Religion and Belief: Guidance for Colleagues Managing or Supporting Staff and Students
Social Inclusion at Warwick is about creating a community for staff and students where differences of culture and identity are celebrated, where differences of opinion are welcomed and respected, and where prejudice and socially unacceptable behaviours of any kind are never tolerated.
We have provided guidance in these webpages on accommodating and support common religion, faith, or belief-based requests. This is non-statutory guidance designed to help you understand and apply relevant University policies – the below does not constitute policy itself.
The Equality Act
You may find it useful to understand the legal protections afforded to religion and belief in the Equality Act.
Time off and flexibility
Do you need to approve all requests for time off relating to religion and belief? Should you prioritise these requests?
Dietary requirments and fasting
How can you support staff who are fasting? Can students request extensions/mitigating circumstances due to fasting?
Religious dress or symbols
Are there circumstances in which you can ask staff/students to remove religious dress/symbols or to conform to a particular dress code?
Opting out
Do you need to automatically approve staff requests to opt out of duties? Can students opt out of aspects of their course?
Assessing requests
Whether or not you are familiar with the staff member’s or students’ religion or belief(s), or the particular practice or observance for which a request is being made, staff and students should be treated with respect and requests considered sympathetically.
You can review the reasonableness of a request, for example considering business need, how easy or difficult it would be to accommodate the request, and the effect of accepting or refusing the request on the individual and other staff. But you should refrain from evaluating the sincerity of a religious belief as part of your consideration of whether or not to approve; for example, if the request is short term, it does not undermine its validity (e.g., if someone requests flexibility so they can attend Bible study just during Advent). You should give proper consideration to requests, if you do refuse a request you would need to be able to objectively justify this decision.
Examples of the kinds of requests staff and students may make are included in the guidance for illustrative purposes, but this is by no means exhaustive. The best thing to do is speak to the staff member or student themselves and listen to their wishes. Expressions of faith can vary, so not everyone’s needs will be the same even if they have the same religion or belief(s). The individual themselves is best qualified to tell you what works for them and what support they need.
Further guidance and resources
You might find the following additional links helpful: