really the whole quarterly plan, the use of space, everything, that's talked about, because so often that also creates and encourages cross-departmental cooperation, which they've got to cooperate in order to have all that work.

David: Right. And that's not quarterly; that's monthly.

Al: That’s monthly, oh. I’m sorry.

David: We do that once a month. And then every week, we have the communications meeting, and that's also cross department.

Al: Well, that's great. Yeah.

Well, one of our top-three items on the engagement survey is the level of trust between leaders and your employees. And we know that trust takes a long time to build, and it can be lost easily. How do you see trust being built on your senior leadership team and throughout your staff culture?

David: Well, I think that I've got a responsibility to our staff to get a few things done and get done really, really well. So it's my job to set vision under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. That's a role that I have to fill. It's my job to take the lead in securing finances and resources to facilitate that vision. I've got to lead in finding staff. I've got a lead in creating an environment where everybody can do their job and create structures that help people perform. But the execution of all of that, in my view, has got to be participatory. So we work hard to plan far in advance, and we work hard to work together in that process, and then we deliberate a lot. So we have a culture that encourages people to push back, speak their mind, all of that kind of stuff. And at the end of the day, people know that sometimes I've just got to make a call. Maybe there's disagreement or we're not quite clear on which direction to go, and I've got to say, well, guys, this is the direction that we're going to head. And I think everybody knows that they have a seat at the table, they get to have input into how that's going to unfold, they get to have input in how we're going to get there, and they know that I trust them and I'm counting on them. So in turn, they can trust me to keep the ship kind of steered and pointed in a direction that's going to make sense and they feel like they've got some ownership in.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast. We’ll be right back after this brief word about a valuable tool that can pinpoint the true, measurable health of your culture.

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Al: All right. Now, let’s hear more from today’s guest.

I like the way you describe that, David, that you know what your role is: vision, resources, staffing, and culture environment, as you say, but then executing is a very participatory process. That's something we can all learn from. But I bet you've got a story about trusting another person in ministry. That's kind of a next step. So how does that really work?—as well as trusting God—but how about a story?

David: Well, for years now, we've been doing a car show on Father's Day, and it started off just as a gimmick. We were going to put four cars out in the front lawn on Father's Day. This was 12, 13 years ago. And the men of the church go, as they left, they went and looked at the cars, and two or three of them said, we ought to do a car show. So the next year we did. And we had, like, 25 cars at our first car show, and we thought that was fantastic. And we said, let’s just do this every year, Father's Day. And so it's grown and grown and grown. This past year, we had over three—right around 300 cars there; 1500, 2000 people in attendance. And we were doing this on Sunday afternoon right after church. Well, we live in Florida. Sunday afternoon on Father's Day right after church, it's 100 degrees outside. It's no fun. And so the staff member that was in charge of that said, we're going to take this event—this very successful event—and we're going to move it to Saturday night so that we're not out there in the heat. And I thought, man, that's going to just destroy the event. You're going to take something that's really worked well, and you're going to change it. But he kept making his case and he kept making his case. And so finally I said, okay, we're going to do it. I’m going to trust you. And that year, leading up to Father's Day car show, I thought, we're going to get smoked. Nobody's going to come. And the event doubled in size, just in that one year. And the next year and every year since we've been doing it on Saturday nights. And I'm so glad that he pressed for his way, if you will. He really felt that was the right thing to do. And I'm so glad that we followed his lead on it, because it was such a great thing to do. And we've had similar situations where we didn't quite make the right call. And I said, well, okay, we'll eat that mistake together, and then we'll work together to get it fixed. But I'm convinced that a lot of our best innovations happen when people feel like they're able to kind of make their case and go out there and do something, with confidence, that they're being trusted to go through it.

Al: Yeah. You've got to really, really trust your people to have that kind of engagement with your staff. Again, 91 percent; that's remarkable.

But I've got to ask you. When trust is broken between colleagues—continuing this trust conversation—what, in your mind, is the first step toward restoration? because we oftentimes find ourselves where, oh, my gosh, trust is broken one way or another. But now we've got to rebuild that trust account. What's the first step, do you think?

