Managing Faith in the Workplace

Religion is a touchy subject but in today’s super-sensitive political climate, it’s a topic that employers can hardly afford to ignore. Last year’s passage of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which critics contended could be used by individuals and businesses to discriminate on the basis of religion -- particularly against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals -- ignited a firestorm: Boycotts, travel bans and petitions supported by Eli Lilly and EY, among others cost the city of Indianapolis alone an estimated $60 million in lost convention revenue.

Indiana Governor Mike Pence ultimately signed into law revisions that explicitly protected sexual orientation and gender. But there are currently 21 US states whose legislatures have passed a version of RFRA and ten more states where passage is being debated amid concerns that such RFRAs are being used to punish those whose lifestyles might not align with certain religious doctrine, rather than protect those who bring their personal religious convictions to their work as the law intended. A new law in Mississippi makes it legal for physicians and therapists to opt out of care on religious grounds.

The issue of how corporations approach complicated legal and religious entanglements is by no means cut and dried. North Carolina’s House Bill Two, for instance, demanded that transgender people use the bathroom corresponding to the gender they were assigned at birth—and was swiftly and robustly condemned by corporations such as Bank of America for that reason. Yet 68 percent of North Carolina citizens who identify as evangelical Christians said transgender people should not use the bathroom of their chosen gender, complicating the evangelical community’s interactions with those corporations and vice versa.

People bring religion into the workplace with their dress, the breaks they take, the spaces they need -- and it can cause friction with co-workers and employers. For example, many companies whose workdays are based on eight-hour shifts schedule work breaks every two hours. That schedule is difficult to reconcile with Muslim workers whose religion requires a break for prayer five times during every eight hours. A Colorado beef processing plant recently fired 150 Muslim employees after they walked off the job in protest of their employer curtailing prayer shift breaks. In Wisconsin, dozens of employees quit when Ariens, a lawn mower and snowblower manufacturer, told workers that they would have to pray during scheduled breaks, not when their religion dictated.

Religion may be an important element in the lives of your employees. At the Center for Talent Innovation’s annual Summit this year, Trevor Phillips, former chairman of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, noted that for anyone working in a multi-ethnic organization, there’s no ignoring the issue. “The bland assertion that all decent people share the same values isn’t enough, given that there will be frictions, even perhaps confrontations that come with encouragement to people to bring their ‘whole selves’ to work,” he said.
Finding a way for employees to bring their whole selves to work is vital for your company and workplace environment.

CTI research finds that when employers promote inclusive leadership and create a speak-up culture, they are more likely to enjoy a competitive edge in their ability to unleash the innovative potential of their employees and secure new market segments. Employees at companies with 2D diversity in leadership are more likely than employees at non-diverse companies to say their team takes risks, is not afraid to challenge the status quo, and embraces the input of a diverse array of its members.

For example, in Israel’s booming tech sector, companies ranging from industry giants like Cisco and Intel to boutique firms, are starting to offer amenities that accommodate the strict guidelines of very religious Jewish women. In addition to kosher food and single-sex offices, Cisco provides flexible hours and part-time positions that enable the women to juggle their careers with their large families. “Our hiring strategy is to bring variety of people from different cultures, gender and backgrounds,” says Shani Ginat, human resources manager at Cisco’s Jerusalem office. “This way, we build more diverse teams, bring new way of thinking into the company and promote creativity and innovation.”

At present, there’s no one right approach or model for companies to take in handling this issue. Some companies will want to lift up and celebrate the benefits of their employees’ religious convictions; others may feel that the costs of encouraging religion in the workplace outweigh the benefits and prefer to keep the workplace completely secular. Still others will try to thread the needle: to acknowledge the enormous positive influences of their employees’ religious beliefs while figuring out a way they won’t impinge on other people’s freedoms and welfare. Speaking at the CTI Summit, Kenji Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law, said, “Instead of one script for success, we need a set of equally valuable scripts.”

There is no more urgent issue employers face -- nor a more timely moment to engage. As Trevor Phillips pointed out, “We shouldn’t use the uncertainties of today as a reason to stop our search to understand each other tomorrow. We cannot avoid these questions. The principal place in which they will be addressed will be in the workplace. As employers and employees, we have to find an answer. If we operate in the right way, we can bring people together.”

"(Photo: Jesse Thorstad, Flickr)"