How to Use Prayer and Meditation Rooms to Support Inclusivity

Over the past decade, organizations have worked hard to create diversity within their workforce. Diversity can bring many organizational benefits, including greater customer satisfaction, better market position, successful decision-making, an enhanced ability to reach strategic goals, improved organizational outcomes, and a stronger bottom line.

However, while many organizations are better about creating diversity, many have not yet figured out how to make the environment inclusive. Gallup’s research indicates recognizing that diversity and inclusion are very different things is the first step in the journey toward creating a uniquely diverse and inclusive culture.

What Is Inclusivity In the Workplace?

As Christine M. Riordan, Provost and Professor of Management at the University of Kentucky, puts it, “diversity is useless without inclusivity.” Inclusion has to be understood as very different from diversity because simply having a wide roster of demographic characteristics won’t make a difference to an organization’s bottom line, unless the people who fall into any one demographic feel welcomed.

Inclusion refers to a cultural and environmental feeling of belonging. An inclusive workplace is that working environment that values the individual and group differences within its workforce. It enables a company to embrace the diversity of backgrounds and perspectives of the employees, which in turn increases their talent, innovation, creativity and contributions. It can be assessed as the extent to which employees are valued, respected, accepted and encouraged to fully participate in the organization.

Research has shown that inclusion also has the promise of many positive individual and organizational outcomes such as reduced turnover, greater altruism, and team engagement. When employees feel as though they are truly being included within a work environment, they’re more likely to share ideas, information, and participate in decision-making, and demonstrate other aspects of their true and authentic selves.

How Prayer and Meditation Rooms Can Embrace Inclusivity

Over the past two years, an employer in Minnesota refused to schedule prayer breaks requested by employees, and subsequently fired some workers who refused to comply with the work schedule. In response, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed a complaint with the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Similar situations have recently arisen with employers in two other states in the U.S.

While Muslims account for roughly 2% of the population in the United States, they now represent one-quarter of religious discrimination complaints to the EEOC. Requested accommodations for prayer are at the top of the reasons why such complaints are submitted.

These trends show that many employers have little knowledge of the religious tenets of their Muslim employees, and may lack any acquaintance with the entailments of daily prayer for Muslims. Perhaps not coincidentally, the three recent cases all occurred in states with fast-growing Muslim populations.  As workforces become more diverse, employers should not only become aware of these practices, but also understand their legal obligations to accommodate such practices.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act stipulates that employers must reasonably accommodate an employee’s sincerely held religious, ethical or moral beliefs or practices unless by doing so it imposes an undue hardship on the employer. Accommodation could include providing a space for prayer or reflection.

As Dr. Pragya Agarwal, social and creative entrepreneur, and CEO of The Art Tiffin, explains, “the first step towards designing an inclusive workplace is acknowledgement and acceptance of differences. It is about offering choices to people.”

These choices have begun to include dedicated spaces for employees to pray, meditate and reflect. Now tech firms are asking to build prayer rooms into their floor plans, says Theresa Williams, a design director in the Chicago office of Nelson & Associates, a Philadelphia-based interior design and architecture firm.

In Chicago and elsewhere in the country, the dedicated spaces mean that religious employees no longer have to use conference rooms or other shared spaces–sometimes uncomfortably–for daily prayers. The rooms can be a tool for attracting and retaining talent, proof that the leadership and cultural climate welcomes people who practice their faith.

For example, when Gogo Inc. designed its new office space in Chicago, they included all the amenities you’d expect at a newly public tech company: a game room with foosball and ping-pong tables, a fully stocked kitchen, a bike-storage area, a rooftop deck. They’ll also have two rooms specially set aside for prayer and meditation.

“To make a space for people to be able to live that part of their lives is a fantastically good thing,” says Jeff Carlson, a professor of theology at Dominican University in River Forest. “It honors the fact that religion or spirituality is real and is to be honored and respected. Diversity is a fact. It’s how you react to it that matters.”

The Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, a secular, nonsectarian nonprofit, recommends calling such spaces “quiet rooms” to make it clear that the space is available to all employees, including those who do not consider themselves religious or spiritual.

Without advocating or endorsing any particular religion or belief system, a quiet room is a space in the workplace designated for prayer, meditation and reflection for all employees. It provides a temporary sanctuary in which employees can escape the fast pace of the work environment, while not interrupting general operations.

Employees benefit from having a space within the workplace decompress before the end of the work day. One such employee is Sana Mohammed, a project manager at Orbitz Worldwide Inc. She says, “After taking those few minutes to pray, I come back refreshed and focused. I’m able to put more toward my work.”

Such a space “is meaningful to employees who practice a religion requiring prayer at specific times,” such as Muslims and Orthodox Jews, as well as to non-religious employees who simply seek time to meditate or reflect. The designated room can be tailored to the needs of each company’s workforce, and changed to accommodate new employees’ needs over time.

Diversity and Inclusion For Optimal Outcomes

As the Harvard Business Review article “Diversity Doesn’t Stick Without Inclusion” put it: “In the context of the workplace, diversity equals representation. Without inclusion, however, the crucial connections that attract diverse talent, encourage their participation, foster innovation, and lead to business growth won’t happen.”

So, it’s true that diversity and inclusion work together to affect outcomes. According to a recent research on inclusive decision making using the Cloverpop decision-making database, there is a direct link between inclusive decision making and better business performance. Inclusive teams make better business decisions up to 87% of the time, teams that follow an inclusive process make decisions twice as fast with half the meetings, and decisions made and executed by diverse teams delivered 60% better results.

 “Diversity and inclusion must go hand-in-hand to drive results,” said Laura Sherbin, CFO and Director of Research at the Center for Talent Innovation. “Cloverpop’s research bolsters the case that employers who build diverse and inclusive teams see the best outcomes.”

Above all, true inclusivity is a matter of effective leadership and the organization has to have a true culture of inclusivity and diversity. It is about being open to change and accommodating a wider range of workforce, inclusive of flexible working conditions. Design helps people personalize their workplaces, feel a sense of belonging and comfort, thereby reducing everyday frustration and effort, and ultimately increasing mental well-being and productivity.