At the NASDAQ MarketSite in New York, Brian Grimm, founder of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation, and Seth Cohen, Chief Impact Officer of Forbes, discuss how business leaders can leverage faith in the workplace to drive innovation and collaboration.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00My name is Seth Cohen. I'm the Chief Impact Officer at Forbes, and I'm here today at the NASDAQ Market Site in New York City, joined by my friend Brian Grimm, the President and Founder of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation.
00:19Brian, thanks for joining me today.
00:20Great to be with you, Seth.
00:21So, we're here to have a conversation about the intersection of faith, of business, and the way people really are showing up in their lives and in their workplaces as people of faith.
00:33Tell me about your foundation and what work you're doing to address these kinds of needs and these trends in society right now.
00:43Yeah, well, Religious Freedom and Business Foundation, usually you don't hear those two words put together, and it really came out of data.
00:50I was at the Pew Research Center for eight years looking at measuring restrictions on religion around the world, and I found that when you have more restrictions on religion coming from either governments or societies, that that's a damper on economics.
01:06And then as I dug in more, I found that when you're in a business and there's a restriction on religion, meaning you have to hide your most important self for many people, not everyone, but many people, that's also a damper on morale and productivity.
01:22So, tell me what you mean by restrictions, because there's legal rules and requirements that obviously allow people to kind of be open about their faith and freedom of religion, but in the workplace that can be somewhat different, right?
01:37Yeah, well, so by law, companies have to accommodate people's deeply held beliefs as long as it doesn't cause an undue burden, and they can't discriminate on the basis of religion or belief.
01:51But as you've heard, there's a lot of unconscious things that go on, and one of the ideas in America that is often promulgated is the idea that there's two things we can't talk about.
02:05One is politics, and the other one is religion.
02:08And so there's this idea that the separation of church and state applies to everything, including business.
02:16And so in many places, it's just saying, we don't do religion, like Tony Blair once famously said.
02:22So let's just keep that outside the door and just come to work and do your job.
02:27But that runs counter to the way a lot of people feel.
02:30We're told every day we can bring our whole self to work, and that might mean our identity, our gender, even our hobbies and interests.
02:37But I guess what you're saying is a lot of people have felt that they're not really able to bring their whole selves to work because they can't bring that faith-oriented side of themselves to work.
02:46Yeah, well, one story when I was working with Intel, and they've opened their doors for many years to include religion as part of diversity.
02:55And the head of their Muslim group, a guy named Hadi Sharifi, is a different company now.
03:00But when they changed CEOs, it was during COVID, and he was watching it virtually, and he started to cry.
03:09And he said, he's an engineer, a tech guy.
03:12And he said, why am I crying?
03:14And he said, you know why? Because they've let us bring our whole souls to work.
03:19And I don't have to hide the fact that I'm a Muslim, and his Christian colleagues didn't have to hide the fact that they're Christian or Jews or whatever their identity.
03:27And that was something that set him free.
03:31So there wasn't a restriction there.
03:33But for so many people, it's like, you know, keep your head down.
03:36Don't let people know that you're whatever you are.
03:39So before we get to how some companies are doing this, because I know you've been very involved in that work as well.
03:45You mentioned earlier that there's some economic advantages to this.
03:48Tell me what you mean by that.
03:50Because that's, I mean, if people can bring their whole selves to work and the company can get even greater value out of its workforce, it seems like a win-win.
03:58Yeah.
03:59Well, at the macro level, where you have societies that are characterized by inclusion, then you have more peace and more sustainability for economies.
04:08That's on the macro.
04:09Then on the micro, when you have a company that allows people to bring their whole, as I said, souls to work and not just other parts of themselves, then you have more buy-in.
04:19And you also get what they bring with that.
04:22So religion often gets a bad rap, and sometimes for understandable reasons.
04:29But one thing that religion or belief systems, even atheist beliefs, have is they have sort of a code of ethics, whether it's the Ten Commandments or it's other types of codes that people live by.
04:42And a corporate lawyer told me, look, if people are bringing those ethical beliefs with them into the workplace, that makes my job on compliance a whole lot easier.
04:52Right. So it's actually bringing kind of the best of that perspective into the workplace, which also maybe creates more disciplined or at least more ethical employees.
05:03Yeah. Well, you know, if somebody, so like I'm Catholic, if somebody knows and I come to work and I out myself as a Catholic, it's like, well, I better live up to what Catholics are or I'm going to be a bad rep.
