“Without my faith, I wouldn’t make a difference at work”: How religion inspires employees

"Given the way things happened, it was really the good Lord who led me to this company..." Mohamed (1) confides with a broad smile. It was more than twenty years ago, but he remembers the teenager he was as if it were yesterday. His accounting studies and his desperate search for a company for his work-study program. The final door he knocked on, saying to himself: "This is really your last chance." Miracle? Luck of the bold? The person who received him agreed to take him on as an intern.

From this company that ended up hiring him on a permanent contract, he climbed the ladder to become its administrative and financial director (DAF). "If I got here, " he thinks gratefully, "it's thanks to my way of being, which comes from my religion. Of course, I don't think about it every morning. I'm French, employed in a secular company. And I'm also Muslim. Faith guides me in my daily life and I can't leave it outside of work, otherwise I wouldn't be myself anymore, I wouldn't make my mark."

Civics at work, general interest…

The academic consensus has been confirmed for several decades, study after study: "Religions influence the motivations and values ​​of believing workers, through the promotion of ethical behavior, a vision of the common good and a commitment to the general interest, traces Lionel Honoré, who directs the Observatory of Religious Facts in Business. It is not a question of affirming that they are better than others, simply of noting that their faith is a powerful resource in their professional life."

Each witness interviewed is aware that his or her personality is the result of a mixture of intertwined components. However, and beyond the differences in confession, origin, age, education and profession, all see in their religion a "driving force", which invites them "to be the best person possible and to seek fair decisions", as well as "to be civic-minded at work and to put the general interest before their personal interest"...

Participate in God's creation

Sophie (1), a Catholic in her forties, sees her job as a school teacher "as a place that allows me to contribute to something greater than myself, what the Church calls the common good in its social doctrine. Through my work, I feel like I'm doing my part in the world, participating in God's creation," continues this member of the Christian Movement of Executives and Managers (MCC).

Employees who believe are committed to translating their values ​​into action. As a senior executive of a company with 800 employees in the Paris region, Isabelle (1) follows a clear line. “As a Protestant, I strive to embody the religious notion of forgiveness by granting a second chance. Anyone who makes a mistake and acknowledges it can be offered a second position.”

And if all internal redeployment solutions have been exhausted, sometimes you have to resolve to let an employee go, "while ensuring that you support them so that they maintain their self-esteem and can bounce back elsewhere." Isabelle also assumes that she relies heavily on her teams "because I don't feel infallible and in that, I feel very Protestant. I like to listen to all points of view and disagreements," she insists.

"Repair the world"

Laurent, who presents himself as a "French Jew, product of the school of the Republic", is deeply committed to embodying tikoun olam in business. For him, this Jewish injunction to "repair the world" involves transmission. In his team, he permanently takes on an apprentice. Even if it means "upsetting" his employer to obtain the necessary budget. "I feel that training an apprentice is a civic duty, a contribution to French society in the broad sense, because I know that my group never recruits its apprentices at the end", says the man who has remained in touch with most of the young people he has taken under his wing over the past fifteen years.

Damien (1) is an electrician, employed in an SME of 60 people near Lyon. This member of the Young Christian Workers (JOC) cultivates patience in the name of his faith. "On a building site, it happens that the plasterers put up their plasterboard where I was supposed to install sockets. I then choose to engage in dialogue and wait rather than come to a sterile confrontation with the person."

The employer's choice

For some employees, the choice of company must also be consistent with certain values ​​stemming from their religious beliefs. By interviewing converts to Islam , Hugo Gaillard, a researcher at the University of Le Mans, met people who turn to NGOs or companies created by Muslims, "to easily practice their religious rites but also to give themselves the opportunity to carry out good deeds through their profession". Not to mention those who turn their backs on the banking sector because of usurious interest rates, condemned by Islam. As an echo, Sophie, the Catholic, tells how she left her lawyer's robe in business law "because this environment was too 'shark' in (her) eyes".

And what about the cases of conscience in all this? “When a Muslim colleague asks me to take every Friday afternoon off for the main prayer, I refuse because that would open Pandora’s box. As a believer, I have to set limits because religion cannot impose itself on the company,” Mohammed replies in a soft and firm voice.

Géraldine Galindo, a researcher at ESCP Business School, will publish in a few months the results of a study she conducted with 80 practicing Catholic employees. She notes that if the tension between their values ​​and the tasks assigned to them becomes too great, resignation becomes an option. "In my research, five of them took the option of changing positions or leaving their company."