Scheduling
Time & Attendance
Forecasting
HRIS
Payroll
Task Management
Performance Management
Employee Engagement
Legal
By Jon Hyman
Oct. 29, 2013
According to the Wall Street Journal, religious-discrimination claims are on the rise.
Companies big and small are being affected by the complex intermixing of work and faith. The trend toward a seven-day workweek sometimes treads on the Sabbath. Religious garb and grooming clash with dress codes. Job duties that intersect with changing public policies—for instance, issuing a marriage license to a gay couple—test some workers’ adherence to their religious beliefs.
While religious-discrimination claims only comprise a small portion of all charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, they have more than doubled over the past 15 years, growing at a rate faster than race or sex claims.
These claims are not going away. Indeed, a recent survey by the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, entitled, “What American Workers Really Think About Religion,” concluded that religious discrimination is rampant in the American workplace.
Some the survey’s more eye-opening findings include:
What can you do to make your workplace religiously diverse and tolerant, so that you are not a target for these claims (also via the Tanenbaum Center)?
Ask: When an employee comes to work in a turban, find out if this is due to a sincerely held religious belief. If so, you should try to accommodate (unless it causes too big of a burden).
Respect Differences: Americans don’t know much about others’ religions. Tensions often arise around religious difference because of a lack of information or misinformation. If your employees need information to understand different faiths and to make co-workers feel welcome, make it available.
Communicate: Do you have written policy on religious accommodation. The Tanenbaum Center suggests that the mere existence of a written policy on religion, in itself, reduces the perception of bias in the workplace. Of course, merely having a policy is never enough. You must communicate it to your employees and enforce it when the need arises.
Think Outside the Box: When an employee requests a religious accommodation, think creatively about how to meet the needs of the employee and the needs of the company. Communication and compromise are key. Unless you talk, you cannot know what your employee needs and your employee cannot know what you’re willing to offer. In these circumstances, lack of communication (and not intentional discrimination) is the root cause of most lawsuits.
Written by Jon Hyman, a partner in the Labor & Employment group of Kohrman Jackson & Krantz. For more information, contact Hyman at (216) 736-7226 or jth@kjk.com. You can also follow Hyman on Twitter at @jonhyman.
Schedule, engage, and pay your staff in one system with Workforce.com.
Staffing Management
4 proven steps for tackling employee absenteeismabsence management, Employee scheduling software, predictive scheduling, shift bid, shift swapping
Time and Attendance
8 ways to reduce overtime and labor costslabor costs, overtime, scheduling, time tracking, work hours
Don't miss out on the latest tactics and insights at the forefront of HR.