Should Employees be Allowed to Wear Symbols of Faith in the Workplace?

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Catherine Palmiere

The modern American workplace thrives on diversity, and experienced employers recognize this diversity as a strength. Our differences help us overcome boundaries and teach us how to work together to achieve shared goals. But difference can lead to conflict, and employers are sometimes at an impasse when one worker’s freedom of religious expression seems to undermine productivity or infringe on the rights of another.

I’m often approached with the following question from confused employers and HR professionals: Should employees be allowed to openly express their faith in the workplace? Specifically, should they be allowed to wear faith-based clothing, images or jewelry?

workplace, symbols of faith, religious expression

Religious Expression and Symbols of Faith

According to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers may not discriminate against individuals on account of their religion. This applies to hiring, firing, terms of employment, and the obligation to accommodate religious practices in the workplace as long as they don’t cause undue hardship for the employer. Accommodations may include providing a place to pray, allowing a day off occasionally for religious reasons, or allowing employees to wear religious garb.

If you would rather not accommodate an employee’s right to wear religious clothing, you will need to prove that doing so would cause undue hardship for your business. This is a two-step process. You’ll need to prove that

1) You made a good faith effort to help the employee accommodate her religious obligations, and

2) her obligations incurred an actual, significant monetary or administrative expense.

If an employee would like to take action against an employer for a Title VII violation, she’ll need to prove the following three things: 1) that she has a bona fide religious obligation to wear the symbol or clothing, 2) the employer knew about her obligations, and 3) she was subject to some adverse action, like punishment or firing, for wearing the symbol or clothing.

Legal vs. Social Obligations

Short of going to court, there are plenty of ways to peacefully resolve a workplace conflict over religious garb. If an employee is offended by another employee’s religious attire, use your diplomacy skills and meet with each of them privately to discuss the issue. Help the two sides find common ground on their own. Only if this method fails should you resort to formal disciplinary or legal action.

Class Discussion

In my HR management class at Manhattan College, this topic inspired a lively and productive debate—Possibly one of our best discussions ever!

Five of my students present argued that symbols of faith should be permitted in the workplace, since the practice is unlikely to harm and may actually increase productivity. One student argued (and I was inclined to agree) that symbols of faith should be discouraged in the workplace. Otherwise a precedent may be set that can open the door to other forms of permissive, productivity-undermining behavior.

Posted in Employee Development, Employee Rights | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Is the Americans With Disabilities Act Being Abused in the U.S. Workplace?

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Catherine Palmiere

The Americans With Disabilities Act, or ADA, is a set of Federal laws designed to protect disabled Americans from discrimination or restricted access to opportunity. In addition to the ADA, each state has a similar set of laws that serve the same purpose– that of providing the disabled with equal access to public services, stores, businesses, and the ability to work without impediment.

american disabilities act

In 2009 the ADA was amended to ADAA to broaden the definition of disability. A disability that interfered with “major life activities” was redefined to include an exhaustive list of activities such as walking, standing, lifting, eating, bending, reading, writing, and sleeping, among several others, including critical functions of the body.

Abuse of the ADA

Unfortunately, no law is perfect, and while the ADA provides vital protections for the disables, some of the finer points of the law expose employers and business owners to the possibility of illegitimate lawsuits and difficult dilemmas. Two of the most common challenges to employers result from workplace access issues and legal protections for employees with mental health problems.

Access Concerns

In accordance with Federal and most state laws, disabled employees must be provided with all the resources they need to complete their jobs. All employees deserve reasonable accommodations, including wheelchair ramps and other structural requirements. This means employers and public businesses are subject to lawsuits when these requirements are not met, and this occasionally leads to abuse of the system. To protect your company from frivolous legal action or expensive settlements, take all reasonable steps to ensure that your workplace adequately accommodates the needs of disabled employees. But know your rights, and investigate the law. Understand what protections are available to companies who find themselves facing ADA abuses.

Mental Health Concerns

Employers often turn to me with questions about preventing workplace violence, since many efforts toward violence prevention appear to discriminate against those with mental illness and run counter to the protections of the ADA.

HR professionals need to establish protocols to deal with aggression, threats, and antisocial behavior in the workplace, and these protocols cannot violate the Federal rights of the ill or disabled. This places employers in a challenging position. But there are ways to sidestep these issues, including careful, effective screening during the hiring process. Employers should also have zero-tolerance violence policies clearly in place, and should make counseling, stress management and employee assistance programs available to all staff members.

Posted in News | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Is Affirmative Action Still Necessary?

