Risk & Resolve
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Risk & Resolve
What If Your Work Was Actually Your Worship?
Brett Billups, CHRO of Marketplace Chaplains and author of Biblical HR, shares his 30-year journey in human resources and how he bridges his Christian faith with workplace challenges.
• Stumbling into HR after seeing disconnects between management and employees at a manufacturing company
• Writing Biblical HR as a personal guide before publishing it to help others apply faith to specific workplace situations
• Challenging the notion that Christians should avoid accountability—holding people accountable in a godly way is actually biblical
• Approaching conflict resolution with the understanding that resolving conflict is ultimately God's job
• Reframing work-life balance as having one unified life dedicated to honoring God in everything
• Explaining how workplace chaplains provide confidential support that traditional HR departments often cannot
• Discussing the challenges of writing about diversity from a biblical perspective
• Sharing how the book led to his current position at Marketplace Chaplains
If you're struggling to align your faith with your work, remember that biblical principles represent how we were designed to function—they work whether we label them as religious or not.
You're listening to Risk and Resolve, and now for your hosts. Ben Conner and.
Speaker 2:Todd Hufford. Welcome back to another episode of the Risk and Resolve pod with your co-hosts, Ben and Todd. We have a special guest today, Brett Billups, who's the CHRO of Marketplace Chaplains, as well as CEO and author of Biblical HR. Brett, Thanks for being with us here today.
Speaker 1:Oh, thanks for having me. It's a joy to be here, thank you.
Speaker 2:Awesome let's just start out If you could tell the audience just a little bit about yourself and your background.
Speaker 1:Professionally, I've been in human resources for about 30 years in both private and public companies in a variety of different roles, both as a support mid-level manager but also leading the HR function for the last two companies that I've been. One was a large construction company of about 6,000 employees and now I'm a CHRO for Marketplace Chaplains. I have experience in public companies craft foods for about 13 years, mondelez International and Iron Mountain. That was a wonderful learning experience from a public company standpoint. Got exposed to a lot of different things.
Speaker 1:Personally, I've been married for 36 years and a couple of weeks to a Green Bay, wisconsin, girl, and actually we lived up there for about 15 years and three of our four kids were born there. We moved to Dallas in 2006 with Kraft Foods and we have four children. The two middle ones are married and I have four grandkids. So my daughter and they're with one daughter, so she has four boys, eight and under. Wow, we've kept them overnight a couple of times. But yeah, it takes a lot out of us, of us old people.
Speaker 1:From a spiritual standpoint, I grew up on a farm and ranch in the middle of Texas. We went to church every Sunday, but that was just what you were supposed to do in the middle of Texas and I wasn't a believer. I didn't realize what that looked like. I just felt like if I just followed all the rules, then I was doing what I was supposed to do as a Christian. It wasn't until I got really sick about 20 years ago that I started getting more serious about my faith and when I did that we started homeschooling our kids and growing in Chrissy and I started growing in our relationship and then really understanding what it looks like to be a godly husband and father, and we have been growing ever since.
Speaker 2:Wow, thanks for sharing that. So you had a face-to-face with your creator moment being sick. That really changed your faith.
Speaker 1:I did Very much so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what led you into the HR field? I'm guessing that you didn't wake up or, you know, maybe you weren't taught at a young age about HR and that was potentially your dream from the get go. So how did? How did you get involved in the field of HR?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. I kind of stumbled into it. Stumbled into it. I graduated from Texas Tech University with a degree in advertising and minored in marketing, after growing up on a farm and ranch, which was kind of unusual.
Speaker 1:And then when I got married, my wife's father owned a company in Wisconsin and so I went to work in the operations part of that company. It was a small polyethylene bag manufacturing company and when he sold the company the new owners asked me if I wanted to stay in operations or move into human resources. And I saw a need in human resources. There were only about 80 people. But I said, oh, I would like to help the people from a human race standpoint. I had no clue what I was getting myself into.
