Religion at the workplace is one of those subjects that organisations can be hesitant to discuss. There is often an instinct to treat religion as something entirely personal and therefore best kept outside the workplace. From an HR perspective, that may appear to be the simplest approach.

If organisations do not discuss religion, perhaps they do not have to deal with the complexity that comes with different beliefs, festivals, practices, food preferences, fasting, holidays and individual religious requirements.

I believe the Indian workplace requires a more thoughtful approach.

Religion has been part of India’s heritage and culture for a very long time. It has influenced how people live, how they celebrate, how they relate to others and how they interpret circumstances that are not entirely within their control. Employees do not enter the organisation as blank professional identities. They bring with them the beliefs, practices and ways of living that have shaped them outside the workplace.

This is why the HR question should not simply be, how do we remove religion from the workplace? The more useful question is, how do we understand religion well enough to ensure that it becomes something we can accommodate fairly rather than something we automatically assume is a source of personal identity or a topic to be avoided?

That distinction matters because religion need not automatically be a negative influence in the workplace. There are aspects of religious life that teach people to follow practices and rules, accommodate others, participate in celebrations different from their own and accept that not every outcome is completely controlled by individual effort. These ideas can coexist comfortably with organisational life when they are understood properly.

Consider the last point. Employees work in organisations where careers and business outcomes are influenced by many factors. Some things are controlled by the company. Some are influenced by markets. Some are affected by economic conditions. Some are created by circumstances completely outside the control of the company or the employee.

People already understand, in different ways, that not everything that happens in life results directly from only their physical effort. The corporate equivalent of that idea is also familiar to us, market factors, economic factors and external circumstances can change outcomes. Therefore, not every negative career decision or impact can automatically be attributed to the employer, just as not every organisational outcome is created entirely by management.

There is another workplace connection worth examining, discipline around practices and processes. Every organisation has situations where something has to be done in a particular way because that is the defined process. This is not about asking employees to ignore integrity or follow something unethical. It is simply about recognising that organisations cannot reopen the logic behind every established requirement every time it needs to be followed.

Take safety. If a safety harness must be worn, it must be worn. An employee may argue that they are going only to the first floor and therefore the harness appears unnecessary. But a safety process cannot depend on everyone individually deciding when it looks relevant. Similarly, if fire exit markings are required, somebody cannot decide that the building has enough natural lighting and therefore the markings are unnecessary.

Processes need discipline.

From this perspective, the Indian workforce does not necessarily present religion only as something HR needs to protect itself from. There is an opportunity to understand whether some of the behaviours already familiar to employees through their lives outside work can coexist with the organisational need for discipline, accommodation and acceptance of circumstances beyond individual control.

The More Interesting HR Opportunity Is Accommodation

India presents organisations with a workforce in which people may follow different religions, observe different practices and celebrate different festivals. Yet in everyday life, people frequently engage with the happiness and celebrations of others. People may participate in another person’s celebration even when the underlying religious practice is not their own. The belief that there is value in participating in somebody else’s happiness is already familiar in the social environment from which employees come.

That does not mean differences disappear.

There will be things one person’s religion permits and another person’s religion does not permit. There will be practices important to one employee that are irrelevant to another employee. There will be occasions where somebody participates in another person’s festival and other occasions where somebody simply says, in effect, “That is your religious practice, you can follow it, while I will follow mine.”

That is accommodation.

For organisations, this can become a far more practical starting point than trying either to standardise all religious behaviour or pretend religion does not exist.

The important question becomes, what does reasonable accommodation look like in daily HR practice? A very simple example is fasting.

Employees belonging to different religious traditions may fast on particular days. The organisation does not necessarily need to declare a holiday because an employee is fasting. That would be an extreme interpretation of accommodation. But the organisation can recognise what the employee is doing and ask whether some aspects of the working environment can reasonably take that into account.

If an employee is fasting, does that person need to be taken to an offsite on that particular day? Is there a need to assign unusually heavy physical activity if that can reasonably be avoided? Can the employee be given an environment with lower physical pressure on that day without creating an unreasonable burden on the business? None of these actions requires the organisation to alter its entire operating model. They require awareness.

Food provides another practical example.

There may be employees who eat particular kinds of food on certain days because of religious practice. If the organisation operates a canteen, the question need not immediately become whether the organisation is required to provide that food free of cost.

That is not the point.

The question is whether the organisation can reasonably facilitate an arrangement that gives employees access to the food they need. If a small arrangement means the employee does not need to remain hungry, carry everything from home or leave the factory, office or workplace to find appropriate food, that may be sufficient. This is what I mean by accommodation. It is not necessarily about large expenditure. It is not about satisfying every conceivable request. It is about understanding that something matters to an employee and considering what the organisation can reasonably do.

