Meat + Poultry - August 2005 - 44

Faith

accommodate people of many faiths.
While it is predominantly Christianbased, it also includes an imam, a
spiritual leader for the company's
Muslim employees, who visits about
six plants.
"We certainly respect faiths other
than Christianity in what we're trying
to do," Tyson says. "That's part of being faith friendly."
Tyson describes the chaplaincy
program as a proactive employee
assistance program from a spiritual
perspective. "It's proactive in a sense
that chaplains are in the workplace
every week on different shifts, making themselves informally available.
I call it a ministry of presence and
availability," he says.
Calihan does not have any formal
spiritual programs
in place. That said,
Landon says he's
not afraid to share
his faith with employees if they ask
him about it. "I'm
a Christian and everybody knows it,"
he says.
Landon wants
his employees to
know he's available for spiritual
advice because he
knows how lonely
people can feel if
they have personal
problems and don't
have someone to
consult.
"They talk about hell being ﬁre and
brimstone," Landon says. "I heard a
sermon one time that said hell is being
all by yourself with nobody around you
and nobody to talk to."

out if your walk does not match your
talk," Clemens says.
Hatﬁeld strives to do everything it
can to walk the walk, Clemens adds.
The company tithes 10 percent of its
proﬁts, for example. The company also
has an employee proﬁt-sharing plan. In
a good year, employees can earn bonuses up to 18 percent of their wages.
"From a Biblical standpoint, we
believe we need to share the rewards
with those who help make our success
possible," Clemens says.
Clemens says Hatﬁeld also strives to
treat its customers and vendors fairly.
When the hog market crashed in 1998
and prices dropped to 8 cents a pound,
Clemens says Hatﬁeld still paid its
vendors 25 cents per pound.
"We felt it was the right thing to do,"
Clemens says. "We
felt it was not morally correct to take
that loss while we
could turn around
and make a very
healthy proﬁt at
that time. Did the
25 cents per pound
pay all of the farmers' costs? No. But
it did help some
that were on the
verge of going out
of business."
Clemens
also
believes that animal welfare plays
a vital role in the
company's
mission
statement.
He cites the book of Genesis when
discussing it.
"In the animal processing business
we need to raise animals, transport
them and process them the best way
possible. And we will be held accountable for how we do that," he says
Clemens says there's no pressure to
live up to the Christian standard the
company has set for itself. "We want to
be held accountable for what we do,"
he stresses.

"We certainly respect
faiths other than
Christianity in what
we're trying to do"

Living up to it
It's one thing to say your company
adheres to a Christian philosophy. It's
another thing to put that philosophy
into practice and adhere to it.
"People will be very quick to point

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Alan Tyson says he hopes employees
expect the company to live up to the
standards it has set for itself.
"When you put your core values out
there to the public like we have, I hope
that people would expect us to live up
to those core values to the best of our
ability," he says.
The reaction
MBA's Haskins says he hasn't
heard any complaints from the
company's 405 employees about the
company's Christian stance. Even if
they don't embrace his philosophy,
Haskins says employees and customers shouldn't be wary of it. In fact,
it's all the more reason for them to
trust in the company.
"They don't have to worry whether
or not they're being told the truth,"
Haskins says. "There's certainly an
amount of ease in our work environment because there's light within our
environment and not darkness. And
light is always good."
Alan Tyson believes many of Tyson
Foods' nearly 120,000 employees have
embraced the company's chaplaincy
program. Some haven't, however.
"But that's OK," says Tyson, a former U.S. army chaplain. "We're not
here to force our faith on someone.
But if someone is open to talking about
faith and spiritual matters, we're certainly here to do that."
Tyson says he frequently asks plant
and human resource managers for
feedback on the value of the chaplaincy program. "There are a lot of
anecdotal stories that make us think
that it probably has a positive effect on
[employee] morale," he says.
Similarly, Clemens says Hatﬁeld has
never received any complaints from
employees, customers or vendors about
being overzealous with its Christian
approach. Clemens says Hatﬁeld has
been criticized by environmental organizations, though. In one instance, a
group familiar with Hatﬁeld's mission
statement condemned the company for
building a hog farm.
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