Corporates merge faith at the pantheon of work

Knowledge@Wharton

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 saviour 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.

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.

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 is all that and more, argues 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”.

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.

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 Georgette Bennett, president of the New York City-based Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding.

She points 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.

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.

Proselytising 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 proselytisation 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 proselytise,” she says.

Miller suggests leaders use the term “faith-friendly” to ease into the topic of religious belief at work, because it accommodates both popular, general spirituality and more specific, orthodox religion.

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.

Becoming “faith-friendly” is “not a formula; it is a mind-set,” Miller adds. He encourages companies to make faith-friendliness an explicit part of company policy — a move that could heighten a company’s appeal to potential employees.

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 evangelising 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 co-workers.

This model gives employers a window into how religion can benefit the business side, Miller says. “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.”

Stew Friedman, director of the Work/Life Integration Project at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, advises companies to encourage a “grass-roots approach”, in which employees take responsibility for asking the company to meet their individual needs.

“Let’s say you need to pray several times during the work day. How does your being able to pray during the day make the company more effective? If it’s something you really care about, you’ll find a convincing way to make your case. This inverts the normal antagonistic way of thinking about your company meeting your needs,” he says.

“Most people want to have more of themselves alive and active in their work,” Friedman concludes. “The more they can be a whole person at work, the more energy, focus and motivation they have to offer.”