This becomes more challenging when the religious request is unfamiliar.

An employee may approach HR with a practice or request that sounds genuine and religiously important, but HR may not know whether it should be permitted. That is where HR should avoid instant judgement. There are situations where applicable law already gives clarity.

If the applicable rules provide clarity on what is or is not permissible for religious reasons, the organisation should follow the law. The individual manager’s personal view of whether the practice is right or wrong is not what determines the response. If the law says that something can be done, the organisation needs to respect that legal position. If the law says otherwise, that also gives the organisation its boundary.

Not every religious workplace question, however, will have such a legal answer.

Consider an established practice of praying to machinery or tools on a particular day. What should a business do? Should the factory close? Should production stop? Should the activity be formally encouraged? Should everything operate normally?

There is no need for an individual manager to improvise a personal religious policy. This is where the HR practitioner and the relevant department or business head need to discuss the requirement and determine what makes sense for the organisation.

Understand what the employee or employee group is asking for. Understand whether there is a legal requirement. Understand what the organisation can reasonably accommodate. Understand the business impact. Then make a decision. This is much more valuable than trying to create an organisation in which religion is simply never discussed.

Religion is already present in people’s lives. The better HR capability is learning how to respond to it intelligently.

Fair Religious Accommodation Does Not Mean Identical Treatment

This brings us to perhaps the most important operational issue, fairness. An organisation dealing with religious diversity must be fair in its religious communication and practices. But fairness should not be confused with doing exactly the same thing for everybody.

Suppose an organisation does something for Religion A. The immediate reaction may be that exactly the same thing must now be done for Religion B and Religion C. That is not necessarily what fairness means. The better question is whether employees belonging to different religions receive an equivalent ability to observe or represent what matters to them, considering the impact on that employee or group.

Consider holidays.

An organisation may have a large population for whom a particular religious festival matters. A holiday may therefore exist around that festival. Now suppose there is just one employee in the organisation for whom another festival is very important. Would fairness require the entire factory to be shut down for that one employee’s festival?

Not necessarily.

The organisation may instead provide that employee with leave on the relevant day. The employee gets the opportunity to observe the festival. The organisation does not unnecessarily shut down the whole operation. The person does not feel that their religion has simply been ignored.

Unless the law requires the workplace to close, there is no reason fairness must always translate into identical organisational action.

This is a useful principle far beyond holidays.

Fairness can mean creating comparable impact without creating identical arrangements. This distinction becomes particularly important in India because religious practice is extraordinarily varied. It is tempting to organise everybody into a few large religious categories and then write standard rules around those categories.

The reality of individual practices is much more complex. Broad traditions contain numerous branches and variations. Individual religious practices can differ considerably even among people who might be placed under the same broad label.

An organisation can therefore create some basic rules, but it cannot realistically anticipate every individual practice through one standard HR policy.

Individual requests will arise.

When they do, the answer should not automatically be, “No, our policy does not permit this.” The employee should first receive a fair hearing.

• What exactly is the person asking for?
• Why does it matter?
• What does the practice require from the employee?
• What does it require from the organisation?

Once HR understands the request, the matter can be discussed with the relevant business or department head and a decision can be taken based on the organisation’s rules and operational realities.

This is where transparency becomes extremely important.

Sometimes the organisation cannot provide what the employee initially asks for. The employee may want a holiday, but the organisation cannot declare one. The employee may want permission to arrive late or leave early, but the operating model may not allow that. The organisation can explain these constraints honestly.

However, perhaps it can allow the employee to use leave on that day. Perhaps the organisation can make sure the person is not disturbed while on leave. Perhaps the team can ensure that work is managed so the employee does not return to an unreasonable backlog.

The person may still have to use their leave balance. The organisation therefore has not given everything away. Yet something important has happened, the organisation has demonstrated that it understands why the day matters.

Employees can be remarkably accommodating when they receive a patient hearing, see that their requirement has been understood and receive a transparent explanation of the constraints within which the organisation operates.

That is a very different employee experience from an immediate rejection. The employee may not expect the organisation to overturn every business rule for a religious requirement. The employee may simply want to see that the organisation is trying to understand and accommodate them within what is realistically possible. This is why, when dealing with religion at work, the quality of the conversation can sometimes matter almost as much as the final decision.

An organisation that explains, “I understand what you are trying to tell me. These are the rules under which we operate. This part of your request I cannot accommodate, but this is what I can do,” creates a very different relationship from an organisation that simply says, “No.” In practical HR management, that difference matters.

Religious Wellbeing and the Indian Meaning of Diversity and Inclusion

The final idea is the one that I believe organisations should reflect on most carefully, religion does not have to be viewed as a negative tool that will adversely affect the workforce. If understood properly, religion can become part of how an organisation understands and supports its people.

