Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

So @compassionuk consider the following jobs to be leadership positions? #faith #law #sitp /cc @RDFRS_UK

Regards my query about their job advertisements, Compassion UK have responded:

I do believe they must be doing good work, but I am amazed by this claim, because they job roles they have advertised with the faith proviso include:

  • Communications Director
  • Communications Manager (Maternity Cover)
  • Digital Communications Specialist
  • Finance Manager
  • IT Director
  • Partnerships Assistant
  • Project Manager
  • Regional Partnerships Manager
  • Staff Development & Engagement Specialist
  • Supporter Engagement Assistant

…so the decision making/leadership team includes the temporary communications manager hired to provide maternity cover for another employee?

And somehow faith is important for a Finance Manager to make (presumably finance-related) decisions?

That does not smell right to me.

A Christian friend has voiced to me:

If someone had no faith, could they do this: “functions within this role will be promoting the organisation’s Christian Ethos and enabling people to experience, explore and express the faith-based motivation of our work.”? At least they are open about what they want. I suppose the next question is whether Dawkins’s Foundation for Reason and Science would accept Christians or Muslims working for it, or would that organisation discriminate, albeit silently.

The former argument makes sense from the perspective of outreach personnel, but not beancounters, project managers, and (perhaps) temps.

The latter argument is moot because as far as I am aware I’ve never heard of evidence of anyone at RDF advertising for a role and saying must be an antitheist; further if there were such discrimination I would be dead against it not least from the perspective of the hired hand being exposed to some really interesting ideas.

I try to be very much in the even if I hate your ideas I will defend your right to speak mould, but that’s also why I won’t abide discrimination on grounds of faith, or non-faith. Or gender. Or colour. Or race.

⊞

Comments

30 responses to “So @compassionuk consider the following jobs to be leadership positions? #faith #law #sitp /cc @RDFRS_UK”

  1. Nick Palmer

    Suppose a finance manager is determining whether to invest the organisation’s money in a particular institution? Or whether to accept money from a particular source? Those are financial, certainly, but can you really not see that they might have a moral and thus faith-related aspect? The bottom line is that moving money around *does* have a moral dimension; one can argue that a significant portion of our current economic woes come from a wilful blindness to that.

    Reply
    1. alecm

      It could be argued but I wouldn’t do that.

      Likewise I think morality has a wider base beyond asking oneself “What Would Jesus Do?”

      Especially since the punchline of the old joke goes: “Moses would Invest.”

      Reply
    2. alecm

      ps: Do compare the statement:

      “Christians would have prevented the Financial Crisis”

      …to “Jews” or “Hindus” or “Women” or any other demographic.

      See how you get on with that.

      And consider how many bankers might actually be CofE.

      Reply
  2. Nick Palmer

    If all you have as a response is a straw man, fine, whatever.

    Reply
    1. alecm

      Nah, I just sense there’s no point in trying to deeply engage in critical debate tonight. Am letting it chill.

      At the most surface level though: there is no faith-based moral high ground. Pick a faith, pick no faith. What is of benefit is someone who cares about their job and knows what they are doing. Someone professional.

      Reply
  3. Nick Palmer

    And the job that they want their employees to care about requires that they take decisions and act in a manner consistent with the faith-based objectives of their organization. That kind of requires that the person’s beliefs be consistent with that; I can’t see Anton LaVey or Gordon Gekko working out too well as their FD (professional qualifications aside).

    Reply
    1. alecm

      LaVey was a dropout and Gekko is fictional, but I know one director-grade beancounter who worships only at the altar of Reading FC and who would do an epic job in any fiscal role where the goals and aims are clearly delineated, especially in the likelihood that strategic direction is set by the CEO/equivalent.

      Reply
      1. alecm

        Oh, and another counter argument: for the Finance Manager, pick from the following two candidates:

        1) An agnostic chartered accountant

        2) A vicar who studied art history.

