Presence can mean a lot of different things, but I learned early in my academic and professional career the significance of being both physically and mentally present. Simply showing up, whether to a class, meeting, or event, but being mentally distracted by other activities ranging from the mundane to the critical, significantly limits your effectiveness over the long-run. And, depending on the nature of the work you are doing, this not only has implication on your own performance, but also the wellbeing and safety of those around you.
I was reminded of this when Dr. Alan T. Baker spoke recently at the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation "Dare to Overcome" Faith@Work ERG conference. While his keynote was primarily to address the question, "How can corporations provide the same quality of spiritual care for members as the military does?," his insights on the role of chaplaincy across various organizations certainly helped highlight the impact chaplains can have on both absenteeism and "presentism."
Dr. Baker recalled a recent interview with Karen Diefendorf, former Director of Chaplain Services at Tyson Foods and the US Army's first female chaplain paratrooper (!), where she highlighted four key areas corporate chaplains make a difference:
1. absenteeism; 2. presentism, which is defined when someone is present but their head is not in the game because they are thinking about personal issues and that often leads to safety issues; 3. life and death issues; 4. crisis and trauma which can include workplace violence
Even before the pandemic, many of us knew the importance of someone being focused and "all there" in an important meeting or activity. The past couple years of hybrid work have made that distinction even more apparent, where virtual, online presence was not always a reliable indicator of actual mental presence and focused attention. In some cases, resistance to continuing hybrid work stems from the reality Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic described "that many managers and leaders are not very good at measuring employee performance/output clearly, so they focus on input instead. This means valuing presentism over actual productivity, which inadvertently promotes pretending to work rather than actual work, and political maneuvering over value creation or merit."
Through hybrid work, the significance of physical presence may not be what it used to be in some industries, but that's only because the importance of mental presence has grown even more in a hyperconnected and easily distracted environment. In an era of rapid change, there are a lot of things that can happen in work and in life that can throw you off, but the important thing is to be able to recognize when it's happening so you can be present in every meaningful way when it matters most.
Reference
Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, "Karen Diefendorf - The Demand for Spiritual Care," Dec. 6, 2021, at
Rev. Dr. Alan T. “Blues” Baker, "How can corporations provide the same quality of spiritual care for members as the military does?" keynote speech at Religious Freedom and Business Foundation "Dare to Overcome" conference, May 23-25, 2022, published Aug. 3, 2022, at https://religiousfreedomandbusiness.org/blues-baker-dare-to-overcome and
Religious Freedom & Business Foundation "Dare to Overcome" National Faith@Work ERG Conference site: https://web.cvent.com/event/748beb79-bff9-4c73-bfd8-3503d0a07018/summary
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, "The Challenges of Hybrid Work," Forbes, Jan. 26, 2022, available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomaspremuzic/2022/01/26/the-challenges-of-hybrid-work/