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Pizza chain turns to chaplains for employees’ inner peace
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
Rob and Torri Zeigler, owners of The Loop Pizza Grill in Mount Pleasant, are seeking a chaplain for their franchise restaurant.
What the Zeiglers want is what Mike Schneider, co-founder and CEO of the Jacksonville-based pizza restaurant chain, recommends.
Schneider says there is so much “dysfunction and disconnect” in today’s work-a-day world that people with no outlet for their personal problems often bring those problems with them to an increasingly stressful workplace.
Employee stress, depression, frustration and discontent can lead to tardiness, poor attendance, a low employee-retention rate, all of which take a bite out of a business’ bottom line. The Loop’s chaplaincy program handbook points out that lost productivity due to employee behavior cost U.S. companies more than $300 billion a year.
With workers handling heavier workloads and often holding more than one job to make ends meet, with more working parents caring not only for their children but for their parents and with the rise of single parents straining to run a household, stress in the workplace has skyrocketed, said Sarah Gainey, president of Strategies to Assist Valued Employees, a North Charleston-based employee assistance service.
Also, the labor pool from which The Loop and other hourly wage businesses draw their employees includes many young people from troubled families or with drug or alcohol problems. Chaplains help lighten the employees’ emotional load by being there for the employees and listening to their concerns.
Eight years ago, Schneider started a chaplaincy program for The Loop. Today, there are 30 Loop Pizza Grill restaurants, all in the Southeast. So far, 10 restaurants have a chaplain who stops by four times a week for between 20 minutes to a few hours at a time.
The chaplaincy program is an employee resource, Schneider emphasized. Loop chaplains serve the employees 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whenever or wherever employees need them, not just at the workplace.
“It shows that we care about our employees. It’s good business to demonstrate that you care,” he said.
The Loop’s dividends from such caring are plain to see. Employee turnover is low while morale and attendance are high, Schneider said.
The chaplaincy program is not a Loop franchise requirement and Schneider emphasizes that the program is nondenominational and not about pushing religion onto employees. It is about helping them.
The Zeiglers have bought into the chaplaincy concept. They are working with the Charleston office of Young Life, a Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Christian ministry that serves teenagers, to secure a chaplain for their restaurant’s five full-time and 25 part-time employees.
“A lot of folks don’t have anyone like that to turn to in the workplace,” said Rob Zeigler.
A chaplain would be especially helpful during hectic periods like lunch hour. With customers streaming into the restaurant and expecting to be served quickly and efficiently, a chaplain could help the employees, many of them teenagers, cope with the stress, Torri Zeigler said.
While providing emotional comfort to employees, Loop chaplains work with them, often performing less-skillful but nonetheless helpful tasks like rolling silverware inside napkins and cutting and boxing pizza. And rather than wearing a priestly collar, the chaplains wear the standard Loop shirt with the restaurant’s logo embroidered on it. The only difference is the word “chaplain” is inscribed on the shirt.
Most of the restaurant chaplains are trained youth pastors, and some have a degree or license in counseling. Loop franchises can hire chaplains independently or through Loop-recommended agencies like Marketplace Ministries, Corporate Chaplains of America, the National Institute of Business and Industrial Chaplains and Chaplains at Work.
SAVE does not provide chaplaincy service but does offer counseling for stress, alcohol or drug abuse, family issues and other problems plaguing employees, said Gainey, who oversees five licensed counselors.
Business over the years has been brisk. When SAVE began in 1983, the counseling service had one client. Today, SAVE serves close to 50 clients, ranging from local municipal governments like the cities of North Charleston and Hanahan to big businesses like Nucor Steel, Gainey said.
SAVE’s services are available to employees and their families, she added.
Aiding the emotional health of workers is nothing new to the Charleston Port and Seafarers’ Society, which for the past 100 years has been a dockside ministry for visiting sailors.
Working aboard a cargo ship can be a lonely life, and the loneliness coupled with the dangers of the sea and the long separations from family often cause sailors stress and depression, said the Rev. Len Williams, an Episcopal priest and Seafarers’ Society chaplain.
The Seafarers’ Society tends to the emotional and spiritual needs of the sailors regardless of their religious beliefs. Ordained and lay chaplains bring to the sailors religious items, magazines, long-distance phone cards and gifts during the holidays.
They will help the sailors wire money home to their families. And sometimes they will simply sit with the sailors in the ship’s break room and have a cup of coffee with them, Williams said.
Such comfort and caring is the point behind The Loop Pizza Grill’s chaplaincy program.
“Employees come to trust the chaplain as a resource, someone who will listen to problems and make recommendations,” Schneider said.
Dennis Quick covers health and wellness for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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