TruthBook Religious News Blog

Published: January 24, 2007 in Knowledge@Wharton

Do your Hindu, Sikh and Jain coworkers 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?"

"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 also initiates conversations with its 16 employee network groups, five of which are religiously based.

"We want a corporate culture that retains employees, so that they value Fannie Mae as a great place to work," says Bailey. "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.

The issue came up again recently, when Fannie Mae was rushing to complete its financial restatement following charges that it misstated earnings from 2001 to 2004, among other allegations. "Some of our divisions had to work on a six-day-a-week, 12-hour-a-day schedule," recalls Bailey. "From our employee network groups we learned that this decision cut into certain people's religious observances. That's what led us to the multicultural calendar."

Avoiding Bad Business Decisions

Whether it's prayer breakfasts, study groups or workplace ministries, much of the faith-at-work movement has evolved outside of the church -- in large part because churches in recent decades have been uninterested in, if not hostile towards, the business world, according to Miller, a former senior executive in the financial sector. "Although there are pockets of interest in some churches, it's fair to say that churches, whether evangelical, mainline Protestant or Catholic, have abdicated their theological and pastoral interest in the workplace," Miller says in an interview.

Welcoming faith into a company can also provide unlikely solutions to common business problems. Miller points to Tyson Foods, whose business quadrupled in 2001 when it acquired IBP (formerly known as Iowa Beef Processors). Faced with the task of merging two strong but divergent company cultures, chairman John Tyson "recognized he needed a set of core values that would steer the new Tyson Foods and get people out of their prior identities," says Miller, who advised Tyson in drawing up these new "core values," which state that Tyson Foods is a "faith-friendly company" striving to "honor God and be respectful of each other, our customers and other stakeholders."

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% 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 company increased in the past five years.

Legal Hot Spots

The workplace is not the only formerly faith-free zone to witness an explosion of interest in religion. Public life and politics are now marked by frequent battles over everything from gay marriage to evolution to stem cell research. This could lead companies to worry that if they bring religion into the workplace, they may be opening themselves up to litigation from non-religious employees or members of non-mainstream religions who feel they are excluded.

Proselytizing in the workplace is one 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."

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.

Taking the "Faith-Friendly" Plunge

For managers used to keeping religious belief -- or non-belief -- under wraps from nine to five, talking about religion in terms of company policy can feel as strange as wearing your underwear on top of your slacks. 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.

Like underwear, 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, 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.

To make sense of the faith-at-work movement, Miller breaks it into four motivating factors. Doing the right thing and being socially responsible are driving concerns for many people, while others want to express their faith through evangelizing co-workers. Another category of people is searching for transcendent meaning in their work, and still others hope to improve or deepen themselves through prayer, meditation or scripture study with coworkers. Some enthusiastic individuals encompass all four categories, wanting to integrate faith and work on as many levels as possible, writes Miller in his book.

This model gives employers a window into how religion can benefit the business side, Miller adds. "Three of these four categories are easy for leaders to embrace. If they have employees who are more ethically grounded -- that's good news. If they have employees who view their work as a calling, rather than being cynical Dilberts -- that's a good thing. And if people's faith heals and restores them amidst the challenges of corporate life -- that's a good thing, too." While the other category -- proselytization -- suggests potential conflict, Miller says, most employers lack "an even basic awareness" of the already existing legal structures that govern evangelism in the workplace.

And how does one create an environment where employees feel this sense of personal responsibility? "That's the job of a progressive, smart company: motivating people to bring what they've got so it can help both them and you," says Friedman. "Most people want to have more of themselves alive and active in their work. The more they can be a whole person at work, the more energy, focus and motivation they have to offer."