Speaker 1:So the new owner brought one of his former HR people in to help me build the HR function, establish an HR department, and that's how I really got my start. And from there I was with them for about three or four years, transferred to another small private company, and then I was there for about two years and that's when I got on with Kraft Foods from an HR standpoint at their largest pizza manufacturing plant in Wisconsin, and then that's where I cut my chops from an HR standpoint. I was with Kraft for about 14 years. I transferred to Kraft Corporate in 2004, worked at Kraft Corporate for about two years and then transferred in the sales function to Texas in about 2006. And then, at 2013, transferred to Iron Mountain, which is another public company, and then I got asked to if I wanted to leave the HR function for a large employee-owned construction company here in Dallas, and I did that for about five years before coming here as the CHRO.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you said you saw a need in HR or with the people element at that first role. What did that look like at that point in time? What need did you see that you're like? I want to go to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the need I saw was that I think there was a disconnect between the owners and the floor people and I wanted to try and bridge that gap as best that I could, because I saw a lot of animosity between the two and I wanted to try and repair some of that communication. It wasn't tremendously bad, but I just saw that there was a gap there that I wanted to try and fill.
Speaker 2:So you obviously you recently wrote your book Biblical HR, where it really is like a how-to guide. So tell me a little bit about your reason, or like what was stirring in you to kind of start doing that.
Speaker 1:What happened is I really kind of started writing for myself, because about 10 or 12 years ago, I really started struggling with how to apply my faith to my work. And what does that look like? Because I would go to church on Sunday, listen to a wonderful sermon, wonderful worship, and then spend the rest of the day dreading going back into the workplace the next morning because I knew what I had to deal with. I knew there was a lot of things on my plate that I needed to deal with and I would dread it, and so I realized I needed to take I bridged the gap between Sunday and Monday morning. And how do I do that? And so I started looking at the specific situations that I was having to deal with from an HR standpoint and then started writing. Okay, how do I deal with these from a biblical standpoint? Like dealing with a difficult boss, a difficult employee, a difficult coworker, how to do a performance review, how to conduct an interview, all of these things from a biblical perspective. And so I just started writing for my own benefit. Okay, how do I deal with this issue from a biblical perspective? And I would look at a passage of scripture, pull out the biblical principles, and then I started writing what can I do before, during and after this particular situation to bring biblical principles to bear in specific situations in the workplace? So I started writing it for my own benefit, so I could deal with them. And then a friend of mine encouraged me Brett, you need to get this out and help people with that. And I said, ah, maybe when I retire I'll put this in a book form and do that. He said, no, you probably need to do that now. So I did. I finished, I presented it to a hybrid kind of publishing company, morgan James, and they accepted it right away and I finished it and it was published. It was something that was. That was the risk for me was a risk of, okay, putting that out there. Okay, so is this really going to benefit people or not? Is it just the ramblings of a crazy HR guy that has been in the business for far too long? But it seems to resonate to certain people. That's all I wanted to do. Okay, it helped me, but how can it help other managers or believers in the workplace to deal with these specific issues? Because one of the things that I would deal with from an HR standpoint, even from mid-level managers how do I deal with this specific situation? And I would walk them through how to deal with them. But they have scripture that they can also utilize to bridge that gap. And that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to take people to scripture, take people to those biblical principles to deal with things that they may not have an in-house counsel to deal with.
Speaker 1:Brett, you mentioned it was a risk to put that book out there. Can you identify what risks you felt at that time? What truly was at risk by publishing that book out there? Can you identify what risks you felt at that time? What truly was at risk by publishing that story, those ideas? Well, because I've never written a book before, so it was one of those that, okay, I have no clue what I'm doing, so I'm just going to take a step in faith and just take one step at a time and see what happens. It's not one of those things that, okay, I'm going to write a book to get rich. I mean that's yeah. So it's one of those things that I felt called to do and called to help, and so is it going to help people or not? The risk was saying something inaccurate, saying something that was unbiblical, saying something that would take people off of the right course, and so I was very purposeful in being as biblical, ideologically sound as possible. I had a friend of mine who was a pastor, went to seminary he was one of the editors of this as well and made sure that I was theologically sound and biblically sound as I started presenting these things you mentioned I think I've got the timeline right that it seemed like halfway through your career, or career thus far, your faith began deepening.
