Business Services Industry

Human resources gets religion

HR Magazine, Jan, 2009 by Jennifer Schramm

As the workforce becomes more influenced by trends in globalization, some demographers say, religious diversity in the United States will increase. This is drawing attention to issues of religious accommodation in U.S. workplaces.

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Human resources, already involved in ensuring legal compliance in many business functions, sits at the center of organizational efforts to create diverse and inclusive environments, and thus holds a strategic position at the forefront on workplace issues and concerns arising from religious diversity.

One concern stems from religious discrimination, one of the types of employment discrimination that can lead to lawsuits. As the economy falters, some lawyers are reporting an increase in the number of employers seeking legal advice to protect themselves against lawsuits from former employees who were laid off.

Yet there's evidence that employment discrimination suits overall are declining. A study by two Cornell University law professors published in the Winter 2009 issue of Harvard Law & Policy Review shows that there has been a dramatic decrease--almost 41 percent--in employment discrimination cases filed in federal courts in the past five years.

Although there are various explanations for the decline, some legal experts who specialize in such cases say the rising professionalization of human resource management--and, as a result, the development of more-rigorous processes to deal with employee grievances--represents an important reason.

In fact, efforts to improve diversity and inclusion may be improving corporate culture, making it more accommodating toward, and more comfortable with, religious differences--not as a way to avoid religious discrimination suits but as an organizational value.

A survey report, Religion and Corporate Culture: Accommodating Religious Diversity in the Workplace, published in October by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), found that the majority of HR professionals across organizations of all sizes reported religious and spiritual diversity among their organizations' employees.

In addition, 98 percent of the HR professionals reported that in their organizations, religiously diverse employees work well together.

There appear to be some continuing problem areas, however. Earlier studies from organizations such as the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding in New York have shown that some of the accommodations that are most meaningful to employees, such as providing personal days for religious observance, are not yet offered by many organizations. The SHRM study shows that 44 percent of organizations still do not offer leave for holidays that they don't regularly cover.

Nonetheless, as religious diversity continues to increase, standardization of workplace policies and practices on religious accommodation may emerge.

Online Resources

For more information on emerging issues, go to www.shrm.ora/trends. For a link to the SHRM research on religion in the workplace, see the online version of this article at www.shrm.ora/hrmaaazine.> The author is manager of the Workplace Trends and Forecasting program at SHRM.