Biblical Business Radical: Goals and Methods of Developing a New Employee

 In a discussion with business owners regarding mentoring new believers, I was struck with an observation that perhaps we could apply the same mentoring methods to new employees. So first, I had us look at the similarities and differences between new employees and new believers:

• THEIR MOTIVATION: New employees are often motivated by money and escaping a prior bad work experience; they might also be looking for new life opportunity (career) and a sense of belonging in the new organization. Similarly, new believers are looking for belonging, new way of living (opportunity), confidence, and perhaps mostly hope.
• THEIR GOALS: New employees want to be good at the new job, fit in with the new team and have a sense of job security (i.e. into the next week, month, year at least). New believers also want to fit in, find peace/joy/love; most will want to be good at followership and seek enlightenment. 
• OUR GOALS: We want the new employees to be able to operate independently, be proficient to help the organization be more profitable and, as owners, thus we can do more through the company as a whole; we also want them to be as passionate about the work as we are. As discipling mentors, we want the new believers to become mature followers (Col. 1.28) and be able to make good life decisions that bring glory and honor to the Christ.

At the top of Maslow's hierarchy is Significance and that can be achieved by most. I believe most people want to know how they're contributing to the team and they'd like to think that they would be missed, that the team wouldn't function as well without them.

So what are the biblical means of developing these newbies? Paul has some suggestions in his letter to the Thessalonians:

• Gentleness as a nursing mother
• Fondness
• Vulnerability, as in admitting we made mistakes when we were learning too
• On call day and night
• Education cycle to be light and applicable to daily work

With this list, we realized this might be contradictory to how many of us have seen or heard of drill sergeants in the military's basic training. We also know that they have a goal to make a mature soldier and they want each one to succeed by toughening up, being resilient, being dependable to the next person, to put the mission/goal first...

• Modeling the right behavior with maintaining integrity with personal and corporate values
• Encouragement, exhortation, imploring to make improvement (see the Progress Principle)

In short, as we want our children to be prepared for life on their own, we want our employees to be prepared to work independently. Therefore, we need patience and a focus on the ultimate goal of developing them to be the best they can be. Paul's advice to create new disciples and new churches can provide guidance for us to create new successful employees.