By John H. Thurman Jr, M.Div., M.A., LPCC, CCCRS
A Leader’s Guide to Managing Grief and Loss in the Workplace, by John Thurman, is designed to give leaders, proven, practical, advice and insight on what to do when a team member dies.
“If the death is predictable, it can still feel like a punch in the gut when it finally occurs, and if the death is unexpected, it can be laced with trauma.”
Bob Vandepol, President, Vandepol Crisis Response Services, Holland , MI
“If the death is predictable, it can still feel like a punch in the gut when it finally occurs,” said Robert VandePol, president of VandePol Crisis Response Services in Holland, Mich. “And if the death is unexpected, it can be laced with trauma.”
Whether expected or sudden, the death of an employee will impact the workplace. Dealing with the loss of a co-worker can be traumatic. Because of the nature of the workplace, co-workers often feel like extended family. Yet, when the unthinkable happens, employers and employees want to know what to do.
Our collective view of mortality has drastically changed due to the impact of Covid-19 and the lockdown. As a result, many businesses are more in tune with the needs of their workforce and are taking active measures to help their team members effectively grieve and process losses.
Assisting work teams in navigating the death of a co-worker is not typically covered in leadership development classes. And while most companies’ H.R. departments may have some policies and procedures, they rarely provide any input regarding the personal impact on leaders and how they should lead in a crisis.
The death of a team member, on or off the job, can be troubling.
As a leader, the way you manage an event like this will either bring your team together or cause potential harm. Therefore, leadership needs to respond compassionately and effectively to keep the workplace functioning, sustain a positive image of the organization, and lead associates through this challenging season.
So, if you are the leader, my goal is to help you lead well.
The Cost of Grief in the Workplace
Did you know the approximate cost of grief in the workplace is roughly $75.1 billion annually? Those are the numbers according to a multi-decade study that surveyed 25,000 employees published in 2003.[i] It will be interesting to see what the post-Covid research reveals.
This study also found that grief can impact the performance of grieving employees in multiple ways.
For Example:
Ninety percent reported a reduction in their ability to concentrate following a loss
Ninety percent of those working physical jobs were more likely to get injured due to a lack of concentration.
Seventy percent reported an increase in or new use of alcohol or mood-altering substances[ii]
Before going into this, let’s review the basics of Crisis Management.
Essential Components of Crisis Leadership: Be, Do, Know
Note: I spent 22 years as an Army Chaplain serving in the National Guard, U.S. Army Reserve, and Active Duty during Desert Storm. One of the concepts I was exposed to over the years was the Army’s “Be, Do, Know” Principles of Leadership.[iii] This next section is taken from all those years of learning and implementation.
Be is all about who you are. It combines your character and core values as a leader and is the baseline of your leadership ability. The source of courage guides you to do the right things for your people and your organization.
Be loyal.
Be selfless with a team-first attitude.
Be courageous.
Be caring.
Be calmly assertive. When calmness is not maintained in the fast-moving, chaotic crisis, frustration and the need to dominate or avoid tend to show up.
Do is about the actions you take. Leader’s act! They pull people together. They can do this because they bring everything they are, believe, and know to provide a sense of purpose, direction, and motivation. This typically involves four leadership actions: the ability to influence, to operate under pressure, and to improvise and improve actively.
Actions:
Know your organization’s core vision, values, ethics, and guiding principles, then act promptly and decently.
Keep communication channels open. Listen carefully and accurately and communicate precisely and in a timely fashion.
Know is about the skills and knowledge you need to be a competent and caring leader. These skills include:
Interpersonal Skills – the ability to lead with compassion, clarity, crystal clear communication, and the wisdom to delegate.
Technical Skills – knowing how to work within your organization’s guidelines to impact your employees and your company positively.
Conceptual Skills – this is primarily the ability to lead your team through the critical, disruptive event by having a vision for your company’s future as they emerge from the event. The leader must demonstrate a strength-based, forward-looking mindset that will give hope and courage to the team and the stakeholders.
