|
|||
|
|
|
||||||
|
Toppling the Religion Taboo
In the world of corporate diversity and inclusion, first there was race, then gender and ethnicity, then sexual orientation. Now, businesses are going 'faith friendly.'
Do your Hindu, Sikh and Jain co-workers need a three-day weekend in November to celebrate Diwali? Have you ever asked Muslim employees to help design products destined for a Southeast Asian market? Did you know one colleague urging another to accept Christ as a personal savior is a legally protected act? In the world of corporate diversity and inclusion, first there was race, then gender and ethnicity, then sexual orientation. Now religion is knocking at the door, and, according to some experts and practitioners, it isn't likely to go away anytime soon. "The train has not only left the station; it's passing through town," says David Miller, executive director of Yale University's Center for Faith and Culture and author of the 2007 book, God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement. "The question is: Are you going to steer the train or let it run you over?" Evidence of faith percolating through the workforce abounds. Prayer breakfasts, once confined to Capitol Hill, are now popular among executives in unexpected sectors such as technology and real estate. Companies are hiring corporate chaplains to do everything from performing marriage ceremonies to visiting sick employees and offering drug and alcohol counseling. The Academy of Management's five-year-old interest group on spirituality and religion has attracted nearly 700 members, and a quick trawl through Amazon or your local bookstore reveals enough spirituality-at-work titles to fill a small chapel. Is this just evangelical Christians flexing their business muscles? Or members of non-Western religions appealing for recognition? It's all that and more, argues Miller. It's a genuine social movement, a confluence of forces including an increase in non-Western immigration, rising religiosity among management-level baby boomers, and a search for meaning prompted by 9/11. This faith-at-work movement, says Miller, will ultimately shape business culture as profoundly as the push for civil rights and equal pay has shaped the environment for minority workers and women. "The old paradigm of leaving your beliefs behind when you go to work is no longer satisfying," says Stew Friedman, practice professor of management and director of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project. "More than ever, people want work that fits in with a larger sense of purpose in life. For many people, that includes a concept of God, or something like it."
Do Ask, Do Tell At Fannie Mae, a leader in the diversity and inclusion field, recognizing religion has been a natural outgrowth of responding to employee needs, according to Emmanuel Bailey, vice-president and chief diversity officer at the Washington, D.C.-based home finance giant. In addition to conducting a biannual employee survey, the diversity office initiates conversations with its 16 employee network groups, five of which are religiously based. "We ask, 'From your own perspective, what could we do to improve the culture here?' We had the Jewish, Muslim and Hindu groups say, 'We always see an acknowledgement of Christmas, but we never see any acknowledgement of Rosh Hashanah, Ramadan or Diwali,'" says Bailey, whose office has issued a "multicultural calendar." The calendar, available companywide, notes religious celebrations throughout the year. When holidays approach, says Bailey, employee groups write an article about the holiday's meaning and history, which is then posted on the company intranet; at the bottom is a note directing managers on how to accommodate employees celebrating the holiday. Leveraging employee religious knowledge to assist product design "can help companies avoid a lot of dumb mistakes," such as Liz Claiborne's decision to embroider verses from the Quran on the rear end of its DKNY jeans, says Georgette Bennett, president of the New York City-based Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, a pioneering organization in the field of religious diversity in the workplace. "Cultural competence is a big buzz word right now. But you can't be culturally competent without understanding something about religion, because religion is the largest component of culture. You have to figure out how to tap into your internal diversity resources," she says. Corporate leaders resistant to the idea of being faith-friendly may be persuaded by evidence that religion and spirituality already exist in their workplace, says Bennett, pointing to a 2005 NBC poll in which nearly 60 percent of respondents said religious beliefs played some role in making decisions at work, and an even higher number said such beliefs influenced their interactions with co-workers. Similarly, recent figures from the U.S. Census show a dramatic rise in the rate of immigration from non-Western countries; one-third of human resources professionals surveyed in 2001 by the Tanenbaum Center and the Society for Human Resource Management said the number of religions in their companies increased in the past five years.
