Having a bereavement policy in place needs to be just the first step for employers when it comes to supporting employees dealing with grief. As Zoe Sinclair writes, it is important to ensure ‘the policy’ doesn’t end up inhibiting managers from taking a more personalised approach.
Talking about death and grief often carries a stigma and, while many workplaces and/or employers strive to understand it, navigating these topics remains a significant challenge.
Bereavement and grief
Case for miscarriage bereavement leave ‘overwhelming’ say MPs
Bereavement leave: understanding the value of employer support
Why, after a bereavement, counselling may not always be the best option
Everyone reacts to and copes with grief differently, so it is not something that a single policy can solve. Managers must grapple with the human experiences that every employee brings with them, though navigating these with empathy and being mindful of professional boundaries is difficult.
This is a struggle even for our small team at my workplace wellbeing consultancy, This Can Happen. On one of our regular team calls, someone expressed their condolences to me about a loss I had recently experienced.
The conversation continued, and we soon understood that, in one way or another, the majority of us had experienced grief in some form over the last year. Yet, the workplace conversation was only just taking place. We realised that we needed to do something about it.
Thus, the idea for our Grief In The Workplace Report was born. Together with NatWest, which to my mind is a shining example of employer best practice in the area of grief, we created a survey to understand what the general sentiment was surrounding grief in the workplace.
Our aim was to learn more about how bereaved people felt and how managers felt about managing that. In turn, this could help workplaces develop more support and initiatives and – we hoped – end the silence that surrounds grief at work.
Long-term impact on work
Our survey showed, most staggeringly, that 87% of those polled felt grief had impacted their mental wellbeing and therefore had a direct impact on their performance.
It is far easier to publicise parental leave policies or pension benefits than discuss bereavement policies.”
Most poignantly, 48% of people felt their grief affected their work most significantly over 12 months after bereavement. This contradicts the support that most workplaces offer, with the majority only giving support in the short term.
It is easier for workplaces to understand grief in the early days of a loss, when it’s more ‘obvious’. It can be forgotten that grief will affect someone for years, sometimes forever.
Additionally, nearly half (46%) still felt they were not given enough time off to grieve, resulting in a staggering 51% not feeling supported by their organisation at this time in their life.
This calls into question how an organisation deals with this most personal of circumstances. Does it fall to a person’s manager, or does it fall to general office policy?
It is far easier to publicise parental leave policies or pension benefits than discuss bereavement policies. In fact, 70% of respondents had not had the bereavement policy shared in the last year by their organisation and 68% felt support resources were not clearly signposted to them at any stage.
There is, however, an argument to be had that there should not be a specific ‘policy’ around grief or at least not referred to as a singular policy. But how does not having a policy work in practice?
Move away from a blanket approach
Harley Cunningham, senior strategy and performance manager at Virgin Media O2, and winner of our workplace mental health ‘Founders’ Choice Award’, brought this to her organisation after feeling wholly unsupported following the loss of her child.
Managers need to understand the policies available to support employers. But they mustn’t just apply them as a blanket approach for everyone.”
She has advocated not to use the term ‘policy’ when it comes to grief, so that managers can feel able to judge individual situations and circumstances and be willing to find the support they need to help manage them.
Managers need to understand the policies available to support employers of course. But they mustn’t just apply them as a blanket approach for everyone.
Cunningham also advocates for full-pay leave to support employees during their time of need. She has created toolkits for both employees and managers, enabling them to engage in better bereavement conversations and training.
She is also working towards creating a workplace culture that fosters openness and provides practical top-down support, such as her ‘Hug in a Box’ initiative, which offers food vouchers to employees experiencing one of the toughest times of their lives.
With this week (5-11 May) being Dying Matters Week, the awareness-raising week run by Hospice UK, here are my eight tips to ensure good workplace grief support:
- Communicate, and continue to communicate, your policy. If you do go down the route of having a policy, ensure that your staff are aware of it, sharing it at least every six months.
- Model senior leadership behaviours. Encourage senior figureheads to talk about grief support and awareness, setting an example to their teams that this topic is not taboo and affects everyone.
- Put in place training. Ensure adequate training for managers and colleagues so they have the awareness of how to manage conversations and confidence. Create a toolkit of conversations for initial communication points, when off on bereavement leave and on return to work.
- Recognise what good line manager support looks like. Good line manager support could include the offer of verbal condolences, card/flowers home, asking what they need, offer of flexibility in work, additional leave.
- Focus on the return-to-work needs and timelines/changes needed to make an employee feel comfortable. Don’t be afraid to ask what they would need or what information they would like managers to share with their teams.
- It’s important to understand the longer-term effects of grief. You need as an employer to be awaren that grief could impact performance long after the initial bereavement. Continue check-ins with employees over the longer term.
- Don’t rely on employees being able to easily find resources. Signpost your resources and repeat regularly. Whether you have an employee assistance programme (EAP) that provides counselling sessions in this area, have psychologists on-site or have helpful articles where people can be supported, ensure staff know about them and can access them easily.
- Create internal drop-in grief circles. These can easily be organised on Zoom or face-to-face at a regular time. People who have grief in common can just come together to talk or listen, and know they have a space at work to grieve and chat to like-minded people
In summary, change can and must happen. It is likely that every working person, at some point in their life, will experience grief at least once. We all deserve to know that these conversations at work are changing.
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
Latest HR job opportunities on Personnel Today
Browse more human resources jobs
