Religion in the Workplace

Running head: RELIGION IN THE WORKPLACE
RELIGION IN THE WORKPLACE
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1RELIGION IN THE WORKPLACE
Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................2
Religious Beliefs in Australia and its workplace...........................................................2
Concept of Workplace Diversity...................................................................................3
Religion and Workplace Diversity.................................................................................5
Factors affecting the attainment of Religious Diversity within the workplace..............6
Organisational Culture..............................................................................................6
Employees................................................................................................................6
Clientele of the business enterprise..........................................................................7
Job Design................................................................................................................8
Benefits offered by Religious Diversity.........................................................................8
Challenges faced by enterprises for the attainment of Religious Diversity..................9
Literature Gap.............................................................................................................10
Conclusion..................................................................................................................11
Works Cited................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
As opined by (O’Sullivan, 2017), the process of globalisation and the rapid
international expansion of the different business enterprises in the present times had
drastically changed the status quo of the workforce of the modern-day business
enterprises. (Lund Dean, Safranski, & Lee, 2015) are of the viewpoint that the impact
of this extensive internationalisation becomes apparent when a look at the different
teams or the workforce of the modern-day business enterprises is taken into
account. The resultant effect of this is that the term ‘workforce diversity’ had become
the catch-phrase of the present-day business world business and the different
business enterprises are increasingly using this concept for the effective
enhancement of their overall performance (González-González, 2018). In this
regard, it needs to be said that the effective usage of the concept of ‘workplace
diversity’ offers various benefits to the business enterprises like the creation of the
right kind of organisational or workplace culture, enhancement of the performance or
the productivity of the firms, adequate learning, completion of diversity of tasks and
others (Cole, 2016). However, it is seen that in the recent times many business
enterprises find the aspect of the management of religious diversity within their
workplace a very challenging task and this in turn adversely affects the overall
diversity as well as the performance of the enterprise. The purpose of this paper is to
undertake a literature review on the topic “Religion in Workplace” and the manner in
which it affects the diversity within the workforce of an enterprise.
Religious Beliefs in Australia and its workplace
(Miller & Ewest, 2015) are of the viewpoint that more than half of the entire
population of the nation of Australia are the followers of the religion of Christianity

3RELIGION IN THE WORKPLACE
and thereby try to follow the different precepts of the concerned religion. As a matter
of fact, it is seen that the majority of the Australians try to model their lives on the
basis of the teaching of the Bible and also follow its different precepts like kindness,
righteousness, virtue and others within their day-to-day lives (Barak, 2016). In
addition to this, it is seen that there are people who subscribe to other religious
orders like Islam (2.6%), Hinduism (1.9%), Sikhism (0.5%) and others in the nation of
Australia (Scheitle & Ecklund, 2017). More importantly, it is seen that within the
workplaces of the different business enterprises of the concerned nation as well this
religious diversity is being noticed. However, the major problem arises because of
the fact that because of the ineffective religious diversity policies of the national
government or the business enterprises it is seen that the people related to the other
religious orders apart from Christianity had to face discrimination (Ancarani, Ayach,
Di Mauro, Gitto, & Mancuso, 2016).
Concept of Workplace Diversity
(Dinham & Shaw, 2017) have articulated the viewpoint that the concept of
workplace diversity can be defined as the process through which the business
enterprises try to manage the diversity in their workforce, be it in terms of gender,
culture, religion, citizenship status, sexual orientation and others. According to
(Hambler, 2016), this is important from the perspective of the contemporary business
enterprises because it had been seen that the workforce which they are have are
becoming increasingly diverse in nature rather than being uniform. The resultant
effect of this is that the business enterprises are required to take the help of different
diversity management processes like gender diversity management, cultural diversity
management, religious diversity management and others (Syed & Ozbilgin, 2015).