Earlier this week, I did a job search.

No, I am not looking for a job. You would be hard pressed to find someone happier with what they do in life than I am. I love my work, all the patchwork pieces of it. But I was curious. So I put in the word “Spiritual” into several job search engines, just to see what came up.

And what came up? Basically two of the jobs I already have. Besides my coaching and consulting work, I am a part-time pastor and “pastor” came up. I also do a day or two a week as a spiritual counselor at Bayada Hospice. That job came up too. Nothing else.

That struck me as odd because in my experience, the spiritual side of work is important. When I do my main work, the stuff that pays the bills, with coaching clients, or marketing and business consulting, spirituality always ends up as part of the conversation. Always.

We are not talking religion here. Yes, sometimes religion plays into a person’s vision of a full and wonderful life. But we are talking something broader. What feeds our spirit? What feeds our soul? And what are we doing about it? Or are we? Somehow we have lost the idea that feeding the spirit is part of what organizations can and should do. It is, somehow, a separate thing from how we make a living. Profitability and spirituality are carefully separate into two different boxes, n’er the twain to meet.

And yet. And yet. Study after study show the same things – when our people are engaged not just in a job or a task, but holistically, they are better employees, more productive, brimming with good attitude, more, dare we say it… profitable. They also burn out less. They change jobs less. They cost less. They are (gasp!) happier. What’s that worth?

And yet we ignore this in the working world. We certainly don’t feed that part of our people. We offer them classes, medical care, even in some cases, psychological care. But not spiritual care. Why not? And what would change if we did? And what might that look like in a practical sense?

No. I don’t have answers. I just have questions. I know people’s spirit affects everything else. How did we decide that we can just ignore it?

Tom