Spiritual-religious aspects have positive results on both the personal and occupational spheres of life through shaping moral emotions such as gratefulness, forgiveness, and humility ((Davis et al., 2015; Hardy et al., 2014; Li & Chow, 2015; Wnuk, 2021c, 2022a, 2024b, 2024c), fostering more frequent prosocial and less frequent antisocial behaviors (Li & Chow, 2015; Wnuk, 2024c), enhancing hope and subjective well-being (Wnuk & Marcinkowski, 2014; Wnuk, 2021c), and serving as an antecedent of organizational commitment (Rego & Pina e Cunha, 2008), work engagement (Bickerton et al., 2021), performance, job satisfaction, and effectiveness (Karakas, 2010; Sharma & Singh, 2020).

A review conducted by Karakas (2010) sheds some light on the function that religious-spiritual aspects of life have at work as antecedents to well-being and quality of life and providers of an employee’s sense of purpose and meaning in work and sense of inter-connectedness and community. A sense of meaning in work is a significant issue in the occupational area because finding meaning in work has a beneficial effect on job satisfaction (Guerci et al., 2019; Lavy, 2014). At the same time, a sense of meaninglessness at work is related to negative consequences, such as work addiction (Brieger et al., 2020), high turnover intention (Guerci et al., 2019), and burnout (Lavy, 2014). There is no research on the role of employees’ religious practices in finding meaning in work that proposes a mechanism underlying this relationship. Previous studies have been limited to looking for simple correlations between workplace spirituality and occupational well-being (Karakas, 2010) without exploring the function spirituality can fill in daily work and potential links with other relevant variables in this mechanism. Results are lacking regarding whether religious commitment is beneficial or harmful at work. Religious values can influence work attitude and be an antecedent of spiritual growth at work, but for nonbelievers other secular values can serve the same function.

The purpose of this study was to examine the links between religious practices, relationship with God, and gratitude toward the organization and the role these variables play in explaining finding meaning in work.

In more religious nations, religiosity is positively correlated with subjective well-being, but in nonreligious countries, this association is negative or unsubstantial (Diener et al., 2011). Mochon et al. (2011) confirmed that individuals with a religious affiliation who are religiously involved are happier than those with a religious affiliation who are less involved in their religion—and that these are even less happy than atheists and agnostics.

Furthermore, the beneficial influence of religion has been recognized more in national cultures where religious faith is socially accepted than in cultures with less prevalent religious socialization. In these cultures, religious practices are negatively related to subjective well-being (Lun & Bond, 2013). This consideration is highly relevant to Poland, which is a very religious nation whose worship attendance is the highest of all European countries (Pew Research Center, 2018).

Other religious variables that act as moderators in the link between religiosity and well-being are religious orientation (Maltby, 2002; Watkins et al., 2003), positive religious coping mechanisms (Wnuk, 2021c), type of attachment to God (Leman et al., 2018), religious denomination (Tix & Frazier, 2005), measures of religiosity—institutional or devotional (Pöhls, 2021)—and level of religious identity (Lim & Putnam, 2010). Polish employees are a homogeneous population in terms of religious affiliation; 78% declared themselves believers in 2024 (Bożewicz, 2024), and the vast majority of these were members of the Roman Catholic Church (Pew Research Center, 2018). Between 2018 and 2022, there was a decrease in participation in church attendance by Poles, from 49% declaring they attended church at least once a week to 37% in 2022 (Bożewicz, 2022). In 2024, this figure was 34% (Bożewicz, 2024).

Additionally, in Polish culture, socialization around religious faith is a common phenomenon (Lun & Bond, 2013).

Considering the above, it was expected that Polish employees’ religious practices would be positively connected with organizational gratefulness and meaning in work, but only in those employees who declared a close bond with God.

This study focused on the perception of the relationship with God as a moderator in the relation between employees’ religious practices (praying and Mass attendance) and their gratitude toward the organization and finding meaning in work as occupational well-being indicators. Additionally, gratitude toward the organization was established as a mediator in the relation between employees’ religious practices and finding meaning in work.

The system of meaning whose vehicle is religion constitutes a framework for individuals to evaluate and interpret the world and the events around them as elements of something larger and more significant. Religion as a meaning-oriented system provides a set of beliefs, desires, and guidelines regarding how to live, from which a person can derive a comprehensive framework for building personal meaning based on the ultimate meaning that belief in God provides. The religious system of meaning can therefore provide a comprehensive framework for perceiving, understanding, and evaluating experiences, as well as organizing and orienting the behaviors of religious people (Silberman, 2005). Oviedo (2019) explored the relationship between religiosity and meaning by describing the variety of approaches to this topic and concluded that religious meaning is a specific form of meaning that differs from other kinds of meaning as it is a cognitive structure that determines the perception among other goal selections and goal internalization.

