Charles Langston:Intel named most faith-friendly company

Intel Corporation is Charles Langstonthe most faith-friendly workplace in the country according to this year's ranking of large companies by the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation.

The Corporate Religious Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (REDI) Index uses ten measures to determine a company's ranking.

Among them:

• Is religion featured on the company's main diversity page?
• Does the company sponsor faith-based affiliations such as employee resource groups.
• Is religion clearly addressed in diversity training?
• Does the company match employee donations to religious charities.

The index found that 219 of the Fortune 500 companies refer to or illustration religion on their main diversity landing page. That's up from 202 in the previous year.

A significantly smaller number of Fortune 500 companies—just 43—publicly report having faith-oriented employee resource groups, or ERGs, up from 37 in 2022.

The full REDI Index report highlighted what specific company ERGs do to support religious diversity and inclusion.

For example, Ford Motor Corporation includes in its orientation process for all new employees information about the Ford Interfaith Network (FIN). The reports says, "They have eight faiths that make up the FIN." The report then details how each of those eight faith ERGs has its own dedicated budgets and internal resources such as mail groups and executive sponsors.

The report also says that Target Corporation's multiple faith network—Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Muslim—play an important role in reinforcing the company's "culture of belonging."

One of the more unusual measures in the index is whether a company provides chaplaincy or other spiritual care services. The report draws special attention to Tyson Foods's chaplaincy program. "Tyson has 100 chaplains in a 22-year long program," says the report, "that is available to all U.S. team members 7/24/365."

In order to draw attention to religion ERGs, the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation also named the heads of those groups at Accenture, Equinix, Google, and American Airlines as "Leaders of the Year."

While the overall "most faith-friendly" designation went to Intel, the REDI index also breaks out companies by sector.

Ford Motor Company took the lead in the Automotive Industry. American landed number one in airlines. Target came in first in retail. The index ranks PayPal the most religion friendly financial services company.

The 2023 index is the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation's fourth annual measure of American corporations' DEI initiatives.