David: Well, I think it's very easy for us to do things that blow up in our face. Maybe it's a careless word. You can probably tell, Al, that I like to speak, and I like to speak really fast. And sometimes that gets me into trouble. You mean to affirm somebody, but instead you hurt them. And there's really nothing that you can do in those moments other than to quickly recognize it and to start working toward biblical reconciliation. So we just recognize that in those moments where something's happened and trust has been breached, that speed matters, and we've got to get in there and say the right things and do the right things and mean the right things. Extend those apologies and just reassure that person, man, you matter the world to me, and let’s kind of push the reset button on this, and let's get it right the next time that we go forward.

And we've been very successful at that. One of the things I think that really contributes to our culture is tenure. We've got—well, I would say the average pastor on our staff has been here 12 years. So our support staff, that number also is quite high. And so we've been able develop those relationships, I think, because as we see trust breached, we're pretty quick to come in there and get the process moving toward reconciling and being right with one another.

Al: Yeah. And that's another differentiation for Christian community, is it? It's how well you live together. And I love the idea that your staff has come together. They're working together. They trust each other. There's reconciliation. I love that idea. And what a great witness it is outside of the church.

So I'd love to talk a little bit about accountability, at least just for a moment, because I noticed that in your workplace culture that your staff and their supervisors regularly talk about the progress they're making and that there's a culture of accountability. And that's one of the questions we ask. And this can be really unusual for churches your size that have some type of a process for development and regular discussions with supervisors. Tell us about your review process and your accountability culture.

David: Well, we do have an annual-review process, and it took us a long time, a lot of trial and error, before we finally came up with something that we actually liked. So my goodness, we must have tried four or five different annual-review processes and so forth and really didn't like them. We just kind of burned through those things. But we were determined to settle on something that we really liked. And now we've got a process that we do think it works well for us. And it's all kind of built around an outline that says you talk with the staff member about what you want them to stop, what you want them to start, and what you want them to continue doing, in the year to come. And it allows both the employee and the employer to set goals for the next year, and it gives you the chance to review what's been successfully completed. So it's an instrument that we really like and we think is really well thought through.

So everybody knows that the annual review is going to be a part of the process. Everybody knows it's going to happen in October. That's just something that's a given in our culture. But everybody also knows that that's not the only opportunity for feedback that we have. We try to be really good in giving attaboys. When someone does something well, we try to really celebrate that, and we try to affirm that as quickly as we can in front of the whole staff. We do a weekly standup meeting, 30-minute standup meeting, a chance to celebrate what God's doing in our workplace. And at those meetings, we always do our best to celebrate when someone's had a really big success. We have a couple of places in our culture where we do that. We do a monthly staff lunch, and we celebrate victories there as well.

Now, obviously, you're going to have to have some hard conversations along the way. It’s not always just “attaboys” and “good jobs.” We want to have those conversations as quickly as we can. So I tell our supervisors that no employee should ever feel like they were ambushed by an annual review. That should never happen. If you've got feedback, critical feedback about underperformance that needs to happen, it needs to be done right now. Get that done. And if somebody’s got a deficiency in skill, we can spend a long time resolving that deficiency in skill. They may need additional training, whatever it may be. If someone’s got a deficiency in attitude or character, that's going to be troubleshot in three to four weeks. We typically don't let an attitude issue run on for more than a month. You have three or four weeks to fix that attitude or something's going to have to happen. There's got to be pretty substantial change. So we work on that immediately so we can move on from it. Then that way, when we sit down for the annual review, it's largely to affirm set goals for the year to come.

Al: Mm-hmm. We've seen situations where somebody will complain and show this really destructive attitude in a meeting, and then you’ll ask, well, how long has that person felt that way? Well, they've been pretty much that way for 20 years. But your policy, let's deal with this now. We need to have that attitude changed in three to four weeks. And I'm sure that you've had great success stories of how people have changed their attitude. And some people probably have decided that maybe there's another place for them to go otherwise.