Legal Hot Spots Proselytizing in the workplace is a legal hot spot, according to Deborah Weinstein, who teaches employment law for managers in Wharton's legal studies and business ethics department. "Courts across the country have interpreted this issue very differently. In a 2006 case in California, the court said persistent and blatant proselytization is prohibited because it could constitute harassment. But other courts, in Colorado, for example, have said employers need to bend over backwards to accommodate those who [believe they] need to proselytize," says Weinstein, whose Philadelphia-based Weinstein Firm provides legal and consultancy services on workforce issues. Employers may be surprised to learn the extent of religious expression legally protected in the workplace by the Constitution and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating on religious grounds and requires them to make "reasonable accommodations" for employees' "sincerely held beliefs." According to an executive action paper from the Conference Board, a business research organization based in New York City, employees can, within limits, wear religious medallions or clothing, argue with one another about religious beliefs and even hand out literature advising co-workers they will burn in hell unless they change their ways. An employer cannot insist that a Muslim woman remove her head-scarf on the presumption that it might make customers uncomfortable. Another contentious issue right now is what Bennett calls "diversity backlash," in the form of Christian employee affinity groups opposing domestic partner benefits, refusing to sign diversity statements that include homosexuality, or asking management not to recognize Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender (GLBT) affinity groups. While Bennett says these conflicts make some companies "scared to death" of religion in the workplace, Nicole Raeburn, a University of San Francisco sociologist, says many of these disputes have been successfully resolved, sometimes with the help of outside mediators. "There has been some hand-wringing among companies about the [correct] way to handle this. People have a right to their religious beliefs, but they can't create a hostile work environment because of them. When companies have been very clear about drawing that line, it seems to defuse the tension," says Raeburn, author of the 2004 book, Changing Corporate America from Inside Out: Lesbian and Gay Workplace Rights. "It's a red herring to presume that evangelical Christians are by definition going to be at odds with GLBT groups," says Miller. "Yes, [companies] will stub their toes sometimes. But they need to be realistic: Good outcomes require struggle." Taking the "Faith-Friendly" Plunge
For managers used to keeping religious belief -- or non-belief -- under wraps from nine to five, talkingabout religion in terms of company policy can feel strange. Miller suggests leaders use the term "faith-friendly" to ease into the topic, because it accommodates both popular, general spirituality and more specific, orthodox religion. Faith-at-work is not a one-size-fits-all product: Companies have to choose the approaches that fit best. The menu of options for meeting religious and spiritual needs is short but growing. Popular picks right now include allowing employees to swap holiday time; modifying cafeteria food to meet religious dietary restrictions; providing spaces for prayer or meditation; and allowing employees to start faith-based affinity groups. Hiring corporate chaplains, who do everything from conducting weddings to visiting sick or injured employees in the hospital to advising managers on meeting ethical standards, is another possibility. Tyson Foods, for example, has a director of Chaplain Services, a manager of Chaplain Operations and 122 part-time chaplains working throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Diana Dale, executive director of the Houston-based National Institute of Business and Industrial Chaplains, warns companies interested in corporate chaplains not to accept unqualified applicants who don't meet professional standards. She advises businesses to hire only chaplains who have relevant masters degrees, specific training in drug and alcohol abuse and marriage and family counseling, and membership in a professional chaplaincy organization. Such chaplains may be full-time human resources employees or on-call professionals, usually charging about $125 an hour as part of employee assistance programs, she says, adding that workplace chaplains are more common in the South. Miller agrees that each company must choose faith-friendly options relevant to their corporate culture and geographic context: "What's suitable in Tuscaloosa may not fly in the Twin Cities," he says. "Republished with permission from Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu), the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania."
January 31, 2007 Copyright 2007© LRP Publications |
||||||
Print
Email
Write to the Editor
Reprints
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
© Copyright 2010 LRP Publications. All rights reserved.
|
||||