Willow Creek Community Church, located in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, was included on this year’s Best Christian Workplaces list compiled by the Best Christian Workplaces Institute, Mercer Island, WA. The study factors included employee job satisfaction, Christian witness, personal growth and effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and compensation/benefits.
“I believe Willow Creek’s best days as a church are ahead of us,” says Colby Burke, director of Willow Creek’s human resources. “I’m convinced our ability to realize God’s potential for our church is largely dependent on the spiritual commitment, quality and engagement of our people.”
Willow Creek Church is among 38 Best Christian Workplaces for 2012 in the United States and Canada. These organizations exemplify best workplaces because they create healthy environments that engage their employees in a fun and meaningful way while making a difference for their communities.
Over the past 12 months, Best Christian Workplaces have been chosen from 88 organizations representing nearly 14,000 workers. Attaining employee engagement is not easy to accomplish as many organizations survey multiple times before achieving BCWI’s certification and recognition. The BCW program began in 2002 and is in the US, Canada and Australia—surveying 120,000 employees in 500 organizations to date. All participating organizations have a stated Christian mission and/or values.
Al Lopus, president of BCWI notes: “We salute the leaders of this year’s Best Christian Workplaces for their intentional efforts to create healthy, flourishing environments for their staff. These courageous leaders pursue the high calling of being a faithful steward of their staff as well as those they serve, in good times and bad.”
To earn the distinction as a Best Christian Workplace, organizations participate in the Best Christian Workplace Institute’s employee engagement survey and meet predetermined standards of excellence. The survey covers issues such as: job satisfaction, commitment, Christian witness, supervisory effectiveness, work satisfaction, personal growth and development, management effectiveness, customer/supporter satisfaction, teamwork, communications and pay and benefits. Employees confidentially respond to more than 55 questions addressing these topics.
Best Christian Workplaces Institute’s purpose is to serve faith-based organizations by creating processes of discovery, facilitating organizational effectiveness and encouraging practices that build healthy workplaces. BCWI is a non-profit research based organizational and human resources consulting firm based on Mercer Island, Washington. www.bcwinstitute.org
The Canadian Council of Christian Charities is a member-based association of more than 3,000 Canadian faith-based registered charities. www.cccc.org
