UK Mail tries to deliver spiritual message – sprituality consultants employed
The Royal Mail is hoping to restore its battered reputation by calling in a team of consultants who specialise in bringing “spirituality” to business.
After losing thousands of working days to wildcat strikes and being criticised for its “frankly dire” management style in an independent review, the Royal Mail, part of Consignia, is to try a new approach.
It is putting its faith in a company that promises to unite employees by helping them find spiritual satisfaction in their work.
Managers in Consignia’s organisation, design and development unit will learn how to transform the workplace so that staff experience personal growth, a feeling of making a difference to the world and service to humanity from sorting and delivering the nation’s mail.
The UK arm of the US management consultancy Corptools will begin work at Consignia shortly.
Corptools was set up by Richard Barrett, who founded the Spiritual Unfoldment Society at the World Bank in Washington in 1993. “It was as if suddenly we had given permission for those interested in personal transformation to come out of the closet,” he recalled.
Now something of a guru on the growing “spirituality in business” scene, he is called on by companies that believe they could be more successful if only staff would find meaning in their work.
He has worked for MicroSoft, Siemens, Mitsubishi, Ericsson, Sterling Bank, Mars and Kraft. His brand of “corporate culture transformation” involves asking staff what kind of “positive or love-based values” they would like to see in their workplace and what kind of “negative or fear-based values” they could do without.
Copyright: The Financial Times Limited
