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...

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…