by Mary Beth Barry
As I’ve heard from many members and as a fellow HR professional, I know that most HR staff and leaders are overwhelmed with putting out daily fires. You may have staffing or employee relations issues, be rolling out new benefit or training initiatives or dealing with business and financial emergencies.
While our members aren’t looking for life saving assistance from us, they are often looking for guidance on treating and assessing some of their HR challenges. They ask for help with providing crisis management, rapid responses to difficult conversations, resources for strengthening Catholic identity, or guidance on aligning their mission with the support and responses they provide to their employees, and they want tips on looking out for the wellbeing of their organization and its staff.
Add to that, they are at least partially tasked with ensuring that their institution’s religious freedoms are as secure as possible. Even if you work for an obviously Catholic organization such as a Diocese, Parish or Catholic School, it is still necessary to ensure that your Catholic identity is clear, simple and consistently incorporated in your organizational documents, including your HR documents, to secure your CBA protections. It is more important than ever to make sure that employees clearly understand and support your mission and values.
Recent court decisions reveal that it is no longer sufficient for a Catholic institution to rely on the word “Catholic” in its name or a brief recitation of the Catholic “rule” at issue to receive protections for the institution’s attendant beliefs and practices.
Take for example a case that involved a Title IX suit by a female wide receiver who wanted to play against a Christian school that had a policy, stating: “There is to be no physical contact between boys and girls at Valley Christian Academy.” Normally this case would have been dismissed as a result of the School’s Title IX exemption. However, the Christian School had not expressly connected its no-boy-to-girl-physical-contact policy to its Christian faith in its student handbook, so the court allowed the suit to proceed.
It can be daunting to think about managing so many difficult priorities. We are here to remind you that CBA has a variety of solutions to assist our members and can help make your job less overwhelming.
Templates and Standardized Documents
Our Members Only Room provides these to assist employers in identifying themselves as authentically Catholic. Whether you need to revise one of your employment documents or are looking to create a whole new one, you can take our templates and make them your own. The following are some examples of the templates that we offer to members.
- Faith-based Employee Handbooks
- Interview questions
- Job Descriptions
- Applications
- Legislative updates and more.
Our MOR also provides resources in the areas of Legal, Moral and Ethical, Health Benefits, Webinars and Videos and includes topics such as our Plus One policy, Pregnancy Discrimination Act memo and other topics important to all Catholic employers. You can also consult past webinars or videos that have benefited our members on issues like the proposed HHS Super rule.
If you haven’t had a chance to look through our MOR lately and would like a walk-through of the portal for yourself or your team, please reach out. I can give you an initial or refresher walk-through of the key areas of our MOR.
Review/Audit for expression of Catholic identity to minimize risk.
Professor Helen Alvaré’s recent book, Religious Freedom After the Sexual Revolution (2022), compellingly argues that “Catholic institutions must carefully contextualize their religious identity and associated beliefs for their personnel and their clients, as well as for courts, to the extent they wish to enjoy freedom to live their faith fully.”
CBA can help you reduce the risk of threats from courts or governmental organizations looking to question your right to religious freedom by providing a review and audit of your:
- Employee handbook
- Healthcare benefits
- Other important employment related documents
We can give you language that assists with enhancing the Catholic experience for your employees and assist with making sure your employees understand that they work for a Catholic organization with Catholic values and a Catholic mission.
HR Conversations with faithfully formed responses.
As HR professionals or leaders, we look differently at most of what we encounter daily. We don’t respond to an employee relations issue, or a question about what is or is not covered on our benefits plan in a traditional linear way. We are more thoughtful; we prioritize our employees’ dignity, and we respond in a way that helps our employees understand our mission, why that mission is so important and how all employees reflect its mission.
If you are looking for guidance on how to respond to difficult topics or to questions your employees might be asking, our blogs provide thoughtful advice and ethical responses and Church teachings to assist you with practical language and solutions on handling these issues. Click here to view our library of blog topics: https://catholicbenefitsassociation.org/news/cba-blog/
Customized guidance on everyday HR issues.
For some of our members, they don’t have a dedicated HR team. For others, even their seasoned HR staff and leaders may not have experience with a religious, or non-profit organization and they need guidance on transitioning from a secular HR role. Or often, members just need to talk through a problem or question. Having another HR professional who they can consult with to confirm a plan of action or who has a different perspective, can be helpful.
Whether you need help with talking through a unique employee relations issue or want another eye to review your job postings from a Catholic lens, we are here to support you.
We want to help your institution prepare to have their Catholic identity carefully contextualized for your clients, personnel and the courts, so that you can enjoy freedom to live your faith fully.