Speaker 1:It seems like you had a season with public companies of kind of a stale faith, but it also seems like you had time at public companies with a stronger faith. Do I have that timeline right? Yeah, I think so, because when I started writing the book, that's when I was with one of the public companies and I realized that you know the public company. They have a tremendous amount of resources, sure, okay, so I just relied on them so I could do that.
Speaker 1:But then I started to see a little bit of disconnect between my faith and my work, and that's when I just started. You know there's got to be more to it than just, and that's when I just started. You know there's got to be more to it than just following public company policy and laws and regs and more than that. And then, as I started getting into it, todd, I realized that you know, I don't know, especially from a human resources standpoint, how do people do it without the discernment of the Holy Spirit? People do it without the discernment of the Holy Spirit. I mean, it's like if you don't have that, then all you have is company policy and laws and compliance and regulations and all of that stuff. But there's more to it than that. There's a spiritual component to everything that we do. Were you working at one of those public companies when the book was released? Public companies when the book was released? No, it was not released until I was leading the construction company organization.
Speaker 1:And was the company a faith forward company, or was that a risk too? There has some faith components to it. It's Texas, dallas based. There's a lot of faith based people that are within the organization, but it was still a profit-driven organization. Let me put it that way Since it was a book about your professional knowledge, as opposed to some off-topic discussion, did you feel the need and did you kind of run it past?
Speaker 1:You know, whoever you reported to to kind of A, let them know, b sort of get their tacit approval? No, I didn't. It was one of those that, yeah, you're right, you know, putting something like that out there and I was made aware of that by, actually, one of the company presidents. He knew about it. So he said you're putting yourself out there. That's when you draw that line in the sand or you put that stake in the ground. I mean that's something you can't come back from, especially in the environment of the political environment. That was five years ago. So that was a risk. And putting that faith component out there from an HR standpoint, yeah, that was a risk.
Speaker 2:You know, I think it's interesting too. I mean, HR is the cultural champion for any business, not only internally but also of, like, what bleeds in from culture in general. You know, political or otherwise, or social, that comes into the company, right, right. So how did you navigate when you put yourself out there like that and you probably did before the book? You put yourself out there in general as your faith being really important to you, as you mentioned earlier the. You know how do I make decisions without the Holy Spirit? Did you ever find yourself getting challenged about? Well, you know you can't bring religion into the workplace, or how did you handle that?
Speaker 1:Well, you don't have to. What I've learned is that we were created and designed to operate by biblical principles. We just were, and they work in the workplace. Whether we call them biblical principles or not, that's just how we were designed. So when you purposely act and respond in a godly, biblical way, you don't have to call them. This is from the Bible. I'm operating from a religious perspective. Now, if somebody asks me how are you grounded? What does that look like? I'm a Christian. That's how that's grounded, but that's especially in the workplace. The first thing to do is operate and manage by godly, biblical principles because, again, that's how we're designed, that's how we work, that's how things function. So when you do that, it honors God and you acknowledge him in the way that you do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, honors the Lord and honors his image bearers. So you're right, that natural connection so in the book and honors his image bearers. So you're right, that natural connection, so in the book. Literally it is a manual. It goes through those topics that are can be really difficult and, if you don't mind, I'd like to obviously want to encourage all of our listeners to go get a copy. It's a fantastic read. I got through it quickly and I'm a slow reader.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not one of those that you have to read cover to cover. I mean, it's one of those that you have a situation. You turn to chapter 12, you turn to chapter. That's right, and it's not one of those. That is a you sit down and read it all in its entirety. It's just as you need it. It's a reference.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's kind of interesting. I think from an encouraging standpoint. It may be easy to live out your beliefs because everything is great. But I think what's interesting in this book? It talks a lot about conflict. Resolution is one of the chapters. Managing poor performance is one of the chapters. So we're talking about things where there is like human conflict, and how does the Bible reference behavior in those areas? What is your mindset around pursuing people in conflict or even when there's poor performance? Just give us a little highlight of the framing around that Sure.
