Ask a Manager: Where’s the line on religious accommodation?

[minoanmiss]

I was curious about where the line is on religious accommodation, and at what point it’s okay to say an accommodation cannot be made. Also, I know for many things you recommend that candidates let the hiring team know of any accommodations they need at the offer stage (which makes perfect sense) but what if they don’t say anything until their first couple of weeks?


I had an employee who needed an accommodation that allowed them to take lunch at a different time from the rest of the company once a week. This was somewhat inconvenient but I was able to accommodate them. Later they let me know that they were going to need additional accommodations, which again were doable but inconvenient. I also noticed that their work performance suffered during certain times when they told me they needed to fast for their religion. I felt that I couldn’t bring this up as I was worried about being accused of violating a religious accommodation. They didn’t make me aware of any of these needed accommodations until they’d been hired and working for a couple of weeks. At one point it was suggested that in order for me to accommodate this employee I would need to work additional hours (unpaid as I am salaried and exempt). I was able to push back on that but it was stressful and I had to use some capital I don’t think I should have had to use.

I was able to accommodate this employee with minimal frustration, but what if it hadn’t been as easy? What if there’d been a standing meeting that they were needed for during the time they needed to take their lunch that couldn’t be easily moved? I want to be as supportive and flexible as possible but at what point am I able to say “this goes past reasonable”?

The law says employers must accommodate employees’ religious needs unless it would cause “undue hardship.” The bar for undue hardship is pretty high — generally something that’s costly, compromises people’s safety, requires others to do more than their share of difficult or undesirable work, or infringes on other employees’ rights. Moving a meeting likely doesn’t meet that bar, although you having to work more hours probably would.

If the person’s work performance suffered when they were fasting, I’d look at how you handle it when someone else’s work performance suffers because they’re sick, tired, hungry, etc. Presumably you figure that everyone has ups and downs and unless it becomes a pattern, it’s generally just part of working with humans. (I’m assuming the fasting periods were relatively rare. If they weren’t, then you’d address the performance issues just like you would any other — no need to bring the fasting into it.)

But it’s absolutely fine that the employee didn’t address the accommodations they needed until a few weeks on the job. There’s no requirement, ethical or legal, that they address it earlier than that. (Keep in mind that you can’t legally rescind a job offer over it, so there’s no real reason you needed to hear it earlier; it’s fine for them to raise it when they’re comfortable raising it.)

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Make some popcorn with the heat coming off the comments, then search for OP1. Whee!

[jadelennox]

This is a good answer. And honestly, it's a reasonable question from the LW, and I say that as someone who has felt uncomfortable asking for religious accommodations. People should know what's reasonable and what's unreasonable, and what the law is. If someone needs to leave early every friday for shabbat and can't work saturdays, then whether that needs to be accommodated depends a lot on what the job is -- and I'm pretty sure that the way it works in retail, where having blackout days on weekends is often prohibited, is illegal in most cases. But if the job is "weekend manager", that's different; that's undue hardship.

It's also unfortunately true in the US that the SCOTUS has recently been interpreting religious freedom of employees around Christianity, explicitly, and they've made it clear that "sincerely held belief of a Christian" is protected whether or not there's any connection between that sincerely held belief and any dogma, church, theology, pastor, or lifestyle choice of the Christian employee to support it. That's not for Alison to address, of course, although it's pretty obvious that LW's employee is not a Christian, or at least, not from a mainstream Christian group.

But what is relevant for Alison to address is state laws, which are also shitty in the same way, usually, for example, Pharmacist conscience clauses. Which basically mean anti-choice pharmacists can claim that they don't have to do their jobs, even if there is no other alternative employee available, in a way that almost exclusively protects certain flavors of Christian. (I can't imagine such a law protecting a Jewish or Muslim pharmacist who refused to sell any medications containing gelatin capsules, for example. It would be obviously nonsense, even though the letter of the laws would theoretically require it.)

So, in other words, it depends on the job, and the state. Also the courts are trash.

[movingfinger]

Given the highly structured and scheduled nature of work at the company, it sounds like what OP was asking was, how to wrangle HR on the necessary accommodations. They did well, IMO.

I do think the employee made it harder with the drip-drip-drip nature of the requests, which seem to have added up to a series of exceptions to the established norms, rather than being forthright in the first week or two after starting. I wholly empathize with and understand why the employee did that, but that approach sets up for a very stressful situation where little bombs are occasionally going off for the manager and disrupting long-established (for good reason, in the case of international meetings) routines.