David: Yeah, absolutely. I had the chance to work with a great leader who had come from the corporate world a lot of years ago, and he supervised, at one point when he was in the corporate world, a few hundred employees. He ran a fairly large division. And he said, “David, I would call in a problem employee, and I would say ‘Congratulations. Today's a brand new day for you. Your whole world is about to push a reset button. We're going to do things differently from here on out.’” And he would outline for them the challenges in their attitude, and he would tell them, “For an attitude problem, that's a 30-day clock. We're not going to let this go on forever.” And I thought that was really wise, and I've tried to hang on to that and practice that here at Celebration as well.

Al: Great advice, David, thanks.

At the Best Christian Workplaces Institute, we've set a God-sized goal to see 1,000 flourishing Christian-led workplaces by the year 2030. And last year we had less than 100 such workplaces. Why do you believe it's important for a church or a parachurch organization or even a Christian-owned business to aspire to build a flourishing culture? What would you say about that?

David: Well, I think that as Christian leaders, a lot of our witness is invested in the kind of Christian workplace that we develop and that we create. So if you look at the teaching of Jesus and how He started His earthly ministry, He comes out starting right away, talking about the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God is at hand. And He tells his followers, I want you to be about declaring the kingdom of God. And that kingdom is found when God's desires are carried out. When we as God's people are living the way that God intends for us, we're kind of touching on the hem of the garment of God's kingdom. So for us in the Christian workplace, I think that building a workplace that reflects those kingdom principles is at the heart of what we're supposed to be doing. It's not an extra thing that, especially a church, needs to do. In my view, it's kind of the core part of our mission to establish a kingdom-oriented workplace.

Al: And I'd be remiss if I didn't include probably something that has helped you with this vision, and that is that you actually were a missionary for several years. You were a missionary in Zambia and Ethiopia for ten years before your current assignment. What's one of the transformative lessons about leadership and service that you learned while you were serving in different cultures?

David: Well, first of all, I absolutely love serving and working cross culturally. To me, it's a tremendous challenge. And one of things that makes it a great challenge is as a missionary, you’ve got to learn to lead from one cultural mindset, and you're functioning in another culture. And that makes it a lot of challenge, it makes it a lot of fun, and it forces you to think all the time about how you can achieve your vision in a way that brings benefit both from your host culture that you're living in and makes sense in the culture sent you there. And in particular, I think it forces you to really look hard at how you communicate. So, is what I'm thinking and what I'm saying actually connecting to the fact that the person who's hearing me is likely not like me at all, doesn't share my experiences, doesn't share my cultural perspectives or biases in any way. And I think that when you learn to think like that, it's a huge asset for you because it forces you to communicate without a lot of assumptions. You’ve got to constantly be asking yourself, is the person I'm talking to, is the person communicating with, are they receiving it the way that I want that to go and what I want that to mean?

And I think that in the context of the American church, where it's changing all the time, a lot of people that we’re communicating with are folks that we really need to communicate with cross culturally. We can't just assume that because they've grown up in church or because they're in church, that they are seeing things the same way that we see them, they experience the world the same way that we've experienced them. And so we constantly have to communicate, in a sense, cross culturally here in the United States as well.

Al: Wow. I can see where that would be a great benefit.

But let me ask the question, again, looking at your data, and we've heard this ever since we were kids, the phrase, well, there's always room to improve. And your score’s, again, in the top 10 percent, with your culture. It's like, well, what's next? So what is the growing edge for you? Right now you've got a really flourishing culture, but is there a growing edge? How do you go beyond where you are now, even to greater excellence?

