For 20 years and the 2004 law, the framework has been clear: any ostentatious religious demonstration is prohibited in public schools. At work, on the other hand, a large margin of interpretation is left to business leaders, even managers. Which is not without posing a certain number of problems for the latter, as explained by Lionel Honoré, university professor of management sciences, deputy director of the Institute of Business Administration (IAE) of Brest (Finistère). ) and founder of the Observatory of Religious Facts in Business. He recently published Managing religion at work. References and tools for effectively managing religious facts (Dunod, 2023).
What questions does religion raise in business today?
Lionel Honoré: According to surveys by the Observatory of Religious Facts in Business (OFRE), certain religious movements – evangelical and Muslim in particular – are becoming more and more assertive and demanding. The number of French companies declaring that they were regularly or occasionally concerned by questions linked to religion was thus one in four in 2013, compared to two in three ten years later (“Barometer of religious fact in business 2023”, Observatoire du religious fact in business/Institut Montaigne, July 2023).
For example, employees ask for an adjustment of their timetable, a choice of menus adapted to the canteen, or even to be able to wear religious symbols. We thus observe a questioning of the erasure of religion at work. From the 1950s, in the wake of secularization, beliefs and even more so practices were spontaneously referred to the intimate and private sphere. Today, they are asserting themselves again in the public space as well as in business. This surprises managers who were not or no longer used to taking it into account.
Does this therefore pose more problems than before?
The overwhelming majority of practitioners do not even show their religion at work. The first instinct is to hide it. “I don’t know what my boss would say if he saw me praying, but I think I’d rather not know”, for example, entrusted us with a Muslim employee in an industrial company. Still according to OFRE studies, in approximately 80% of cases where a person expresses a wish relating to the exercise of a religious practice, this poses no problem: the requests are deemed acceptable; employees and employers spontaneously find an arrangement.
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