        Reply
  4. Richard Loxley

    To play devil’s advocate … suppose an Open Source company is advertising a position. They require the successful candidate to have a personal commitment to Open Source software and its benefit to society. Would you have a problem with that? Is that any different?

    Reply
    1. alecm

      I used to work for Sun Microsystems; 20-30,000 people, a lot of whom had no clue about Open Source, some who were quite hostile about it, and others who didn’t care a jot so long as they could ride motorbikes or go to the footy with family at the weekend.

      Plus while we had possibly the world’s largest FOSS codebase at the end (Solaris + OpenOffice + MySQL + sundry Java apps) there were objective observers who would not call us open enough (eg: Stallman) whilst others were satisfied.

      Can’t please all of the believers any of the time.

      All I care is that folk do their job professionally and competently and provide judgement and advice in line with strategy. If an employee is incapable of doing that, then fire them.

      Reply
  5. Simon

    The only exemption in UK law is “genuine occupational requirement”, I find it hard to envisage any circumstances where religious faith would be a genuine requirement for an IT director.

    Given the investing decisions of the Roman Catholic church, and the Church of England, I suspect knowledge of a religions texts and traditions would be a better criteria than professing the faith for a finance director. As if they were familiar with “Proverbs” and the Bible, the CoE would never have got involved with property speculation, which lost them money as well as being unethical. The Institute for Works of Religion has even shadier record if Nino Lo Bello is to be believed.

    There is no legal barrier to insisting a potential employee be familiar with the religious texts, investing philosophy, traditions and history of a particular religion as far as I am aware. Although it might be construed as indirect discrimination if it were not relevant to the job. So they can ask for a finance director who can make investments in a fashion compatible with their faith, just not one of their faith.

    Do note that survey that shows atheists know more about religion than believers on average. They are excluding that likely excluding some of the most able candidates.

    Of course traditions may vary widely from texts, I presume a finance director of a Christian organization would eschew usury given it is widely condemned in the Christian religious texts, despite the wide tradition of practicing it.

    Reply
    1. alecm

      I wonder whether mortgages where the house is bought outright by a bank and then paid off at margin in instalments (to avoid usury) is more/less/the same popular with banks nowadays?

      I wonder if there are any benefits over a trad mortgage?

      Update:

      Simon notes “they are excluding able candidates”; I’ll flip that and note they are excluding agnostics, dont-knows, jews, muslims, hindus, buddhists… and a panoply of the world’s other faiths.

      I wonder if they’d include mormons?

      Reply
  6. Joe Henegan

    Hi. I work for Compassion UK and I replied to your tweet yesterday. I only said that the IT Director role was a leadership role. You have completely taken my comment out of context. As for the other roles, they are a mixture of leadership roles or they are roles that require you to communicate our Christian message or require you to support our Christian sponsors so do indeed require a worker with faith. There are one or two positions at Compassion UK that do not require a faith, I think IT helpdesk is one of those.

    Reply
  7. Joe Henegan

    No response to that then?

    Reply
    1. alecm

      How should I respond?

      You begin with an assertion that I took you out of context, which I find odd because I provided much context in a twitter stream and I believe that you responded to that.

      You appear to ignore that Compassion UK _did_ advertise several other roles which I would also not consider “faith” to be a requirement – Finance included.

      From evidence below I believe that you consider faith to be a requirement for (eg:) “Digital Communications Specialists” – where I from an informed industry perspective would deeply not expect that.

      So:

      I believe you’re incorrect to consider faith a requirement for quite so many roles.

      I believe that many of the job-offer webpages are misconceived in that they specify a faith requirement.

      I believe it would be actionable for you to reject applicants for many of these positions on the basis of their faith – even agnostics – and…

      I am blogging about this because – should that occur – I believe that you (and any other groups who do similarly) should be held to account, and there should be a record of your past behaviour, and that this has been pointed out to you publicly.

      So I would expect a registered charity such as Compassion UK to take this matter very seriously under consideration, and perhaps adjust your future stance or your job web-page templates to fit.

