Business Case for Workplace Religious Diversity & Inclusion
“By bringing religious diversity fully into corporate Diversity and Inclusion efforts, companies will be in a better position to more holistically address the needs of all employees.”
Michael Bodson
President and CEO
DTCC
The most successful businesses encourage environments where employees bring their “full self” to work, where they feel comfortable, willing, and able to talk about what is most important to them.
Employers benefit when they recognize and respect what’s near and dear to employees’ identities, including their religious beliefs and practices. If they exclude or alienate someone for reasons that have nothing to do with a person’s ability to do the job, they might also exclude the next great business solution or the next great product idea—the very thing a company might need for its success. At the very least, they’ll miss out on great talent.
And as companies globalize, they’ll need employees who can relate to the daily experience of increasingly diverse customers. For potentially billions of customers, religious belief and practice are a part of daily life. Having employees who understand the ways religion manifests in private and public life will help companies avoid costly missteps and develop products and services better tailored to customer needs. That’s an essential part of being competitive.
The Problem
More than one-in-three American workers, some 50 million people, report having experienced or witnessed religious discrimination or non-accommodation in their workplaces. This is not surprising given that most business leaders and managers receive little to no education about the business significance of religious liberty, religious diversity and religious inclusion. As a result, businesses fail to build practices and protocols that reflect appropriate religious accommodations and human resource policies, resulting in significant costs ranging from lower employee morale and retention to lawsuits and litigation, which limit the growth potential of economies and businesses.
The Solution
The Religious Freedom & Business Foundation and the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute jointly offer education programs for businesses and business schools across the globe. For businesses, we deliver one and two-day courses focused on middle management and executives. For business schools, we provide online modules that can be integrated into existing courses on marketing, management, liability limitation, and diversity & inclusion.
Participants become religiously literate, that is, they become conversant about how religion impacts the workplace and the marketplace, their coworkers and partners as well as customers and clients. Participants gain an understanding of the empirical evidence on the value that religious liberty, religious diversity, and religious inclusion and their roles in business strategy, corporate policy and economic growth.
This training provides frameworks that will help participants lead effectively in a world of growing religious diversity. The curriculum is grounded in the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation’s Corporate Pledge on Religious Diversity & Inclusion. As companies employ this framework, they send two clear messages to current and prospective employees: (1) you can work here without changing who you are; and (2) the company respects all employees and will not favor certain employees over others, and that’s good for the business of all.
Participants will also learn strategies that help businesses navigate religious freedom as it pertains to other freedoms in the workplace and society.
Contact
For more information, please contact Paul Lambert (Paul@religiousfreedomandbusiness.org) or Kristen Looney (klooney@newseum.org).
Download Brochure: Seminars – Workplace Religious Diversity and Inclusion