Religion at Work

There’s no law against having prayer meetings or other religious events at your workplace, but they’re probably not a good idea. The reason, Langevin says, is that it can be hard for employees to tell whether the activities are voluntary, particularly when supervisors or company owners participate. “The employee who gets terminated who didn’t go to those meetings is going to claim that they got fired because they didn’t go to the meetings,” she says.

If you forbid or allow a prayer group for one faith, you must forbid or allow them all, says Neal Buethe, a partner at Minneapolis-based law firm Briggs & Morgan, PA. “If an employer says we’re not going to have a Muslim prayer group but allows a Bible study group, that can be viewed as discriminatory,” he says. “Allow all or none.”

Running an inclusive workplace also means considering your holiday cards and decorations. Emphasize a happy new year, winter scenes, and season’s greetings over any explicit recognition of religious holidays, Langevin suggests. “I think that’s a reasonable way to recognize that customers, clients, and employees are not all of one faith,” she says.

You can’t keep employees from talking about religion, nor should you try. But you should protect any worker who feels attacked or pressured by other workers. “For many people, convincing other people of their beliefs is an important part of their beliefs,” Langevin says. “This gets difficult. An employer has to stop an employee who is making other workers feel uncomfortable or harassed by talking about religious beliefs. You get to be free from someone telling you what your religion ought to be.”

Asking a preachy employee to back off is easier if you have a reputation for being evenhanded and respectful. “You might need to say, ‘I know you’re well intentioned, but you need to stop talking to Mary about your religion, because she feels uncomfortable,’” Langevin says. If your overall attitude is inclusive, she says, “there’s a better chance that the worker will hear ‘please don’t make Mary uncomfortable,’ not ‘your religion is bad.’”

If proselytizing is out, so is workers disparaging one anothers’ religion. “Workers might engage in conduct that is not very welcoming to people of a minority faith,” says Bill Egan, a partner at Minneapolis-based Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly. Discipline these workers as you would any employee who violated your workplace’s anti-harassment policy. If more than one or two employees are disparaging other workers, conduct an overall training to remind the whole company of your policies. Make that training mandatory for new hires.

Train your supervisors, too, and make sure there’s a way for unhappy employees to report a problem. “Employers get a lot of protection if they can establish that they had training and reporting mechanisms,” Buethe says. An employee who sues a company without first trying other ways to resolve the problem has less of a case if the company can show clear training and established ways of reporting trouble.

But even if no one ever has a religious problem at your business, you’ll still reap the benefits of having an open and tolerant workplace. “We believe it’s good business to treat employees well,” Duddleston says. It shows respect for your employees and attracts diversity, which is one way to attract a variety of ideas, and helps keep employees and managers alike productive and happy. “You can make more money and have a better business that way,” he says.