First of all, as I said in my book, everyone should read Rabbi Hillel Gamoran’s concise, friendly and content-packed book Talmud for Everyday Living, Book 1: Employer-Employee Relations.  While you’re at it, also pick up Rabbi Gamoran’s Talmud for Everyday Living, Book 2: Insights into Buying and Selling.  Rabbi Gamoran makes the original sources so approachable that I recommend his book as a gateway for serious Jewish managers into a strong traditional foundation for workplace ethics.

For a briefer, encyclopedic overview, Rabbi Jill Jacobs at My Jewish Learning offers a high-quality, friendly and scholarly introduction.

Emma Goldberg at Shma Now writes specifically about the issue of maternity leave in Jewish organizations.  She offers an insight so important that I want to quote her here.  Jewish managers and fiduciaries would do well to memorize her words:

It’s all too easy for organizations furthering important causes to forget that their work begins at home, in their interactions with employees. Jewish schools and non-profits can grow so caught up in their big-picture mission statements that they forget how much of an impact they can have even within their own workplaces.

Goldberg helps us see the essential connection between our mission and our workplace practices.  No silver trumpets sound for the ethics of the many managers — way too many — who are better to work with than for.  Judaism, at least, requires us to do better than that.  A Jewish workplace must not forget Goldberg’s call to mission consciousness at home.  For those who need a bean-counter reason to be ethical, I think Goldberg correctly diagnoses mistreatment of workers as creep away from mission consciousness, and ultimately an organization that gets away from its own mission is not going to succeed.  For a somewhat more hard-nosed look at this issue, see my comments on the Level 2 vs. Level 1 organization in Chapter 10, page 272 of Growth through Governance.

Finally, Jewish workplaces must not discriminate, so, especially to the extent we incorporate Jewish text, culture, or even optional ritual into the workday, we are required to be vigilant not to maintain the highest respect for those whose religions are not ours.  I recommend this fine article by Joan Reisman-Brill at TheHumanist.com for an atheist perspective on this boundary.  As a former two-term member of the Seattle Human Rights Commission, I take situations like this very seriously.  It is the employer’s responsibility — through sensitivity, clear communication, and training — to make sure they do not occur.  The situation does not jump out at me as actually discriminatory, though it could be.  I agree with Reisman-Brill’s advice to the questioner as to next steps.  Regardless of that particular case, Reisman-Brill gives us a good brief silhouette of issues we need to be aware of as ethical and law-abiding employers.