05:14I get it. So you're actually like you're becoming representative of that faith in a lot of ways as well.
05:19Yeah. Yeah.
05:20So let me let me get into a little bit of how companies are doing this.
05:26Well, I know you've created and now have run around the world the Ready Index.
05:31What is the Ready Index? Explain to me what is it measuring?
05:34So it's the Religious Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Index, and it's measuring the degree to which a company has made policies and programs that allow people to not be discriminated against based on their religion, be accommodated.
05:48But even more than that, are encouraged to bring that side of themselves.
05:53And so this index is one that Fortune 100 companies, people from Fortune 100 companies who were active in the faith field helped create.
06:03They said, if my company was doing these 11 things, there's 11 different measures on it.
06:09Then we feel like our company be on the right track when in bringing faith and belief as part of.
06:15And these are some major companies like I remember, like Salesforce is on this list.
06:20Yes. Rolls Royce is on this list.
06:22Who are some of the companies that are really the exemplars on the ready list?
06:25Yeah. So the ones that you've mentioned, plus American Airlines, Intel, Dell Technologies.
06:32These are very large corporations that have opened their doors wide to allowing faith to be part of diversity.
06:39Have you seen the index prompt others?
06:42I'm assuming once like Forbes lists, once there's a list that's out, people want to be on that list.
06:47Are you seeing more and more people raise their hands, asking about how they can also become inclusive to individuals of faith in the workplace?
06:56Well, at first, you know, I'll give an example.
06:59So a year ago when we released our report, our annual report, we tried to get the companies that were scoring well to get their CEO or somebody in leadership to give us a quote, you know, say, you know, this is great.
07:11We're so proud of what we're doing in this area. And we got zero.
07:15This year, we got more than a dozen CEOs, presidents or chief people officers from companies such as Equinix, a Fortune 500 company, Dell Technologies, American Airlines.
07:27So they're coming out publicly. I used to say religion is the next big thing, but now it's the big thing.
07:34It's the now thing. So I want to shift gears for one moment.
07:37We share an interesting fact that we both grew up in South Central Pennsylvania in a town, York, Pennsylvania, and that for both of us had a very diverse religious experience.
07:50We grew up in communities with smaller businesses, not the types of large scale businesses that Forbes is always reporting on, perhaps, or we just discussed like Salesforce and Intel.
08:01What do small and medium sized businesses do or do they already have the opportunity to do this, to maybe be more inclusive in faith ways like in the community we grew up?
08:13Yeah. So, I mean, in the community, I mean, we even went to the same elementary school.
08:20In smaller towns, smaller places that don't have huge companies, the very first thing a business owner or a business leader can do is let everybody know they're welcome.
08:32And one of the easiest ways to do that is to just say that, say, you know, I know that we have people from different faiths, different backgrounds here.
08:39Maybe most of us here in this community belong to this religious community, but we're going to let you know everybody's welcome.
08:47I mean, that goes a long way just for that. So when the leader says that, one, it brings up the topic.
08:53You know, this isn't a taboo topic. And two, everybody's included. So I think it doesn't matter the size of a business.
08:59It can just be two people. Well, let me let me ask a question that I think a lot of people who are watching this are going to actually ask themselves,
09:07which is what are three actionable steps I can do as either a business leader or a business owner to make my work environment more open and accessible for individuals of faith?
09:19So I think the very first one is to to come out and say everybody's welcome, you know, regardless of your faith or belief.
09:27We welcome all backgrounds. That makes us stronger. Second is then to do something a little bit more proactive and say, OK, I know that we've got some Hindus here.
09:36You know, we didn't used to have Hindus like in York, Pennsylvania. There were no Hindus when we grew up.
09:41You know, there were no Muslims. You know, it was it was mostly Christian, a few Jews.
09:47And that, you know, that was diversity. That was it. That was the diversity.
09:51But it's really changed. So just to start saying we welcome these new groups and we want to honor your holidays.
09:57So let's have an event. And then I think the third thing is then to start having people sharing with each other to share.
10:04Here's why my faith matters to me. That's easy to do. It also builds teamwork.
10:09So it sounds like most of these things are common sense. Treat your neighbor as yourself and also make sure you're open and inclusive.
10:17Yeah. All right. Well, Brian, I really appreciate you spending time with me today again.
10:22We're here at the NASDAQ market site in New York City.
10:25I've been joined by my friend Brian Grimm, the founder and president of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation.
10:32Brian, thanks again. Thanks, Seth.