Steps Employers Should Take to Prevent Religious Discrimination

Religious discrimination is one of nine unlawful forms of workplace discrimination. As an employer, you must ensure that you do not personally discriminate based on a person’s religion or belief. You must also ensure that others in your workplace do not do so. Otherwise, an employee can claim against you at an employment tribunal for failing to keep the workplace free from religious discrimination. This article will explain what you, as an employer, should do to prevent religious or belief discrimination in the workplace. It will explain, for example, what religious or belief discrimination is and give examples of ways you may be able to prevent this.

What is Religious Discrimination?

Religious discrimination — also called belief discrimination —is where one person is treated less favourably than another or otherwise unfairly disadvantaged based on their religion or belief. In this context, religion is any type of religion, including having no religion at all, and a belief is a religious or philosophical belief or not a belief at all. 

Unlawful religious discrimination comes in two forms:

Further Considerations 

Direct or indirect discrimination can take several different forms. These include:

How to Prevent Religious or Belief Discrimination?

Religious and belief discrimination can occur in various ways, as detailed above. Therefore, you must take all reasonable steps to prevent such discrimination in the workplace. 

Clear Policies

As an employer, to prevent religious or belief discrimination from occurring, you should ensure that you create policies around this. You should have an overall policy against discrimination along with one specifically related to religious and belief discrimination. Ideally, this policy should be zero-tolerance. 

An essential part of this policy should be to clarify how your staff should make a request concerning their religion or belief in their job role with you and how managers should respond to these. Requests could arise in terms of, for example:

• leave for a religious event;
• religious dress code ;
• the need to have a place to worship; and 
• wishing to refrain from specific tasks due to religion or belief.

Your staff may request to refrain from tasks such as handling alcohol if they are Muslim or handling contraceptives if they are strict Catholics. 

When responding to such requests, you should do so in writing and agree to it unless you have good business reasons not to.

Informing Staff

Educating and informing your staff on what religion and belief discrimination is and what you expect from them in terms of this is a crucial way to prevent religious or belief discrimination from occurring in your workplace. This should complement your policies. Your staff need to be aware of their rights and responsibilities and what behaviour is acceptable and not acceptable. You can do this, for example, by having a clear policy on the subject and offering staff training.

Your staff should also understand how to report religious and belief discrimination and that they will be taken seriously by you or your managers when doing so.

Discussions

By making your workplace an inclusive one, it can help to prevent religious or belief discrimination. One way to do this is to allow staff to discuss religion and beliefs. It can also show that you, as an employer, are aware of and accepting of different faiths and beliefs.

However, you may find it reasonable to restrict discussions about religion and belief for particular reasons, such as to ensure that:

• peoples rights are protected;
• your business reputation is safe; and 
• your staff are not forcing their views on each other.

Language and Behaviour

Discrimination is about perception, so the language must be used carefully in the workplace to prevent religious discrimination. Some terminology is derogatory and abusive. Sometimes, the type of language can be a joke but can cause offence and be a form of discrimination. As an employer, you should ensure staff are clear on the language tolerated and sensitivities around specific language regarding religion or belief.

You need to be aware of the behaviour in the workplace as an employer to help prevent discrimination based on religion or belief. This is because specific actions such as handshaking or being in a room with the opposite sex can be normal behaviour to some people, but others may be considered wrong due to their religion or beliefs. As an employer, you must consider behaviour in the workplace and whether it is necessary as part of your employee’s role or which actions may need to change.

Key Takeaways

Religious and belief discrimination is unlawful in the workplace. As an employer, you should not discriminate and must take steps to prevent others from doing so. There are various ways you can do this. For example, you should have a clear policy on religious and belief discrimination, which should clarify how staff report discrimination and how they make requests based on their religion or belief. You should also be wary about language and behaviour at work and how this can affect and interact with people’s religions and ideas.

If you need help understanding how to prevent religious or belief discrimination in England, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.