I'm agnostic, but I wouldn't personally be offended or bothered if my Indian CEO sent out a letter asking my coworkers and I to try Hindu meditation or yoga, nor would I be offended or bothered by Pat's suggestion, nor by a suggestion that I try fasting for the month of Ramadan, etc etc.
Am I misunderstanding some aspect of this? Was Pat demanding rather than asking or something like that?
Maybe we're just different, but I would be extremely offended by a suggestion that I fast for ramadan, just as I would if I were asked to eat kosher for a month, or to go on a vegan diet for a month, or even just to watch his favorite cooking show for a month. Whether they were suggestions, requests or demands, I find these to be unreasonable intrusions of the company into people's private lives. Asking people to pray, might be a tiny bit less intrusive, but I still find it to be unreasonable.
Would you be more offended by your employer contacting you during your vacation to ask you to work, or is that less offensive to you because it's less unrelated to work?
Is the company asking you to go to a morale event where free food is being served less offensive?
Perhaps a better way to ask what I'm trying to get at... if asking (not demanding) you to try fasting is too intrusive into your personal life, what are some examples of an appropriate amount of intrusion into your personal life for the company, by way of voluntary, optional requests?
Is the problem that there's an ask with nothing offered in return? Is it that the ask isn't work-related? Is it that it's the company's leadership asking, rather than your coworker?
I am a big proponent of voluntarism - I believe that voluntary interaction free of coercion is at least partially inherently ethical in a way that involunatry interactions featuring coercion aren't. I tend to give a lot of good faith leeway to voluntary interactions (requests) that I do not give to coercion (demands), so your perspective is very intriguing to me and I want to understand it better.
I appreciate your curiosity and the way you phrased your point.
You hit the nail on the head with:
> Is it that it's the company's leadership asking, rather than your coworker?
I'm a fan of voluntarism too, but don't believe that a company leader can just "ask" something. Same as it is with sexual advances, when a boss asks something from their employees, it automatically implies that doing so will be beneficial to their position in the company, even if they didn't intend it.
As for your examples, I'd generally be ok with requests that can in some way be justified by the typical person as good for the company (e.g offsite team-building), but would draw the line at requests that go beyond that.
Fasting and prayer are pretty universal. Fasting itself has pretty interesting physiological effects wrt healing.
As a straight up atheist if pushed to make a decision, I'd probably participate. The prayer part id probably just interpret as picking an aspect of this news to explicitly make present in my mind for the day.