David: I think for us, one—and I think this is true for a lot of churches in the United States—I think one of the great opportunities is to see our staff grow in its diversity. And I think a lot of church staff’s become very monolithic. So all the pastors are kind of around the same age. They're all from around the same part of the country. All the ministers, all the support staff, they're all about the same age. They're all from about the same part of the country. And I understand that many churches have very specific views about men and women in leadership roles. I'm not really even talking about that as much as I am about the fact that we need to be more intentional about hiring from a broad bandwidth of age and culture backgrounds. I think we want to hire people who have a deep and abiding relationship with Christ. We want them serving on our staff. We all want people who are really sharp. We want people with good skill sets, but we also want to make sure that we're not hiring people who look just like us. We want to make sure that we've got people from every age, from every tribe, from every nation, if you will, as a part of our culture. And I think that we're in an age where the whole idea of diversity, maybe, especially when you think about it in the context of church, it’s a bit of a hot button. It's been kind of hijacked as a topic. And I'm not at all advocating that we blur the lines regarding biblical sexuality and our sexual ethic in any way. That's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm just saying that our staff is better when we have eminently qualified people from a diverse cross-section of age and nationality that are serving on it. And when you've got that in your staff, it becomes a very stimulating place to work.

I love coming into our workplace and hearing two staff members speaking to one another in a different language. I love that. I love the fact that we've got people who grew up in different parts of the world, serving on our staff. I love that. And it's very, very stimulating for me to be a part of that, and I want to be a part of that more and more here at our church. And it's a challenge for us, because I mentioned before, we've got good stability on our staff. We don't replace a lot of people. But as we open new positions, as we expand ourselves, our staff, I think we've got to ask ourselves all the time, is there a chance for us to bring in someone who's younger or older, or is there a chance for us to bring in somebody from a completely different cultural background? because we need their perspectives and their insights as co-laborers for Christ.

Al: Yeah. Great. David, this has really been great. I really appreciate what you've been saying. And we've learned a lot today, including, I just love the reasons why you've really determined that you want to have a flourishing culture both as a witness, but also just personally speaking. It makes it much more of an invitation for any leader to come into a workplace that is flourishing, that there's clearly a biblical background for a healthy culture, where you involve people—we've talked about involving people. We've talked about building trust. We've talked about how to reconcile with people that we've maybe made some mistakes with. We've talked about an annual-review process and accountability, even diversity. This has been a great conversation.

How about anything that you'd like to add about what we've talked about? Anything come to mind?

David: No, Al. I just want to say thanks. Thinking through these topics has been so stimulating and so helpful for me, and it's made me take a lot harder look at our culture at Celebration, what's changed and has gotten better in the past, and what challenges there are in the future. And I just really appreciate the opportunity to do that.

Al: Great, David. I appreciate your research and thought that's gone into this conversation. It's really clear. And to put a bow on the whole conversation, how about one final thought, one encouraging word that you'd like to leave with our listeners?

David: I'd say, once I heard a great piece of advice given from one pastor to another. This was not long after I came to Celebration. He said, make sure that you're building a church that you can lead and that you want to be a part of. And I've never forgotten that advice. I think it's easy to build a church sometimes that maybe another person might pastor or that you wouldn't want to go to or attend and be a part of yourself. And I thought, that makes sense. I want to build a church, build a church culture that I want to be a part of. And so that would be my encouragement. Make sure that you're building a staff culture that you can lead and that you want to be a part of every single day. Make sure that you're creating a place that's going to be a joy to work at.

Al: David Emmert, senior pastor at Celebration Baptist Church in Tallahassee, Florida, thanks for sharing your wisdom, insights, and stories, and thank you for investing yourself in everyone who's been listening and benefiting from all you've shared with us today. So appreciate it. Thank you very much, David.

David: No worries. And thanks for the opportunity to share, and thanks for the great work that you all do at Best Christian Workplaces.

Outro: I want to thank you for joining us on the Flourishing Culture Podcast and for investing this time in your workplace culture today. If there's a specific insight, story, or action step you've enjoyed in these past few minutes, then please share it with others so they can benefit as well. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to show your support by rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen. You can also share this podcast with friends on social media.

This program is copyrighted by the Best Christian Workplaces Institute. All rights reserved. Our writer is Mark Cutshall; our social-media assistant is Solape Osoba; and remember, a healthy culture drives greater impact and growth for your organization. We'll see you again soon on the Flourishing Culture Podcast.