US soldiers attend a prayer service at an army base on the outskirts of Baghdad (AFP)

Managers must deal with big issues all day long — from acquisitions to runaway health care costs — but in many cases it is the little things that count the most. That can be especially true in matters of faith in the workplace.

How little? Toni Riccardi, formerly the chief diversity officer for PricewaterhouseCoopers, remembers being asked whether a lactation room in a facility in the Asia-Pacific region could be used as a Muslim prayer space as well. It was a specific question about a small area in a single office — but all of a sudden work-family matters had the potential to collide with issues of work and faith.

Religion has become a flashpoint in many offices as more employees seek to bring their whole identities to work. So managers are contending with how to create workplaces that are comfortable and welcoming for employees of all faiths — and of none.

There are several reasons for the shift. For one, a global economy is bringing much greater religious diversity to the workplace. Everyone wants their beliefs to be accepted, if not equally represented. Add to that the fact that religion is now a public topic, from a president who talks openly about his faith to a proliferation of religious television programming.

When everybody from the president on down “is wearing their religion on their sleeve, then it’s not surprising that employees will feel empowered to be more assertive about asserting their rights to religious expression in the workplace,” said Georgette Bennett, president and founder of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, New York.

Now, I have worked in several offices where a few people left early every Friday to observe their Sabbath, or took certain days off for religious observance, and no one made a big deal of it. But things don’t always run that smoothly: complaints of religious discrimination to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission increased by 20 per cent, to 2,541, from 2001 to 2006.

Those figures may understate what employees are feeling. The Tanenbaum Center’s research indicates that only 23 per cent of employees who believe that they are experiencing religious bias complain — but of those who feel that way, 45 per cent are looking for new jobs.

“Managers have to think what the factors are that attract or cause people to leave their organisation,” said Riccardi, now the senior adviser on diversity and inclusion at the Conference Board, which published a report last November on faith in the workplace. “If religion is one, they have to think about how to manage that,” and create an environment that is inviting to as many people as possible.

Question no. 1 is how to make general accommodations for the beliefs and practices of religious employees in a way that is fair to all workers. Employers are required by law to make substantial accommodations for their employees’ religious practices, as long as doing so does not create a major hardship for them.

Some companies serve as hosts of employee-run groups that hold discussions on different faiths and the like. Ford, for example, supports the Ford Interfaith Network, which among other things has lobbied for physical accommodations for employees’ religious practices, like sinks designed for the religious washings that Muslim employees may perform.

Other companies take a more hands-off approach. Procter & Gamble does not sponsor any organised religious activities on company property, according to Vicky Mayer, a spokeswoman, but it makes accommodations that include giving employees floating holidays to use for religious observance and providing rooms for prayer.

When it comes to specific questions about faith at work, though, managers often have to improvise. IBM was faced with a tricky situation several years ago when a new hire, a veiled Muslim woman, showed up for her first day of work and was told she had to have her picture taken for her employee identification badge. The woman objected on religious grounds to showing her face.

So IBM officials came up with a solution: she had her picture taken in a veil, and that was on the ID badge she used day to day. But a female photographer also took her picture without a veil for a second badge, which the employee carried in her purse, according to Laurie Friedman, a spokeswoman for the company. If the employee ever had to show that badge, she would be required to do so only to a female security officer.

IBM managed to work through that particular challenge, but British Airways learned the hard way that a small incident involving religion can quickly become a really big deal. A uniformed employee of the airline came to work last year wearing a cross on a chain over her uniform. British Airways views its uniform as a symbol of the airline, and company policy dictated that employees who wore jewellery should wear it under the uniform whenever practical. After the employee, Nadia Eweida, was told to put the cross under her uniform, she appealed against the policy. She lost, appealed again — and then newspaper editorials began castigating the airline, and the Anglican Church criticised the policy. Even Prime Minister Tony Blair delivered a gentle reprimand to British Airways. Last month, the airline revised its policy to allow symbols of faith to be worn as lapel pins, or in some cases on chains around the neck, and Eweida, who was on unpaid leave, returned to work.

And what of the request to allow a lactation room to double as a prayer room at PricewaterhouseCoopers? Riccardi realised on reflection that there was a problem. Muslims need to pray at specific times each day, she said, but for nursing mothers, too, “when it’s time, it’s time.” She advised against the change.