Speaker 1:I think the conflict resolution chapter is one of my favorites. It's probably one of the last ones that I wrote before launching the book and one thing that we have to realize is that resolving conflict is God's job. That's not my job. I mean, sometimes I have a tendency to think, hey, I've been in HR for 30 years, I can sit these people down and we can come to a mediation and resolution, but maybe not so coming to the realization that I may have to live and deal with unresolved conflict in a different way, because it may not happen. God has to prepare the hearts to resolve conflict. If it doesn't happen, then you have to deal with the situation from a behavioral standpoint and a performance standpoint rather than a conflict resolution standpoint. So that's the major thing that I learned. I share a story in a book where a mentor of mine used to be an executive for GE General Electric and he had a conflict with one of his coworkers another divisional president, divisional president and so the region executive scheduled a meeting with these two individuals him and this other person he was having a conflict with on a Saturday morning. So they came to his office at 8 am and on his conference table he had a coffee pot and he said I want you guys to sit down and resolve your conflict, or and if you can't, I will resolve it in my way. They looked at each other after a few minutes and said okay, we got the message. So it's contingent on the individuals in their heart to be able to resolve the conflict. And the leader knew that he wasn't going to change their hearts toward each other. They had to do, he was going to deal with it. If they couldn't change their hearts, he was going to have to deal with it from a performance standpoint or behavioral standpoint. So that's probably one of the key learnings from a conflict resolution. One of the key learnings from a conflict resolution. Now for performance management.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I have learned as a believer in HR is that sometimes believers struggle with wanting to hold people accountable, so they don't want to be seen as impatient or not gracious, not merciful toward the person or not forgiving toward the person. But holding people accountable to godly behavior and godly principles is biblical and so. But you have to do that in a godly way, and approaching accountability in a loving way is actually very biblical, and the more that you ignore it, you're not doing them a service. You're actually encouraging the ungodly behavior. Be courageous enough in our faith and in our ability to confront and hold people accountable, but do it in a godly, biblical, patient way, and that's what I tried to do in the performance management chapter.
Speaker 1:Brett, you got any thoughts on how Christians got there to that point where they view it as they have a hard time holding people accountable. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think what happens is that there's so many unknowns these days because people can sue you for anything. They can sue you for a discrimination, they can sue you for unlawful termination, so there's a fear there of making the wrong move, taking the wrong step. But on the flip side of that I know also going to be seeing there's a fear of confrontation because I just don't know how the tools to do it. So it's a double-edged sword. But you made the observation that you felt like Christians have a harder time than that than maybe a non-believer would. Any thoughts on why you think that is that, than maybe a non-believer would? Any thoughts on why you think that is? Well, we want to be seen as, I think, a loving, patient, soft, kind-hearted person, and holding people accountable will make people mad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Joyful heart doesn't seem like someone that's in a holding line right a tough time.
Speaker 1:Personally, I can't do it. But they're going through a divorce. How can I hold them accountable to their job performance? Well, there's other things that you can do to address that. So the major thing that I see from a believer standpoint is just not understanding number one, that it's our biblical responsibility to hold people accountable to godly behavior. But also, your being not addressing it is actually being unkind, unloving. It's more self-focused and other-focused. It's hard for you but it's really the best thing for them.
Speaker 1:Correct, when you think about the book and you put it out in the world and, like you said, it was a risk. It probably went places you never imagined that could be. From a geographic standpoint, it could be just to the highest levels of some big company that you never thought it would go. It's still in its flight path of going out there in the world. Maybe tell us a couple stories of where it's gone that you never would have thought it would have gone. Well, I will tell you that from a. What God has taught me is that this is his book, not mine. So after I left the construction company, I braced down on my own. I, after the book launched, I said, okay, I'm going to use this as a launch for a consulting company or something along those lines, and it just never took off because this is a very niche kind of resource for people. But as a result of my company and the book, one of the individuals from Marketplace Chaplain reached out to me, said hey, we want to tap into your network. We're Marketplace Chaplains. If you would recommend us to your network, that would be helpful. And then I just asked and then I learned that they were looking for a CHRO. Two weeks later I was working here. Wow, and then what happened as a result of that is that the field people at Marketplace Chaplains were giving this to all the clients and in there the HR people they were supporting, and it got out more than I could have. Yeah, you found your distribution partner, didn't you? Yeah, and it's like unknowingly, I mean. So God said no, that's not the way I want to distribute it, here's the way I want to distribute it. So that's kind of amazing.