Tactical Skills – For the sake of this paper, tactical skills refer to the skill set the leader will need to help get the organization through the immediate crisis. The goal is to help the team expand their resilience skills and come through the crisis stronger.
You must have a vision and know your organization’s values for crisis resolution. Therefore, it is essential to understand your organization’s vision, values, and guiding principles in how you are making decisions.
Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome: The Trifecta of Crisis Leadership
The right mindset can help you navigate the most challenging areas of life, but it must be what Dr. Carol Dweck called an “open mindset.”
Once again, I am drawing from the well of my civilian and military life as I think of the phrase. When faced with an obstacle, I will take a brutally honest look at my situation and then “improvise, adapt, and overcome.” This well-known mantra in the military was elevated to a broader cultural awareness in Clint Eastwood’s 1986 movie Heartbreak Ridge.
Let’s take a moment and briefly review these three concepts.
Improvise – the definition of improvising is “to make something from whatever is available.” [iv] In a crisis, you might need to shift to your “inner MacGyver” to find solutions. First, leaders must be able to improvise to help themselves and their team through the current situation in a resilient, caring manner.
Adapt – Being able to adapt is related to improvising. Identifying an additional or even new use for a policy, procedure, idea, or action could positively enhance the outcomes as you lead your team through this disruptive event. To adapt is to adjust. It means expanding your capacity to be flexible and stay on the mission. Be sure to stay flexible, open-minded, and open to solutions.
Overcome – When you have arrived at this point, it is time to take a deep breath and lean into the opportunity to decide and select your path. While this can be scary, it is necessary for a time when you need to step up and lead.
Develop an Action Plan
My friend and mentor, Bob VandePol, president of VandePol Crisis Response Services in Holland, Michigan, has developed a proven, effective process you can use to guide your response to an employee’s death or other disruptive workplace events. This simple tool is captured in the acronym ACT. It is one that I have used in over 250 critical workplace events.
Acknowledge
- Accurately convey the facts and avoid conjecture.
- Acknowledge that not everyone will be impacted in the same way.
- Acknowledge that the employee’s death has an impact on you.
Communicate
- Provide information with compassion and competence to reduce the likelihood of rumors, build trust and provide a sense of order that supports moving forward.
Transition
- Communicate an expectation of recovery that creates a hopeful vision of the future.
- Communicate flexible and reasonable accommodations as people progress to a new normal.[v]
Common Reactions to Grief and Loss
With a broad range of responses ranging from emotional outbursts or crying to no emotion at all, there is no “correct” way to grieve. However, here are the most common reactions to the loss of a team member you’ll see or experience:
· Shock and disbelief, mainly if the death was sudden and unexpected.
· Anger and blaming—in some cases, this may be aimed at leadership, depending on the circumstances.
· Some may experience poor concentration and decreased productivity for a time—people will want to talk about what happened, so be as flexible as possible, and allow your team time to process the event.
· Irritability—team members may be quicker to anger, feel frustrated or become easily annoyed, so be cautious in customer-facing activities.
· Guilt over unfinished business with the deceased—don’t be surprised if you hear things like “I wish I had told him/her…” or “I regret that our last visit didn’t end well.”
· Changes in team members’ activity level—some may be more fidgety, others more lethargic.
· Physical complaints—things like headaches, G.I. issues, muscle tension, changes in appetite, and disordered sleeping.
Additional thoughts
Grief can have such a powerful impact on individuals. Grief can take up a lot of bandwidth. Just as the body knows how to heal a wound, the brain knows what to do to heal itself after a loss.
How long the grieving process lasts varies from person to person. For some people the pain of the loss can pass in weeks or months, while others might still feel the deep sorrow a year later.
Most bereaved people vacillate between actively grieving and moving through the obligations of daily life.VI
Your mission as a leader is to be present, understanding, and to facilitate your team in connecting with the resources that need to work through the loss.
Management Tips for Supporting Your Team
Make sure the manager of the deceased team member deals with their grief. The team will look to their management team for support and direction. Therefore, the manager needs to address how they are feeling. Managers cannot provide resilient leadership if they fail to care for themselves.
