Thanks for joining us on Season 5 of The Flourishing Culture Podcast, brought to you by The Best Christian Workplaces Institute. You’ll learn how to build a flourishing workplace culture that drives the ministry impact of your organization, your church, or your company brought to you by the Best Christian Workplaces Institute. Now here’s your host, BCWI president, Al Lopus.
The interruptions in our normal routines caused by the COVID-19 crisis is challenging us to rethink our approach to many things. Yes, it is allowing us to rethink our Christian values and how we apply them in our lives and in our organizations. How do we, as Christian leaders, encourage flourishing families? Especially at the beginning of our children’s lives. Listen in to this new and challenging research on how Christian organizations deal with key, family-friendly policies.
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It’s really a pleasure to welcome in Dr. Denise Daniels, Professor of Management at Seattle Pacific University. Denise, welcome to the Flourishing Culture Podcast.
In this time of uncertainty, I would encourage people to be gracious and generous in spirit to themselves and those around them; as they’re working in contexts that are difficult, unusual and create challenges that we might not have anticipated.”
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
- Dealing with constant change (03:12)
- Investigating practices that support families in Christian non-profits and Christian owned businesses (04:13)
- This research team was trying to understand the value and practices of Christian organizations with respect to family-supportive practices (05:02)
- Paid time off, sick leave, family leave (05:43)
- What were some of the early surprises while conducting this research? (07:56)
- Organizations had a mission-driven emphasis on why they wanted to care for their employees (08:18)
- How much time off would an employee have after the birth of a child? (08:50)
- Almost every organization said they were doing the best they could in a resource-constrained environment (11:26)
- Organizations that worked in states or municipalities with fairly extensive laws regulating family leave practices had significantly better practices than those operating in lower regulatory environments (12:03)
- A lot of organizations looked at what they’re particular strengths were and tried to capitalize on them in terms of how they offered benefits (16:22)
- The leading edge right now is not maternity leave but paternity leave (19:11)
- There’s going to be an increasing need for employees to care for their elders (22:01)
- The values and the practices, is there a connection between the two? (24:00)
- Spiritual practices that can benefit employee families and organizations (24:25)
Additional Resources
Buy Denise’s book: Working in the Presence of God: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Work
Download BCWI’s four-page guide for inspirational leadership in crisis for FREE.
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Read a complete, word-for-word transcript of the episode here

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