Elaine Howard Ecklund & Denise Daniels join the Mode/Switch Pod to help managers engage the sacred as a source of strength on the job. (You'll also learn to avoid missteps!)

Since the everything in the world feels so peaceful right now, let’s bring up an easy topic: religion at work.

I know, I know. But if you’re feeling of missteps about what your people hold sacred, this podcast is for you!

This week’s Mode/Switch Pod engages sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund and entrepreneurship professor Denise Daniels to share their research (15,000 surveys, 300 qualitative interviews!) on how huge a driver faith is in the workplace.

Our intergenerational team—Josh (Millennial), Madeline (Gen Z), and I (slacker Gen X)—probe their findings, examining the startling power of religious faith to provide meaning beyond oneself.

Isn’t it complicated to talk about faith at work? Um, yes.

But Ecklund & Daniels’s new book Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work and this week’s podcast helps you practice a respectful pluralism as you encounter religious difference in the workplace.

Our intergenerational team (Gen Z, Millennial, and Gen X) probe these researchers’ arguments, engaging questions like…

• Is religion at work a Trojan horse for proselytizing?

• What is legitimate religious expression at work? What’s discriminatory?

• Why are men more willing to talk about faith at work, even though women are more likely to find religious meaning in their work?

• How can you create psychological safety for religious practitioners at work?

  If you’re a mid-level leader who studiously avoids mentioning the sacred at work, you might be trying to be non-discriminatory. Thank you for that! But I encourage you to listen to this brisk, funny, and definitely data-driven conversation to learn how it’s not actually religiously neutral to ignore people’s diverse faith commitments on the job.