Employee Attitudes Toward and Perceived Employer Stances on Spirituality at Work in Germany

Abstract

While spirituality at work is gaining attention in research and practice, we lack empirical knowledge about how many employees wish to bring their spirituality to work, what their employers’ stances are, and if employee attitudes match their perceptions of their employers’ stances. Using large-scale quantitative data (N = 2,174) on employees in Germany, we develop a typology of four employee attitudes toward spirituality at work: negative, neutral, positive-ambivalent, and positive, and show how these are distributed across them. Empirically investigating Miller and Ewest’s (2015) typology of employers’ stances, our results show a duality of perceived employer stances: faith-positive and faith-negative. The largest group of participants has a negative attitude, matching a perceived faith-negative stance of their employer. The second-largest group did not clearly assign a perceived employer stance. As especially younger employees wish to bring their spirituality to work, spirituality in the workplace will likely become more important for employers.