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Catherine Palmiere

The Supreme Court alone has the power to make final decisions that either further the goals of Affirmative Action or bring the program to an end. But in the meantime, my colleagues and clients often discuss how a diverse culture in an organization helps the growth of the organization.  Diverse populations help business to reach diverse customers, as people feel more comfortable working with those they feel they can relate to. In the staffing and HR industry, we explore these issues frequently, and while open communication furthers our dialogue and helps us understand the complexities of racial equality, none of our conversations have led to a clear yes or no answer to this important question.

affirmative action

In my recent course at ManhattanCollege(www.manhattan.edu), my students had a heated discussion in which about half of the participants opposed affirmative action and the other half felt strongly that it was still needed.

On one side, critics of Affirmative Action claim that with an African American president in the White House and representatives of every ethnicity and gender holding many of the highest offices in the land, Affirmative Action has surely achieved its intended purpose and should now be dismantled. Once the playing field is officially even, any further quotas or artificial assistance constitute simple—and ironic– racial or gender-based favoritism. According to this logic, once all groups have equal access to success, then favoring one group is exactly the same as favoring another.

But this argument only succeeds when entrenched obstacles to equality have been universally and unquestionably removed, and racism and sexism are proven to have no further influence in the workplace. So far, this simply has not been the case. Racial and gender-based bias remains a pervasive, and often unconscious, aspect of workplace life. Until boardrooms are staffed by faces that reflect population demographics, it will be clear that our education system and hiring practices are still burdened by skewed assumptions, flawed selection protocols, and imbalanced access to opportunity.

As students, teachers, managers, employees, and citizens, it’s our goal to find out where in the system these obstacles lie, and then root them out. Once we’ve successfully accomplished this, Affirmative Action will no longer have a place in our culture. But we still have a long way to go.

Posted in Employee Development, Staffing Agency | Tagged , | Leave a comment

How to Make Sure Your Post Gets the Attention of Talented Applicants

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Catherine Palmiere

When my clients create a listing for a position, their goals are twofold. First, they want plenty of applicants to see the post and respond. A wider pool (up to certain point of diminishing returns, which we’ll address in a later post) means an overall increase in high quality applicants and a selection process balanced in the company’s favor. Second, they want this avalanche of responses to come from candidates with all of the minimum qualifications required by the position. An overwhelming response to a post is neither helpful nor cost effective if ninety percent of the respondents don’t make the first cut.

So how can you create an ad that’s both carefully targeted and appealing enough to draw attention and generate interest?

Know Your Target Candidates

First, understand your intended audience. Have a sense of their skills and professional goals, but also try to intuit who they are as people. Are you looking for older candidates with many years of experience and strong ties to the local area? Or freshed-faced, mobile young candidates who don’t mind frequent travel?

Know Where to Find These Target Candidates

Don’t carpet-bomb the internet. That is, unless you want to sift through hundreds of inappropriate applications. Once you know who your candidates are, find industry or university-specific sites where your posting will be impossible for them to miss.

Know How to Bring Them In

Speak directly to your target audience. If you want a candidate with an upbeat attitude and a quirky sense of humor, write your post in this tone. If you want a serious candidate with grim determination and relentless drive, make sure your job description reflects this sensibility. Likewise, consider the perks you decide to list. If you want cultured, curious applicants with an interest in art, mention your proximity to local museums. If you want ambitious candidates, mention your company’s growth potential. Before you publish your post, read it carefully from the position of your ideal candidate. If you were in her shoes, how would you respond to this message?

Posted in News, Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Shouldn’t I Hire You? Asking Trick Questions During Interviews

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Catherine Palmiere

Employers often ask me about the kinds of questions they should use to narrow down the final contenders for a position. Lately, possibly due to a weak job market and inflated confidence on the part of hiring managers, a similar topic has come up several times. The conversation usually happens like this:

Hiring Manager: My interview questions are too standard and predictable.

Me: How so?

Hiring Manager: I’d like to change things up a little. I want to put candidates to the test. Ask them something unexpected to see if they have a sense of humor. And, you know, see how they react.

My answer to this proposition is almost always the same. Please don’t. The temptation may be strong to ask quirky interview questions to catch applicants off guard and trip them up. But before you decide to take this path, consider the following:

First, standard interview questions are standard for a reason. No matter what else you chat about, there are a few pieces of information that are an essential part of the process and productive interviews rarely happen without them. By the time your meeting ends, you need to know what a candidate has done in the past, what her long term goals are, and how her skills match up to the requirements of the job at hand. Usually, it takes at least 15 to 30 minutes to establish these details.

Second, remember that an interview is a two-way process. Intentionally quirky questions can easily be mistaken for baiting, demeaning, or expecting a candidate to grovel. And any of these moves can alienate talented applicants and allow them to slip away. Keep your interview process professional and skip any questions that might corner or insult an applicant.  Applying for a position with your company demonstrates respect. Respect your candidates in return and use the interview to start building a potentially valuable relationship.

Posted in Human Resources, Professional Organizations | Tagged , , | Leave a comment