Including religious identities in diversity, equity and inclusion efforts could positively impact workplace culture and communities as a whole, according to new published research from the Boniuk Institute.
"The workplace--in the midst of these fraught times--is a place we need to turn to, a place we need to examine, if we want to understand what it really means to get along with each other while expressing our deepest differences," said sociologist and Institute director Elaine Howard Ecklund. "What in effect, a healthy religious pluralism really looks like."
The newly released Religion in a Changing Workplace was the focus of an October 7 event sponsored by the Bryan J. and June B. Zwan Endowment and co-hosted by the Boniuk Institute and Rice's Baker Institute for Public Policy, and featured authors Elaine Howard Ecklund, Denise Daniels, and Christopher P. Scheitle presenting their finding and answering discussion questions from a live audience. The research draws on more than 15,000 surveys and 300 in-depth interviews with oversampled minority populations to ensure a robust representation. The authors argue that embracing religious diversity in the workplace helps foster other kinds of diversity and that their data can show managers, organizational leaders, and workers how to engage thoughtfully and respectfully with religion in the workplace.
"The workplace provides special kinds of opportunities for religious plurlalism that really aren't present in any other spaces in society," Ecklund said. "Often we think that people want to remain privatized about their faith, but we're going to show you some data and make some arguments that people actually want to express their faith more."
The interviews repeatedly showed that the workplace is one of the only sectors of society where people are likely to meet those who are different from themselves, the authors explained. According to author Denise Daniels, "We often worry that talking about differences--particularly important aspects of our identity like religion--creates the potential for conflict. But avoiding or hiding these differences can also make people feel less connected to others and to their workplace more broadly. We show that respectful and nuanced engagement can create a path forward."
Author Chris Scheitle noted that, "Our data indicates that workers tend to be less satisfied and committed to their job if they cannot express their religion in the ways that they would like or if they are treated unfairly due to their religion. This can have practical implications for organizations."
"We often send our children to schools with other people who are like us. We go to religious organizations with other people who are like us. We funnel into universities with other people who are like us often, but there's still a matter of diversity in our workplaces," Ecklund said. "We heard this over and over, and we show this through our survey results. People are exposed to people who are different from them. And so that means workplaces are places where we ought to be attentive to religious differences, and think of workplaces as a type of place n society were we can begin to learn how to practice a healthy religious pluralism."
Watch the full remarks and audience questions online.
This research was supported by a grant from the Lily Endowment, Inc. ("Faith at Work: An Empirical Study," #2017 0021, Elaine Howard Ecklund, PI, Denise Daniels, Co-PI).