In recent years U.S. corporations have worked to support their employees regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. And now there’s a grass-root push for inclusion when it comes to employees’ religious beliefs. “Corporate America is at a tipping point toward giving religion similar attention to that given the other major diversity categories,” says Brian Grim, founder and president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation.
Grim’s foundation ranked the Fortune 100 companies on their commitment to religious inclusion. The top 10 include: Google’s parent company Alphabet, Intel, Tyson Foods, Target, Facebook, American Airlines, Apple, Dell, American Express and Goldman Sachs. Of note, Walmart has recently decided to launch their own faith-based employee group.
AP reports that “Tyson won points for its chaplaincy program; most of the others have formed either a single interfaith employee resource group or separate groups for major religions such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Google’s interfaith group, the Inter Belief Network, has chapters for those faiths and for Buddhists, while Intel has a group for agnostics and atheists, as well as groups for major religious faiths.”
One of the fastest growing faith-based groups, called Faithforce, was launched by Salesforce in 2017. Its founder, Farah Siddiqui, a Muslim whose family is from Pakistan, says the group includes followers of America’s largest faiths as well as Sikhs, Hindus, pagans and humanist. “We’re a very inclusive group,” she says. ”If someone has something interesting to share, we share it. There is no proselytizing.”