      I attach relevant text below.

      http://www.compassionuk.org/employment-digital-communications-specialist-2012-08

      Quote:

      We have a new opportunity in our Communications Team for a Digital Communications Specialist.

      This position would suit an individual with a solid understanding of social media communications and websites with the ability to be creative, well organised and meet deadlines. Strong copy writing and verbal communications skills, the ability to work on your own initiative whilst being part of a dynamic team and adaptability to respond quickly and accurately to changing circumstances are necessary for this role.

      Previous experience in written communications plus an understanding of the technical aspects behind web-site development is desirable.

      The purpose of this role is to lead and administer the digital communications platform for Compassion, ensuring consistency across all digital media content and campaigns. The main functions include:

      • Work with the communications team to create relevant and inspirational content for the website
      • Manage the digital aspect of projects and campaigns
      • Develop and maintain our social media presence and engagement including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
      • Create and manage regular electronic communications to our sponsors, advocates, ambassadors and staff

      There is an occupational requirement for the post holder to have a personal commitment to the Christian faith as functions within this role will be promoting the organisation’s Christian Ethos and enabling people to experience, explore and express the faith-based motivation of our work.

      This is a permanent post working 35 hours per week Monday – Friday 9.00 – 17.00. Please note that we cannot consider applicants who do not presently have permission to work in the UK.

      Reply
  8. Joe Henegan

    Finance manager position requires leadership/decision making in an evangelical Christian organisation. I’d say that’s enough.

    As I said before, all the other roles in your list are either similar to Finance Manager in that they are leadership/decision making based roles or they are roles that require support to our Christian sponsors or they require communications marketing to Christians to become sponsors.

    The digital communications specialist is my job intil the end of tomorrow. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that it requires a Christian faith in order to do the job. I can’t market to a Christian if I’m not a Christian and therefore don’t know how to speak to them about their Christian lives. Our child sponsorship is a heavily faith-based sponsorship. I don’t understand how an agnostic or atheist or Muslim could possibly do that?

    If you were recruiting someone to work in a Spanish supermarket in Spain it would be essential that they spoke Spanish. Now, you could hire an English speaking person and they might be able to to do the job, but not very well.

    Do you understand?

    Reply
    1. alecm

      Do I understand?

      No.

      I have friends who are deeply Christian. I am not. We still communicate about topics of morality, charity, welfare, faith, education, sex, politics.

      We also take the piss out of each other. It’s cool.

      You’re saying you find it hard to achieve the same?

      Reply
  9. Joe Henegan

    Please note, that all of these comments are my own personal comments and are not that of Compassion UK. If you want an official response please contact them directly.

    Reply
  10. Joe Henegan

    I’m not sure I understand your question?

    Reply
  11. Joe Henegan

    Actually, I think I do. You’re saying that that I’m suggesting that people with two different faith understandings can’t connect in the same way.

    My response to that is in this context I believe that to be the case.

    Imagine you were working for a generic Christian child sponsorship organisation. A sponsor phones you up. They say, ‘I’m worried about my sponsored child, can you pray with me.’ It’s your job to support them and praying with them comes under that. As a non-Christian, what would you do?

    Reply
    1. alecm

      That’s a really interesting scenario, and you know I don’t think there’s anything wrong with politely declining in those circumstances, or at least something like:

      I understand {Sir, Ma’am}, however I am the {Digital Communications Specialist, Finance Manager, IT Director, Project Manager, Regional Partnerships Manager, Staff Development & Engagement Specialist} – so before that, do please let me pass you to the Supporter Engagement Assistant {?} who has more information and is qualified and able to give you more information about your sponsored child.

      What’s so bad about being polite and yet professional?

      Reply
  12. Joe Henegan

    I believe that would be the correct thing to do.

    However, what if you were the Supporter Engagement Assistant that the phone call was passed to?

    I didn’t say that the Supporter Engagement Assistant role was a leadership role. I was responding to your tweets about the IT Director. Then you created this blog post which applied that response to every single job we have advertised in the last few months. I’m sorry mate, but you have taken it out of context, whether you realised it at the time. All I’m doing is simply letting you know that you did that.

