Spirit at Work: Accommodate the Religious

03/05/07

As the U.S. becomes more diverse, and as people express their beliefs more freely, religion crops up in the workplace far more often than it used to:

Two recent converts to Islam ask you if they can leave an hour early every Friday to attend religious services.

You’re interviewing people for a ware-house job that will occasionally require weekend work. An applicant informs you, without prompting, that he’s a Seventh Day Adventist and cannot work on Saturdays.

An atheist complains that a teammate pesters him constantly about “letting Christ into his life.” He wants it to stop.

Let Title VII Guide
How do you handle situations like these? Delicately, due to this 1972 addition to Title VIIs ban on religious discrimination:

The term “religion” includes all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate an employee’s or prospective employee’s religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.

How do you define undue hardship? In the words of the EEOC, “An employer can claim undue hardship when accommodating an employee’s religious practices if allowing such practices requires more than ordinary administrative costs.”

Ways to Accommodate
The EEOC offers three possibilities for accommodating the religious practices of employees without undue hardship:

1. Permit voluntary substitutes and “swaps.” If other employees have similar qualifications for a job, they may agree to work when a person requesting an accommodation can’t. Thus, in the case of the Seventh Day Adventist job applicant, you may have fourteen other workers in the same job classification who can cover for him. That means you can’t exclude him from consideration based on his lack of availability on Saturdays, as long as other workers are willing to work that day.
2. Try flexible scheduling. Can you let people requesting accommodation come in early or go home later? Work through lunch? Make up time? Perhaps the Muslims requesting time off, for example, can work through lunch, or come in early.
3. Transfer or change job assignments. Maybe a different job within the organization will solve the challenge you face.To this list you might add:
4. Make an exception. The EEOC specifically says employees don’t have to join unions, engage in “New Age” techniques (like meditation), or bend to strict dress and grooming policies if it goes against their religion—unless the requirement is a BFOQ. Changing work rules such as these to accommodate the religious will rarely result in an undue hardship.

Nonbelievers Have Rights, Too
Title VII obligates employers to keep their workplaces free of bias that may irritate employees or customers.

The religious may not badger or harass nonbelievers or adherents of a different faith, for example. That means the atheist mentioned above can simply ask the proselytizer to stop—and expect him or her to comply with the request.

Similarly, you can prohibit an employee from pinning a huge religious symbol on the outside of a cubicle.

Gray Areas Abound
Be aware that courts often consider mild expression of religious views reasonable, and there is no firm line as to what is reasonable and what is not. “Don’t fight over small things,” advises G. Neil attorney Wendy Smith. “In most cases, for example, you should allow employees to wear necklaces or pins with religious icons, or display religious items within a private space.”

And be prepared to face hard questions. While it might be easy to accommodate one employee’s request for a holy day off, for example, what if half your workforce wants that day off, too?

There are no easy answers to a question like this. Besides discussing such matters with an attorney when you need to, discuss requests with the people who ask for them. According to one recent court ruling, they have an obligation to help think up accommodations. And remember: You don’t have to choose the alternative the employee prefers; an accommodation that effectively resolves the conflict is all that is required.

Tread Carefully
Says Wendy Smith, “Many people are passionate about their religious beliefs. You can expect a strong response if you decide an accommodation constitutes an undue hardship. On the other hand, accommodations that require other employees to pick up the slack can arouse resentment. Always comply with the law and be open to ideas about accommodation but, if possible, choose one that keeps other employees from feeling overburdened.”