How to support grieving employees in the best way possible

Employers should not stop at implementing a policy on bereavement when they want to support their employees in dealing with grief. Zoe Sinclair suggests that it’s important to make sure ‘the policy” doesn’t inhibit managers from taking a personalised approach.

While many workplaces or employers try to understand these topics, it remains a challenge.

Grief is a complex emotion that affects everyone differently. Therefore, a policy cannot solve the problem. The human experiences of every employee are difficult for managers to navigate, but they must do so with empathy while being mindful of their professional boundaries.

Even my small team of workplace wellness consultants, This Can Happen, struggles with this. On one of the regular team calls I was given condolences by someone about a recent loss that I had experienced.

We continued the conversation and soon realized that most of us, in one form or another, had suffered grief over the past year. The workplace discussion was just beginning. We realized that we had to take action.

So, our Report on Grief in the Workplace came to be. We created a survey with NatWest – which, in my opinion, is an employer that practices best in the area grief – to better understand the sentiment surrounding grief at work.

We wanted to know more about the feelings of bereaved workers and what managers thought about managing them. This could then help workplaces to develop more initiatives and support. We hoped that this would end the silence surrounding grief in the workplace.

Impact on long-term work

The most shocking result of our survey was that 87% felt grief affected their mental health and, therefore, had an impact on their performance.

The most poignant statistic is that 48% of respondents felt that their grief had the greatest impact on their work over the first 12 months following a bereavement. Most workplaces only offer short-term support, which is in contrast to the majority of them.

When grief is ‘obvious,’ it’s easier for employers to understand. We can forget that grief affects someone for many years and sometimes even forever.

Nearly half (46%) felt that they did not get enough time to grieve. This resulted in 51% of respondents not feeling supported at this stage in their lives by their organization.

It is important to consider how an organization will handle this situation. Is it up to the manager of a particular person, or is it a matter of office policy?

Bereavement policies are far more difficult to discuss than parental leave policies, pensions or benefits. In fact, 70% had not been informed of their organisation’s bereavement policies in the past year and 68% said that support resources had never been clearly communicated to them.

However, there is a case to be made that there shouldn’t be a ‘policy,’ or at least a policy, that is devoted to grief. How does not having a specific policy work in reality?

Avoid a blanket solution

Harley Cunningham is a senior strategy and performance manager for Virgin Media O2 and the winner of our ‘Founders’ Choice Award’ in workplace mental health. She brought this document to her organization after feeling completely unsupported by her colleagues following the death of her child.

She advocates not using the term “policy” when it comes grief so that managers feel confident in their ability to judge situations and circumstances individually and are willing to seek the support needed to manage them.

Of course, managers need to be aware of the policies that are available to help employers. They must not apply the policies to everyone.

Cunningham is also a proponent of full-paying leave for employees to help them in their time when they are most vulnerable. She created toolkits that managers and employees can use to have better bereavement training and conversations.

She also works to create a culture at work that encourages openness, and offers practical support from the top down, like her ‘Hug in a Box,’ which provides food vouchers for employees going through one of the most difficult times in their lives.

Here are eight tips for good grief support at work, in honor of Dying Matters Week (5-11 May), the week-long awareness-raising campaign run by Hospice UK.

• Continue to communicate your policy. Share it with your staff at least once every six months.
• Behave like senior leaders. Ask senior figures to speak about grief awareness and support, showing their team that the topic is not taboo.
• Implement training. Provide adequate training to managers and co-workers so that they are aware of how to handle conversations and have confidence. Create a set of conversation starters for the initial points of communication, while on bereavement leaves and upon return to work.
• Recognise the characteristics of good line manager assistance. This could include verbal condolences or flowers, asking for what they need, offering flexibility at work or additional leave.
• Ask employees what they need and what information they want managers to share.
• As an employer, you need to know that grief can affect performance even after the initial loss. Continue to check in with employees long-term.
• Do not rely on your employees to find the resources they need. Make sure you signpost them and remind them regularly. If you offer an employee assistance program (EAP) with counselling sessions, or have psychologists available on site, make sure staff are aware of and have easy access to these resources.
• Set up internal drop-in grieving circles. These are easily organised via Zoom or face to face at a set time. People with similar grief can come together and listen or talk. They will know that they have a place at work where they can grieve, as well as chat to other people who share their feelings.

Change can and must occur. At some point, every worker will likely experience grief. We deserve to be informed that the conversations we have at work are changing.

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