July Blog: The Perspective

Religion Discrimination            

An employee’s religion the set of values and beliefs the employee holds in their everyday life. The way the employee practices his or her religion is dictated solely on the employee no one else. The Office of Civil Rights states that when an individual is treated differently because of his or her religious beliefs, practices, and or their requests for accommodations due to their religion, religion discrimination is in practice. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) wrote laws and policies for when religion discrimination occurs in the workplace.

When religion discrimination occurs in the workplace, the company will create a toxic work environment. The company’s diversity will hurt because employees of different religions will feel like they don’t belong in the workplace. Employees of different religions will not get along so productivity will suffer, especially if the employees are on the same team. The company will also struggle to hire new employees especially if they discriminate members of a certain religion.   

The best way to prevent religion discriminatory practices from happening is to make sure every employee in the company is aware of the consequences of these discriminatory practices. The company’s leadership team has a duty to make sure every employee is aware of how religion discrimination hurts people and how it affects the whole company. The leadership team also has a duty to make sure that when incidents of religion discrimination happen, the employees involved are aware of what occurred and why it was discrimination. This way, the work culture will remain a safe place for employees of all religion affiliation.