Following Park’s model (2007), I propose that there is a relationship between the religious and spiritual aspects of life and well-being. Beliefs, motives, and goals based on religion as a significant life value create a framework for perceiving and evaluating realities at work, and such a framework promotes the finding of meaning in work, which leads to occupational health. For example, George et al. (2002) indicated that religiosity, in addition to providing positive influences and social support and promoting healthy behaviors, facilitates finding meaning in life, which in turn leads to better health. Vveinhardt and Deikus (2023) described how Christians could deal with mobbing (group harassment and bullying behavior) by referring to holy scripture on nonviolent responses to attacks on personal and professional reputation, as well as social exclusion and physical attacks. They emphasize finding meaning as a key factor in successfully coping through the mechanism of cognitive reappraisal, which leads to making sense of these kinds of negative experiences in the workplace.

Recent research has confirmed that religiosity is positively related to finding meaning and purpose in life in Polish students (Wnuk & Marcinkowski, 2014; Wnuk, 2024a) and alcohol and sex-dependent individuals participating in Alcoholics Anonymous (Wnuk, 2021a) and Sexaholics Anonymous (Wnuk & Charzyńska, 2023). However, other studies have have suggested that this relationship depends on the manner in which religiosity and a bond with God are seen as important factors in daily life (Wnuk, 2023, 2024c). Negative references to God during a confrontation with stressful situations are detrimental, but a trusting and open attitude toward God’s support is beneficial for finding meaning (Wnuk, 2024a).

In a study by Wnuk (2021c) on the beneficial effect of religious faith on meaning in life, hope and gratitude were noted only in a group of students who used positive religious coping mechanisms to a greater-than-average extent. Among students who scored lower than average in this dimension, the link between religious faith and hope, gratitude, and finding meaning in life was not statistically significant. This indicates that mere faith, without commitment to a relationship with God as a source of support and consolation in stressful situations, is not sufficient for finding meaning in situations and events, sustaining hope, and being grateful for what has happened. For the spiritual mechanism underlying the link between prayer and well-being to be beneficial, it requires collaboration with God or the divine (Ferguson et al., 2010) that provides a sense of security, is based on trust, and represents a close bond with God (Paine & Sandage, 2015). For religious individuals, prayer can be an effective way to confront stressful situations. For example, Oviedo et al. (2022) found that for Ukrainian war refugees, prayer is used as a method to deal with stress and build resilience and should be treated as an element of psychological capital. Also, for Polish employees, the capability to forgive, prayer, and Mass attendance enable effective coping with occupational stress (Wnuk, 2022a).

Prayer leads to a beneficial outcome under the condition of a solid and trusting bond with God. In Polish employees who felt God’s love and direction more frequently, prayer was positively related to humility and negatively predicted haughtiness and egoism in the workplace (Wnuk, 2024c). Without building a bond with God, religion is deprived of its essence. However, it can fill another role as an instrumental value for social and personal goals, such as searching for support in church fellowship or other individual benefits. According to Allport and Ross’s (1967) conception of religious motivation, individuals can be oriented to religion as an autotelic and central value in their axiological system, striving for a close relationship with God as a manifestation of their intrinsic religious orientation. On the opposite extreme is an extrinsic religious orientation focusing on secular goals and treating religious practices and devotion instrumentally. This conception has been developed by differentiating extrinsic religious orientation into the two categories of personal extrinsic religious orientation and social extrinsic religious orientation (Maltby, 2002). Recent research has emphasized that intrinsic religiosity is connected with positive human qualities, the facilitation of finding meaning in life (Francis et al., 2010), and a grateful attitude (McCullough et al., 2004; Watkins et al., 2003). On the other hand, extrinsic religiosity has not been related to gratitude (McCullough et al., 2004) or negatively correlated with this variable (Watkins et al., 2003) or with finding meaning in life (Francis et al., 2010). These results are consistent with Lim and Putnam’s (2010) conclusion that religion leads to greater life satisfaction among people with a strong sense of religious identity.