Speaker 1:And how many calls for a sequel have you had? A couple. The sequel would be this was written primarily to basic businesses.
Speaker 1:I think there's another a need for biblical HR for churches, ministries and nonprofits. So, because that's a little bit different animal. So I have thought about OK, how do I need to customize this to appeal to that? What about a book that appeals to the employee, to the team member, to help them lead up from a biblical view to their HR? That may have some pieces of the puzzle, but maybe not all the pieces of the puzzle. And some of that is I try to appeal to Christians in the workplace at whether you're an employee or mid-level manager. So some of the chapters kind of appeal to employees that are dealing with their boss or employees that are dealing with specific situations in the workplace. So I tried to deal with some of that. So some of the audience kind of crosses over a little bit and so, from an employee standpoint, I tried to speak to Christians in the workplace, regardless of what level that they were. That's what I tried to do.
Speaker 2:A couple of chapters I wanted to kind of double click into as well. They kind of relate is talk about like workplace stress and work-life balance. I was even just listening to a podcast even last night just about how stressed just our culture is and just how empty people's tanks are as you look at addressing kind of that element more, even like the mental health side of business and how businesses can come along their work force. If you wouldn't mind just kind of double clicking into that stress element as well as work life balance.
Speaker 1:You know I'm going to combine those two and I'll tell you why Is when I started researching work-life balance. Work-life balance is a misnomer, it doesn't really exist, because you know why we have one life. We don't have a life at work or a personal life. We have one and that is am I honoring God and am I honoring Him in everything that I do, personally and professionally? So to try and separate those two, that's what I was doing for years.
Speaker 1:I was trying to separate those two, which caused a lot of stress. So if I just focus on a singular focus of honoring God in everything that I do and giving everything else over to him, that's where the work-life balance and the stress is. That's where the release is. There are certain things that I can practice. I can go for a walk, I can do some exercise, but the major thing is to spend time on your knees in prayer, focusing on your relationship with him and him alone. That's where your primary focus of one life and stress comes to a head giving that over to him. So that's the major thing that I would focus on from a work-life balance and a stress note it's just your one-on-one relationship with Christ and your creator and spend more time on your knees in prayer. Spend more time in the Word Just focusing on that relationship.
Speaker 2:Is there a chapter or two that almost were in the book, or something that you and you mentioned, obviously from Todd's question about part two is more in the faith community, but is there a chapter or something that you've learned that you're like I could have put this one and this is the secret chapter.
Speaker 1:There were some chapters that I had said, no, I need to incorporate that into this one. It kind of dovetails into this one. I tried to narrow it down to pretty buckets of situations that people would have to deal with. I will tell you that the most difficult chapter I think that I had to write was the one on diversity, and that was written five or six years ago and diversity was a very hot topic. So trying to address that from a biblical perspective without I don't want to say offending people but I'm not sure it did in some respects but some of the cultural kind of political correctness that was going on at the time, I wanted to make sure that it resonated with people and didn't turn them off.
Speaker 1:And one of the stories that I actually shared in the book was that when I was with one of the public companies, they had diversity metrics and public companies had that at one time. So we would measure diversity candidates on how many got promoted, how many were hired, how many were people of color, how many were women, and so there was one time I was presenting those metrics at a region level because that's what we were kind of held accountable to A little while later, a manager who was a person of color got up and he said I want to be measured by my performance, not by my color, not by my race, not by my gender. And that struck me in that we were doing a potential disservice when we were only looking at race, gender and ethnicity and we were measuring that, and it's like it's an insult to people who want to do a good job. So that's what struck me. That was the most difficult chapter, I would say, to write, but it was the most rewarding.
