Religion finding way into workplace

Lunchtime Bible study groups, flexible hours that allow Jewish employees to leave early Friday in time to light Sabbath candles and Muslim employees to leave work for Friday afternoon prayers and on-site meditation rooms: These days more employers are accommodating religious practices.

What for many people used to be confined to their home or house of worship is now finding expression on the job.

"People are becoming a lot more open about their religious practices and unwilling to shut off that part of themselves at work," says Michelle Weber, who directs the Religious Diversity in the Workplace program at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding in New York.

While a 2002 study by Human Resource Executive magazine found only 10 percent of companies said they had a formal religion accommodation policy, and only one in five said they allowed meetings in the workplace for prayer or religious purposes, Weber and other experts sense an increasing number of employers are becoming more accepting of religious expression on the job.

Workers feel increasingly comfortable asking their bosses to accommodate their religious requirements because the mood in the country is more accepting of discussions of religion and spirituality in general, Weber says.

When employees hear the country's leaders openly discuss their religious beliefs and how they guide their decision-making, they feel free to discuss the same things in their own workplace, she says.

Part of the new openness to religion also may be attributable to a number of lawsuits in the late 1990s brought by workers who felt their religious rights were being infringed, says Don McCormick, a business professor at the University of Redlands (Calif.) who teaches a course on spirituality in the workplace.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans religious discrimination in the workplace and requires that employers make reasonable efforts to accommodate their workers' religious needs.

The trend has been for courts to broaden the scope of workers' rights in this regard, says Barry Willoughby, who chairs the employment law department at Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, a Wilmington, Del., law firm.

Willoughby says it's not easy for employers to know where the lines are, because the law speaks in general terms, and the courts interpret it on a case-by-case basis.

The courts' decisions are "very specific to the case, the nature of the job and the employee's religious needs," he says.

Experts say many stressed-out workers want to bring their spiritual values, as well as their religion, into the office.