To do this, leaders need to communicate something simple, we are all in this together. Employees should be able to see that the organisation has an interest not only in what they deliver, but also in their success and wellbeing.

We talk frequently about financial wellbeing. We discuss salary, benefits, financial security and the economic experience of the employee. But for an employee to whom religion matters, there is another dimension, religious wellbeing.

Religious wellbeing does not mean that the organisation must become religious.

It does not mean the employer must participate in every practice. It does not mean that every festival becomes a company event. It does not mean every request must be accepted.

It means that the organisation understands that religion is an important part of some employees’ lives and is willing to hear and accommodate their needs where reasonably possible. The organisation may not be capable of providing any major material benefit. Sometimes there is little it can actually change. But it can understand. It can consult. It can communicate, and it can deliver what lies within its best capacity.

This matters because employees evaluate organisations not only by what the company says but also by whether the company demonstrates that it understands what matters to them.

A person may value the fact that HR understood why fasting mattered even if no holiday was granted. Another may value having appropriate food available. Someone else may value receiving leave for an important festival even though the organisation remained open. Another person may simply value having an HR practitioner listen seriously to an unfamiliar religious request before making a decision.

This is also where the Indian workplace gives us an interesting lens on diversity and inclusion.

Diversity and inclusion is often introduced in corporations as a formal concept. My view is that in India, much of the experience of living with diversity is already deeply embedded in the workforce. People encounter different religious practices in ordinary life. They see different celebrations. They interact with people who follow different customs. They participate in one another’s happiness. They know that somebody else may do something they themselves do not do.

This does not mean differences never arise. It means the workforce does not begin with zero understanding of difference.

In fact, because this experience is so deeply ingrained, formal D&I discussions can sometimes become narrowed largely to gender. The reason is not necessarily that other diversity does not exist. It is precisely because living with many other forms of difference can feel so normal that employees do not always describe it through the formal vocabulary of diversity and inclusion.

That is an important observation for HR practitioners.

Before importing a new language around diversity, first understand the diversity already present in your workforce. Religion is part of that diversity. Festivals are part of it. Food practices are part of it. Fasting is part of it. Individual practices are part of it. The fact that one person’s important day is an ordinary working day for everybody else is part of it.

The fact that colleagues can still participate in one another’s happiness despite those differences is also part of it.

For an organisation, the opportunity is therefore not to create diversity from scratch.

The opportunity is to recognise what already exists and ensure that organisational systems allow people to live with that diversity fairly.

If a practice has a legal answer, follow the law. If it involves an operational decision, consult HR and the relevant business leadership. If one employee needs accommodation, do not automatically assume the whole organisation must change. If a large religious group receives one kind of accommodation, consider what equivalent meaningful accommodation is required for a much smaller group or even one individual.

If an employee asks for something unfamiliar, understand before deciding. If the organisation cannot provide what is requested, explain why, and where the organisation can reasonably accommodate the employee, make the effort.

This is where religious wellbeing becomes practical rather than philosophical.

The organisation is saying, your beliefs are part of who you are. We may not always be able to structure work around every practice, but we are willing to understand what matters and determine fairly what can be done. That approach can strengthen the relationship between the employee and the organisation.

It also gives diversity and inclusion a much more grounded meaning. Diversity is not simply counting different kinds of employees. Inclusion is not simply organising events. In this context, inclusion becomes the ability of the organisation to recognise difference without automatically turning difference into a problem. This is where religion in the workplace can become an advantage rather than something HR approaches only with anxiety.

The key is not religion itself.

The key is how the organisation understands and manages it. If HR ignores religion completely, it may ignore something genuinely important to employees. If HR allows every religious request to override organisational requirements, it creates another problem. The mature position lies between those extremes.

• Understand.
• Listen.
• Follow the law.
• Consult the right people.
• Be fair.
• Explain constraints.
• Accommodate where possible.

And recognise that equality of respect does not require identical treatment in every circumstance.

I believe that this is a very Indian way of understanding workplace diversity.

Not because everybody is identical. Precisely because everybody is not. The workforce is already accustomed to people celebrating different things, believing different things and living differently. The organisation does not need to erase that complexity. It needs to work intelligently with it. There is potentially significant value in doing so.

Employees who see that the organisation is interested in their religious wellbeing alongside their financial wellbeing see a different side of the employment relationship. Even where the organisation cannot satisfy every request, the willingness to listen and make a reasonable effort can itself matter.

This brings us back to where the conversation began.

Should organisations worry that religion will automatically become a negative force in the workplace? I do not believe they should. It can be an area in which organisations demonstrate accommodation, fairness and the kind of everyday diversity that the workforce already understands.

And perhaps my real point is

We do not need to teach the Indian workforce that diversity exists. We need to make sure our organisations know how to harness the diversity that is already there.