Religiosity and spirituality are separate but related and overlapping constructs. Spirituality, as a broader phenomenon, includes religion as one form of spiritual expression (Baumsteiger & Chenneville, 2015; Hyman & Handal, 2006). This means that spiritual experiences as a common element of religiosity and spirituality are affected by religious commitment for believers, but for nonbelievers, other secular values and activities can lead to spiritual growth (Wnuk, 2021a), such as a sense of closeness or connection with a theistic being, a transcendent being, humanity, or nature (Davis et al., 2021).

Based on the historical context, Roszak and Mróz (2024) presented the potential commonalities and differences between religion and spirituality, indicating that postmodernism was a turning point as people started searching for spiritual growth outside the bond with God and the desire to fulfill God’s will. This led to a dichotomy in the perception of religion and spirituality, depriving religion of its spiritual element and, consequently, depreciating religion and affirming spirituality as a different phenomenon. This reflects today’s approach to religion and spirituality, which identifies religion as unfavorable, institutionalized, and connected with myths, rituals, and worship practices and spirituality as something positive, individual, and leading to growth (Wnuk, 2021b).

Religious practices are one of the ways to have spiritual experiences (Hardy et al., 2014) in the workplace (Wnuk, 2018). According to Wnuk’s conception (2022b), employees’ spirituality consists of two factors: a relationship with a “Higher Power” (God) (Sharp & Johnson, 2020) and a positive attitude toward one’s coworkers and employer. A relationship with a Higher Power (God) correlated positively with a positive attitude toward one’s coworkers and employer only among employees who prayed every day and attended Mass once a week or more (Wnuk, 2018). For believers, the term Higher Power was identified with God, but for religious skeptics—atheists and agnostics—the Higher Power personified a secular value (Galen, 2018) and was treated not as a religious part of employees’ spirituality but as a secondary, secular element. This bond between employees and God gives a sense of guidance, facilitates the finding of meaning and purpose in one’s duties, makes it possible to transcend one’s weaknesses and limitations at work, and serves as a source of balance, comfort, and support in difficult situations (Wnuk, 2022b). Because all research participants in the current study had a religious inclination instead of a relationship to a Higher Power, the term “relationship with God” is used here.

In the current study, hypothesis 1 is as follows:

The relationship with God moderates the links between religious practices and gratitude toward the organization and between religious practices and finding meaning in work.

The system of meaning whose vehicle is religion constitutes a framework for individuals to evaluate and interpret the world and the events taking place around them as elements of something larger and more significant. Religion as a system of meaning provides a set of beliefs, desires, and guidelines regarding how to live from which a person can derive a comprehensive framework for building personal meaning based on the ultimate meaning that belief in God provides.

In addition, gratitude toward God as the creator of the world and the giver of everything that humans possess inspires people to be grateful for everything they have and to interpret it all as a gift from God, who is the first cause of all that is good (Watkins et al., 2003). Gratefulness to God can be generalized across the elements of nature, both animate and inanimate. It can be expressed both toward someone or something—i.e., a person, nature, the universe, or an animal (Teigen, 1997)—and toward an organization (in this case, the employer) (Wnuk, 2020).

Gratitude toward the organization includes the moral norm of being grateful and a commitment to reciprocity as a cognitive-emotional-motivational dimension. The first is a stable tendency to be grateful, internalized in the socialization process, and the second is based on the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960), which is the element of social exchange (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005). Because of the stable character of gratitude as a moral norm and its lack of sensitivity to social exchange, only gratitude as a commitment to reciprocity, with regard to gratitude toward the organization, was used in this research.

The reciprocity norm (Gouldner, 1960), a key factor of social exchange, plays a significant role in employees’ workplace behaviors from the perspective of transactional mutual interdependent exchanges, cultural expectations that people get what they deserve, and moral norms (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005). The reciprocity norm is an obligation to be grateful and to repay in kind when one has received something valuable. This norm is important in the context of workplace behaviors, where it is desirable to develop social relationships and reward each of its manifestations by supervisors and co-workers.

The disposition to gratitude may be an important component in the structure of the religious meaning system, through whose lens a religious person perceives the events taking place and, consequently, searches for and finds meaning and purpose in them. A religious person may find it easier to be grateful for what they have or experience and for who they are, finding meaning and purpose in all this from the perspective of God’s plan rather than being defiant on account of what they do not have or who they are not and experiencing the resulting existential frustration.

Recent studies have confirmed that religiosity is positively related to gratitude (Lantz et al., 2021; Lee & Kim, 2021; Wnuk,