    Reply
    1. alecm

      So how often does the IT Director have to pray to fulfil his/her job?

      Reply
    2. alecm

      ps: I still don’t see this “context” of which I have taken you “out”.

      Reply
  13. Joe Henegan

    Well, you’re obviously playing dumb now so I this will be my last attempt to help you see that there is a genuine occupational requirement.

    You took my tweet out of context in the following way:

    – You were tweeting about the IT Director role
    – I explained that the IT Director role way management/leadership
    – you write this blog claiming that I have said that all recently advertised roles are leadership
    – I explain repeatedly that they’re not.
    – You ignore it.

    The fact that you still haven’t been able to completely refute the argument for having a Christian faith as an occupational requirement as a member of leadership in an evangelical christian organisation and have started resorting to petty little games to try and wind me up shows that you don’t have a leg to stand on. Why don’t you get on with something useful to society than pick on Christian organisations. You don’t know what you’re talking about. – This was a message written by Joe Henegan, not Compassion UK.

    Reply
    1. alecm

      Just noting, the tweet, reproduced above, came from the @compassionuk account. If, as it seems, you wrote that (“I work for Compassion UK and I replied to your tweet yesterday”) then I think it’s fair to assume you were speaking from the perspective of representing them.

      Reply
  14. Joe Henegan

    So everything I type in the online world I’m representing employers? Everything a Sainsburys check-out worker writes on their Facebook page is written on behalf of Sainsburys?

    Still can’t prove that it’s not got a genuine occupational requirement to have a Christian faith so now trying a different tactic.

    Reply
    1. alecm

      Standard law of logic: you can’t prove a negative; what I have done though is provided an acceptable, professional alternative for those roles which clearly need have no requirement for praying with the general public who may spring “surprise prayer” upon your staff.

      Reply
  15. Simon

    Joe, he doesn’t have to explain why your IT director needs to be a christian, you have to explain why he does. It is unethical and illegal to discriminate on basis of religious belief unless it is a genuine occupational requirement, so you have so show how christian faith is a requirement for the IT director in your organization.

    It may be the role of IT director is radically different in your organization to any IT director role that Alec or I have seen before (I’m guessing we’ve met a lot of IT directors between us in the last 20 years), and if so that is fine.

    On the other hand if you don’t have a clear and concise answer for Alec on this topic, what is the organization going to say if and when the Charity commission ask similar questions.

    It is also I suspect unnecessary, in that I very much doubt many non-Christians will want to work for an evangelical christian charity, and those that do will likely be sympathetic enough to the cause that you won’t care or notice.

    If he was playing games he would simply have reported the ad to the relevant authorities, I suspect he was expecting the organization to realize the error of its ways and simply correct the advert.

    Looking at the organizations “policy” document I see they are knowingly playing fast and loose with the equalities act so I’ll leave this at “knowingly bigoted” till I hear something convincing.

    Reply
  16. Joe Henegan

    He’s playing games Simon because he keeps twisting my words on me.

    Okay, this is the last time I’m going to try and explain this to you Alec.

    IT Director role – leadership. Therefore decision making role in Christian organisation. Helps to be a Christian, needs to be a Christian. I didn’t say that they need to pray for people I said the position below did. (That’s one example of your twist.)

    Supporter Engagement Assistant – supporter facing role require to support Christian sponsors, sometimes involves praying with them. Always involves understanding their faith and sympathising with their concerns.

    Digital Communications Specialist – public facing role, marketing to Christians and appealing to their faith to sponsor a child.

    All the rest are a mixture of above.

    You seriously do not know what you’re on about. It’s embarrasing. This is such a cliché. Atheist man become enraged with religious organisation, gets on his high morality wagon and assumes that because they’re Christian they MUST be defenceless morons. What makes it even more laughable is that at one point you were cc’ing in the Richard Dawkins twitter account. All hail Richard Dawkins the great moral arbitrator of our time!

    Reply

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