4 Ways To Support Employees During Ramadan

 

If you have muslim employees who are taking part in Ramadan, you should be making accommodations to help support them through this sacred time. These are small adjustments for you as a business but can make a big difference for your employees, so it’s definitely worth putting the effort in here! 

Ask If There’s Anything You Can Do

Firstly, you should send out an email requesting whether there is anything that the business can do to support employees taking part in Ramadan and allow for anonymous responses. Some employees may feel awkward, particularly if they’re newer to the business, so this just gives the chance to make sure everyone can highlight anything that would help them to be more comfortable at work through Ramadan. 

You may have your own ideas but everyone feels differently when fasting and has different requirements in terms of prayer, so this is an open ended way to make sure you’re covering the needs of any muslim employees during this time. Ramadan encourages positivity, sharing and an open dialogue, so this is really important. 

Don’t Make Assumptions

Another important component is to not make assumptions. Ramadan looks different to everyone, with some people fasting and some people experiencing the holy period in another way. From health concerns to personal preferences, there’s all sorts of reasons that someone who is muslim won’t be observing Ramadan. That’s also why sending an email out is a good idea, as people can make you aware if they want to that they are taking part in Ramadan. 

Provide Flexible Working Arrangements

It’s also important that you’re providing flexible working arrangements for your employees, but particularly during Ramadan. One element of this is providing holiday days, as many companies do for Christmas, around Eid, to ensure your employees can celebrate with their family. Within the working day, making sure employees are aware that they can take any time they need to pray is also important. Allowing employees to work from home will also help if they don’t want to have to pray at work 5 days a week. 

Alongside this, as Muslim people don’t eat or drink after sunrise or before sunset, you should be making accommodations to ensure they feel as comfortable as possible. This could be making sure they know they could start and finish early, as they will likely be awake to eat before sunrise anyway, and then more of their working hours will be when they have eaten and drunk relatively recently. Or, other people may prefer to start and finish work later, so they can eat in the evening then do a few hours work after that once they feel more energised. Again this all comes down to personal preference and so you should provide that flexibility. 

Part of this will also be inclusive meeting hours, communicating with other teams and clients based on the adjusted working hours. People taking part in Ramadan may also feel less energised towards the end of the day, so trying to accommodate this is key, perhaps bringing meetings forward into the morning or being aware that levels of participation and energy later in the day may be lower. 

Ensure There Is A Dedicated Space For Prayer

Something else you should do as a business is to ensure there is a dedicated space for prayer available for your muslim employees. Usually during Ramadan, most muslim people will pray 5 times throughout the day which is the core part of Islam, then an additional special prayer at night, as well as going to the mosque to pray. In order to accommodate this, you should have a clean, private area available specifically for prayer within the office, so that prayer can be easily incorporated into their working day without any disruptions. 

Prepare For Eid Celebrations

Another way that you can help to support your employees through Ramadan is to prepare for Eid celebrations! You could get gifts like Arabic name necklaces for your employees, luxury sweets, chocolates or brownie boxes, gifts for the home like reed diffusers or a general gift box with lots of bits and pieces in it. In terms of what you do in the office, you could hang Eid decorations, send well wishes to employees, provide a delicious Halal buffet and non alcoholic drinks, and make charitable donations. Just as you’d plan any other corporate events really with a few tweaks! 

Final Thoughts

Helping your employees during Ramadan won’t take much effort, but it can make a big difference to have that support from a work perspective. As well as this, you should help your employees to celebrate Eid with gifts and get together to mark the end of this important period. Small adjustments can mean a lot to people during Ramadan to help make sure the focus is on this holy time rather than stresses about how work is going to fit in.