Speaker 2:Have you gotten feedback around that chapter? No.
Speaker 1:A little bit. Before I put it in the book, I sent it out to people I respect, who are diverse, and said give me your feedback on this, what do I need to change? And so I got that feedback and I was able to, from a biblical perspective, line it up to what resonated from a biblical standpoint.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you know, as believers, especially over the last you mentioned a couple of years, diversity is a huge, huge topic of conversation and there is, as I'm trying to digest it, there is a possibility for how secular culture defines diversity. There is how the Bible defines diversity. That's correct, and some will overlap and some won't. And navigating through that, you know, through people who believe many different things that are in a business, you know we're to celebrate people's diversity.
Speaker 1:We're all image bearers, correct, we're all image bearers. We're to celebrate that, but from a biblical perspective and not a worldly perspective. Celebrate that, but from a biblical perspective and not a worldly perspective. Brett, you've got a position now where you're leading individuals who are inside of many, many companies and trying to care for their people, so you've got some perspective on what's happening within these companies, just at least from a high level within the organization. Can you give us a couple of things that you feel like businesses are doing well right now in this HR realm as it relates to taking care of people, and a couple of things that maybe they're getting a C or a D grade in how they haven't quite mastered this and it's a bigger question, kind of an in aggregate, but what do you see the American business doing well in the realm of HR of any size and what do you see the American business doing well in the realm of HR of any size and what do you see them still struggling with?
Speaker 1:I think, from an HR standpoint, hr is in a difficult kind of position within an organization because you have to have a relationship with the employees but also have to care for the business needs of the organization. That's a difficult balance to maintain. That's a difficult balance to maintain. One of the things that we can do as an organization is that we can come in and have a confidential kind of resource that people can speak with and express concern to without having to worry that it's getting back to the organization. So if I'm struggling with my boss or a work-related situation, I can express that to my chaplain without any kind of fear of retaliation. So HR people they don't have that kind of flexibility to just deal with individuals on a personal care level. It's not necessarily that they don't want to, it's just by design primarily. And people want to care for their employees and that's why they hire somebody like us to come in. And so from an HR standpoint, it helps with retention, it helps with employee relations, it helps with communication and just being another person there that cares for the employees at a deep personal level.
Speaker 1:We prevented hundreds of suicides over the years and that's a tremendous impact. And we just passed this year. Last year we had over 100,000 gospel presentations. So just bringing that being the hands and feet of Christ in the workplace is a tremendous resource for the HR people that they have difficulty stepping into, either by design or time. It's almost like the American unions missed a real big opportunity here. They've got the relationships in some situations with employers and employees. I know it's not part of their DNA, but they could have layered that chaplain service in years ago and been providing that same level of service that organizations like yours are doing today in mass. Yeah, I would agree. You're right Missed opportunity.
Speaker 2:Well, brett, I really appreciate you sharing your story and bringing the book to life for us today. Again, I recommend to all of our listeners to grab a copy of Biblical HR, but before you go, we have two questions that we ask of our guests, so I'll go into that segment. So first question is what is a risk that you have taken that's changed your life?
Speaker 1:It was writing the book and putting it out there. That changed a lot of things. That alone helped me to align my faith with my work. So, from a personal level, that changed my life Awesome. Second last question what's unfinished that you have the resolve to complete? Oh, I think I've got one or two other books in me that I need to kind of nail down, and so I enjoy writing. And one of the things that my wife has told me she would read chapters of the book. I would let her read them, obviously, and she would say oh, there's Brett. Say oh, there's Brett. So I'm able to express myself better writing than I can verbally, so I need to utilize that gift.
Speaker 2:So you found a passion in the process of book writing.
Speaker 1:Right, it's a passion. We look forward to catching up and reading those next two or three or 12 books that you won't have left in you. I appreciate that. I'll hold you to that. Appreciate it Nice meeting you.
Speaker 2:Thanks for joining us today, Brett, and have a good day everyone.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to Risk and Resolve. See you next time.
