When Employees Grieve: 

Can Businesses Do the Right Thing?

by Robert Zucker

Even in these difficult economic times, more and more business leaders have come to believe that to show compassionate concern for their employees not only makes good business sense: it is simply the right thing to do. Slow downs, lay-offs and lost retirement savings only add to the stress of baby boomers trying to juggle the demands of rising college costs with concerns for their aging and dying parents.  Perhaps more than ever before, grief has crept into the workplace demanding our attention.

Businesses Are Changed by Loss and Grief
There is no blue print or predictable pattern of behavior when workers grieve. Groups of workers may grieve together, but will often look and feel differently at any given moment. Workers may experience periods of numbness and shock, as well as denial, fear, anxiety, anger, overwhelming sadness, and guilt. Feelings may come and go unexpectedly and reactions may take days, weeks, or months to evolve.  As in families, groups of workers are affected by one another’s reactions and feelings. Some may keep their feelings hidden; others may have a need to share with co-workers; still others may not wish to listen to other’s feelings at all. 

There is a financial impact, too. According to the largest organization of employee assistance professionals in the United States, the Employee Assistance Program Association (EAPA), an average stress-related incident costs a business $15,000 - twice as much as other types of medical cases. When organizations demonstrate flexibility and compassion they are able to cut some of their losses. EAPA has begun organizing bereavement seminars for corporate benefit managers across the country.  These seminars provide advice and information on bereavement support to such major corporations as American Express, Mobil, and staff at the House of Representatives and the FBI. Whether human service organizations, healthcare agencies or fortune 500 companies, institutions and businesses of all sizes are discovering that they need to know more about grief, and become better prepared to respond to their grieving employees.

Where Do Businesses Begin?
According to J. Shep Jeffreys, Ed.D., author of Coping With Workplace Change: Dealing With Loss and Grief (Crisp Publications, Inc.,1995), there are concrete skills that need to be taught to business people in order to help their grieving employees heal. These include:

1. Understanding normal grief reactions.
2. Learning to respond effectively to employee anger.
3. Learning how to listen and avoid trying to fix problems.
4. Knowing when to refer employees for professional counseling.

Grief reactions result not only from death and illness, but also from the extraordinary changes in the workplace we are currently witnessing. Jeffreys points out that only half of the companies that downsize realize their financial objectives and he attributes this failure to both insufficient information sharing with their employees, and a lack of attention to the human factor of grief. The fallout from these missed opportunities may include lost work days, damaged work relationships, increased health problems, increased errors and accidents, and anger that may even result in sabotage and violence. Jeffreys encourages businesses in transition to help staff “let go” while maintaining links with their past. For instance, workers might frame pieces of old carpet associated with former offices, take group portraits to maintain connections with colleagues, or save other artifacts representing what was left behind.

When Death Enters the Workplace
United States Labor Department statistics back in 1992 showed 6,083 on-the-job deaths in that year alone, so clearly, there is a role for businesses to actively support their employees grappling with death. Here’s an example of how one business creatively and cost-effectively responded to the death of an employee.

When an engineer died at work in a Northeast-based high tech company employing 50,000 staff, Malaena Nahmias, M.ED, LCSW, employee  assistance counselor and designer of corporate memorial services, saw an opportunity to help employees design a personalized on-sight memorial service. A grass roots committee converted a conference room into a “sacred and safe space” to share feelings. Invitations were sent to staff via e-mail. The corporate cafeteria provided food for a reception and it was agreed that whatever minimal cost was incurred could be charged to the cost-center for that employee. Lights were dimmed and simple flower arrangements were placed on Formica-topped conference tables covered with white table cloths. Friends and colleagues read poetry, and messages were read from those unable to attend. Food, stories, laughter, tears and hugs were shared during an informal reception that followed. One appreciative employee later remarked, “I’ve been in this conference room hundreds of times but this morning, when I walked in, I felt that I was entering a sanctuary.”

Teaching Groups of Workers About Grief and Healing
Sheelah Sodhi, LCSW, a Training and Development Coordinator at the Department of Juvenile Justice for the Commonwealth of Virginia found that personnel can develop the skills to manage grief with all its various complications. She has developed Coping With Loss in the Workplace, a comprehensive loss curriculum that she has made available to all levels of staff in the Juvenile Justice Department, from parole officers to supervisors and managers.   

Sodhi provides a safe environment to explore primary and secondary losses, factors that may complicate grief, techniques for managing grief in the workplace, and conflict management skills related to loss and grief. The workshop includes opportunities to practice skills through use of simulated scenarios representing a variety of critical events, tragedies, or more subtle transitional challenges that can occur at work. 

One particularly unique component to Sodhi’s curriculum involves inviting participants to make drawings about their losses. She has found that for many workers such opportunities for creative expression help them express and communicate complicated feelings. A drawing by one employee depicted her traumatic memory of an unknown assailant who attacked her with a sawed-off shotgun while she was at work. Sodhi recalled that the employee expressed tremendous appreciation for her supervisor who rather than minimizing or ignoring her grief reactions, gave her several weeks to recover from her trauma before sending her out to do any stressful field work. 

Creating a Safe Place to Heal
People will always face loss, and they will always bring their feelings with them to work. Today, as our economy falters and job loss becomes more and more commonplace, grief in the workplace can too easily become the “elephant in the living room” that everyone tries to ignore. Nevertheless, if businesses learn to encourage their workers to find sanctuary in their places of employment, their employee’s lives will be deeply enriched and businesses will be better able to weather the difficult times that lie ahead.

We can help your business rise to the challenge of grief in your workplace. Click here for information about our consultation and training services to businesses or contact us to discuss your particular needs.