The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
We're all about helping create a healthy, positive, and spiritually positive environment for church staff members and leadership teams.
The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
6 Workplace Trends Every Church Leader Needs to Know in for 2025
Discover how churches can become more adaptable and engaging workplaces for their staff in our latest episode of the Healthy Church Staff podcast. Host Todd Rhoades promises to equip you with insights into the top six workplace trends set to shape 2024 and 2025, and what this means for your church community. Uncover the increasing significance of hybrid work models and flexible arrangements that cater to younger team members. We also emphasize the growing priority of employee well-being amid widespread burnout, and why embracing diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) is more than just a trend—it's a necessity for a healthy church culture.
Join us as we unpack the crucial elements of building a thriving church staff environment. From investing in continuous learning and development to fostering an atmosphere of collaboration and strong communication, we delve into strategies that align staff with the church's purpose and vision. By prioritizing these approaches, churches can create a supportive and effective environment, ultimately retaining staff longer and boosting overall efficiency. Tune in to explore how these shifts could transform your church workplace and feel free to engage with us by sharing your questions or thoughts.
Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com
Be sure to subscribe to The Healthy Church Staff Podcast wherever you regularly listen to podcasts.
- - - - -
Is Your Church Hiring?
If your church is searching for a new staff member, reach out to Todd for a conversation on how he might be able to help.
Are You Looking for a New Ministry Role?
If you are open to a new church role in the next few months, add your free resume and profile at ChemistryStaffing.com.
Hi there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about workplace trends. Now, these aren't just about workplace trends in churches, but just in businesses overall, and we're going to look at six different trends and see how they might apply to our church, particularly as we look at this next year, 2025. These are six workplace trends to watch in 2024, but we're just here at the podcast. We're just like most churches. We're a few months behind anyway, I'm just kidding. Gallup recently released their six workplace trends to watch, and that's what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1:Hi, I'm Todd Rhodes. I am your host for the Healthy Church Staff podcast that you are listening to right now. I'm also one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom, so let's dive right in. Here's trend number one the rise of hybrid work. More and more employees are demanding flexibility in where and when they work, and this means that churches. This is going to affect us, and we should be maybe at least a little open to some remote work options or some flexible schedules and some creative solutions that help meet the needs of our staff. We're seeing this in our candidate work here at chemistrystaffingcom, particularly with younger candidates, as you might guess, that are looking for that added flexibility, maybe working from home on Friday or not being in the office on Monday or something like that. You might be diametrically opposed to this, but I'm telling you it's a thing and it's not going to go away, and particularly younger people want a little bit more flexibility and my feeling is eventually churches are going to give in at least a lot of churches are going to give in, at least in some sensible ways to look for some ways to maybe increase some flexibility in the workplace. Okay, so that's trend number one. The rise of hybrid work, flexibility in the workplace. Okay, so that's trend number one the rise of hybrid work.
Speaker 1:Trend number two the importance of employee well-being. Okay, burnout is a real issue and it is in the secular marketplace and it is in the church, and employees are prioritizing their mental and emotional health and we've talked about that on this podcast quite often in this past year. We need to create this kind of culture of support and encourage work-life balance, particularly in ministry, and provide resources to help our staff thrive Again as churches hire younger candidates for their roles. Mental health and emotional health and work-life balance is huge, and emotional health and work-life balance is huge being on call 24-7 with no breaks, and getting burned out is not an option for younger candidates. They will move to a place that is more user-friendly to them in that area. So that's trend number two the importance of employee well-being.
Speaker 1:Trend number three the focus on diversity and equality and inclusion. Dei three the focus on diversity and equality and inclusion. Dei is what you hear and, yes, this does affect the church. And again, yes, it does affect younger staff members more than older staff members. And here's, I know, dei.
Speaker 1:Many of us don't have a really great outlook on DEI overall, but here's what it means for employees. Okay, to throw out everything you know about DEI or everything you think about it, but it comes down to employees and we see this in the church as well. Employees just want to feel valued and respected for who they are and the more that we can do that, where everybody feels welcome and that everybody has a voice. That's really what I'm talking about with diversity and equity and inclusion. If you're not feeling the pressure in your church to be more diverse and inclusive, you will very shortly. That is a trend that's happening in the secular world and it's also starting to happen in our churches, and there are ways that, biblically, we need to be diverse and inclusive, right, there are ways that we should not theologically. But this is a trend. It's the trend that Gallup mentions, and I mention it here as well for your consumption. Okay, here's trend number four the demand for continuous learning and development. We've always had conferences and training sessions and all of that, but employees really do want opportunities to grow and develop their skills and we need to invest in training and mentorship and leadership development programs. And I've mentioned this before on the podcast.
Speaker 1:I think one of the things we're seeing, particularly from younger candidates and younger church staff members, is they want the opportunity to learn and to grow and to develop and to change positions, even in your church. Maybe they get hired as a youth pastor, but in a couple years they want to see what else there is to do. They want to maybe move up or move to a different area, maybe discipleship or a campus pastor or something, but they would love to do it. Many of them would love to do it. If they love your church, they'd love to be able to do it where they are, but so many of our churches are just. We have this slot for you and this is the only slot you'll ever have here. That's a real detriment for some of the younger candidates and younger people that we see church staff, people that really want to continuously learn and develop and maybe even switch and move roles or departments inside your church if your church is large enough to do that.
Speaker 1:That's trend number four. Trend number five the need for strong communication and collaboration, particularly because we mentioned hybrid work factors in there. But clear communication, effective collaboration it's more important now than ever. We need to be able to utilize technology and create systems that foster connection and teamwork, and it's one of the things we've seen in the past five years since COVID is that a strong need for every staff member to be able to lean into technology and to lean into systems and to foster connection and collaboration, not only across teams at your church and on your church staff, but also with volunteers and people in your church as well. So there's a real need for strong communication and collaboration. They have to not only have the spiritual heart and the pastoral spirit, but they also need to be able to communicate strongly and collaborate well together with other people.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, the emphasis on purpose and meaning, and this is happening in the secular workplace. But, man, it should have always been a part of our dna, but it is increasingly important. Our staff members want to feel like their work matters. They need to feel valued. We need to connect our staff to the mission and vision of our church and help them see how their contributions are making a difference. Because, honestly, one of the reasons that we see people wanting to move to a different ministry position is because they don't feel like their work matters and they don't feel valued.
Speaker 1:So here's the bottom line for today. These workplace trends are shaping kind of the future of work. Maybe you've seen some of them already at play in your church. Maybe you're like Todd, no, we haven't seen that yet. If you haven't seen it yet, I would dare to say you're going to see it happen in the next couple of years.
Speaker 1:Sometimes churches are a little bit slower, but bottom line is we need to be increasingly flexible. We need to prioritize well-being of our staff, which we always should be doing. We need to invest in development, which we always should be doing, and promoting collaboration, which we always should be doing. We need to invest in development, which we always should be doing, and promoting collaboration, which we always should be doing. None of this really is rocket surgery. We should be doing all this anyway, but we should be connecting our staff to the purpose of our church and if we do, we can actually cultivate a staff who really is healthy and working in a thriving work environment, and we can keep staff longer at our churches. I hope this is helpful to you. Reach out to me anytime. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Appreciate you joining us. Hope you have a great weekend.
