New Directions

When religious practices conflict with workplace rules

You probably know it's illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of their religion, but did you know that prohibitions against discrimination also cover religious practices, including dress, hairstyle and days of work?

Most lawsuits charging religious discrimination are "accommodation cases, where someone does something in the way of religious observance and the employer doesn't understand it," says Michael Wolf, a Washington, DC, attorney, labor and employment arbitrator, and co-author of Religion in the Workplace: A Comprehensive Guide to Legal Rights and Responsibilities (American Bar Association).

Employers have a duty to "reasonably accommodate" workers' religious practices. They can disregard such accommodation only if doing so would constitute an undue hardship on the business. Although statutes on religious discrimination don't define the term "undue hardship," court decisions have indicated that it includes incurring significant costs, reducing productivity, causing other employees to suffer, endangering workplace safety or creating a violation of public law.

Once an employee notifies management of a conflict between his or her religion and work, steps must be taken to resolve the situation in a way that allows for both sincere religious observation and effective company operations. Most commonly, accommodation takes the form of rearranging work schedules to allow individuals to observe holy days, or rewriting dress and personal-grooming codes to make allowances for employees who wear special clothing or have beards for religious reasons.

Other issues, such as harassment and hostile work environments, are more difficult to define. Employers can be held liable if they're intolerant of employees' religious convictions or if employees are subjected to religious harassment. Courts have found behaviors that contribute to a hostile work environment include improper humor, such as telling jokes about the Holocaust to Jewish employees; daily transmission of prayers over companies' public address systems; and preaching religion in a way that makes employees feel they're targets of conversion attempts. At the same time, employers can't discriminate against employees who proselytize in the workplace if those activities aren't interfering with business or objected to by other employees.

While the legal obligation to accommodate religious practices isn't a particularly onerous one, Wolf says, many business owners don't realize it's an issue they need to be aware of. "They're not paying attention to religious practices; they're looking only at business practices," he says. "If you have a diversified work force, realize this is something you need to pay attention to."

This article was originally published in the August 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: New Directions.