Work Place Religious Conviction

Accounting for Religion at Work In general, religious discrimination is intolerable. This fact certainly applies to human resources management, in which department heads are tasked with hiring various people for positions in any number of organizations across vertical industries. However, the reality of this situation is that religious practices and observances can create substantial complications for organizations that can actually interfere with the fulfillment of organizational objectives.

On some occasions, certain facets of behavior that individuals engage in associated with their religions can actually contradict with their job responsibilities and even prevent them from fulfilling them. As such, organizations that do not discern job placement based on religious tendencies may incur situations in which they are paying people to fulfill job responsibilities that they cannot do.

Therefore, it might behoove organizations to consider religion as one of the factors for hiring people, and human resources management professionals need to be aware of the consequences of a potential candidate's religious beliefs. There are numerous instances in which organizations have evinced a commendable degree of tolerance relating to the practice of religion and did not discriminate on this basis -- weighing "free conscious and anti-discrimination norms"1 (McCrea, 2014, p. 277-291) -- and encountered problems afterwards.

Typically, human resources management professionals merely want to hire the most qualified and competent person to fill a particular position. Early in my professional career I was employed as a tutor at an agency that needed a math tutor. A friend of mine was an excellent math tutor who I worked with at another agency, who was looking for more work. Largely based on my recommendation, this woman was hired at the agency that needed a math tutor.

Although she was excellent in tutoring math, she was also a devout Muslim who made a point to pray five times a day facing towards Mecca. Despite the fact that she only tutored at this location a couple of hours, there was one time during her schedule in which she needed to pray. During the first day she did not, and was unhappy at this fact.

The next day, she persuaded the site owner and human resources manager to let her pray in the office of the former during the brief five-minute time period between students. Doing so not only displaced the manager and reduced her effectiveness, but also presented the potential for the tutor to not be available during this five-minute intercession to speak with parents.

Quite simply, because of her religious beliefs she altered certain fundamental aspects of her job and even of the organizational structure, which compromised both her efficacy and that of the organization for a finite amount of time. Another reason that it might behoove organizations to consider a candidate's religious beliefs prior to hiring him or her pertains to employee happiness, attitude, and productivity.

In some instances, an employee's religion and the behavioral functions it requires can interfere with his or her happiness, resulting in a situation in which an employee is disgruntled and not as productive as a result. When coupled with the notion of religious freedom, the subsequent notion partially explicates why religion is considered a "polarizing" 2 (Adams, 2012, p. 281) workplace issue. When I was a college student I obtained a summer internship at a record label.

A situation arose in which a particular artist was struggling to finish his album on deadline and there was only a single weekend left before the deadline expired. One of the record label executives was Jewish, and negotiated a deal for a music producer to submit a track for payment. This deal was finalized on Saturday and the producer was supposed to get paid on Monday -- which just so happened to be a religious holiday.

The executive tried to explain that he could not be available to issue payment on Monday but could the following day; the producer was not willing to wait an extra day for payment he felt he deserved in the wake of rushing to get the album completed. Subsequently, the executive had to make arrangements that Monday to expedite payment to the producer.

From that point on, the executive and the producer had a degree of animosity between them, which did not help the executive in his relationships with other producers and throughout the music industry. Although the faith and actions of the executive did not necessarily reflect that of the record label, it became clear that the owners would have preferred an executive who would not have taken that particular Monday off for religious observances.

The animosity between the executive and the producer did reflect, to a certain extent, the label and its capacity to do business with both other producers and artists. Finally, it is notable that failing to consider the religious convictions of a particular employee prior to hiring him or her can directly affect an organization's customer base. Unfortunately, the world is populated by people who tend to consider people in according to factions and conventional methods of categorization which occasionally do include "religious conviction"3 (Fones-Wolf and Fones-Wolf, 2015, p. 99).

Again, despite the fact that it might be ideal to not have to account for the religion of an employee when considering hiring him, there are definitely situations in which one's religion can alienate and distance customers. For example, I worked at an interior design firm at one point which specialized in remodeling homes for an extremely wealthy, older and established clientele. On one particular job we had to utilize the services of a consulting agency for last minute inspections of an expensive remodeling client.

The consultant that was sent turned out to be a Muslim, which was quite clear by the turban he wore on his head and the long beard that accompanied it. The client in this situation was a Jewish person who had recently moved from Jerusalem -- partially to avoid some of the ramifications of the lengthy conflict between the Palestinians and the state of Jerusalem. Subsequently, the client refused to allow the consultant in the home.

The consultant, of course, felt rejected and left after he was denied entry to the man's home. However, the customer was so upset about the situation that he also allowed the representative the design company entry into his home -- and opted to have his redesign efforts completed by another firm. Although in this case the Muslim person did not directly work for the interior design company, it is not inconceivable that a similar situation could take place in which an employee of a certain religion could be viewed.