Coordinate with H.R. and your management team. Your team members may struggle with the loss of their colleague, and family members of the deceased will have concerns that need to be addressed. Therefore, it is crucial that you have an identified Point of Contact with H.R. who will help with benefits. A dedicated person to handle these issues will demonstrate caring and compassionate concern for the deceased’s family and your team. NOTE: This should not be the same person acting as a liaison between the family and the company.
Share information. When a death occurs, it is vital to share factual, basic information concerning what happened and what plans or arrangements are being made, if any. In the past few years there is a trend towards private, family services. When possible, check with the family about what specific information they would like to share.
My personal recommendation is that you don’t spend too much time discussing how the individual died, instead focus on how your staff and the family of the deceased (if appropriate).
Have a flexible plan to handle the details! You will have to devise a plan to handle things like: Who will pack up the deceased person’s belongings from their workspace—a co-worker, the family, or a combination? If the family lives in another area, how will their effects be sent to the family? No two people are the same, and each situation must be handled with care and respect. Talking with family members about their wishes will go a long way in expressing caring concern. Check if they want to come and remove the personal effects personally or if they would like them delivered to the house or shipped. Should the family suggest throwing the effects away, DON’T! It might be good to box them up and store them in a secure place for a while. Sometimes when a family is dealing with the difficulty of grief, they may regret asking you to throw their loved one’s effects away.
Provide periodic updates as new information arises. This will help with rumor control and will exemplify honest and reliable leadership.
Be sure to acknowledge the impact of this death on the team and that you know it will likely impact the workplace for a time.
Provide a quiet, private space for employees to gather and mourn. Be sure to have tissues and maybe bottled water available.
Seek a volunteer to be a liaison between the company and the deceased’s family.
o A close co-worker is usually the best choice.
o This simple act will help keep the family from being inundated with phone calls and texts in the early days.
o This person will also be the “eyes on” and can see the family’s potential needs and ways you can support your team.
Keep an “open door.” Allow employees to come and talk or vent to you if they wish.
Get out of your office. Instead, move through your workspace, be visible, and engage with your teammates in their space.
Ensure you and your H.R. department let team members have time to attend the deceased member’s services.
Plan a memorial. It may be appropriate to do something in the workplace to commemorate the loss. Check with your team members and suggest how they might want to do this. Some suggestions include creating a memory book, planting a tree, and ensuring your team has input.
Preserve the team or department and do your best to give the family a helpful transition. Please do your best to ensure everyone in the impacted department does what they need to return to normalcy. For example, if your company has a memorial program, it might be a good idea to invite the family of the deceased team member. This can give the family and the team members some opportunities for expression.
What to Avoid
Minimizing what happened or your team’s reactions—such as by saying things like “this is just a part of life” or “they’re in a better place now.”
Making team members talk about how they are feeling—an avenue for sharing their reactions should be made available but not required.
When dealing with family and friends of the deceased be careful to avoid the following phrases.
- I know how you feel
- At least you have 2 other children
- God must have needed them more than you
- They’re an angel now
- How did they die?
- I lost my dog “fifi” 2 months ago too
- Well, they’re not suffering anymore
- You’ll be fine in a few weeks
- Why are you still sad, it’s been 3 months
Sometimes the best thing to do is to be present, and quiet.
Management Tips for Supporting Yourself (Self-Care)
Whether expected or immediate, the death of a team member impacts the entire team, including your leadership group. Not only did you lose an employee and someone you cared about, but you have the added mission of keeping the work going. During these challenging times, taking care of yourself and allowing yourself to grieve the loss is essential. Here are some proven things you can do for exceptional self-care.
1. Make sure your relationships and spiritual practices (if you use any) are in order.
2. Be a buddy to yourself. Would you offer your best friend support and encouragement on a bad day? Would you cheer for them on a good one? Treat yourself with that same kindness.
4. Move more! You don’t need a gym membership for this. Just begin a simple walking and stretching program. Your body and your brain will thank you for it.
5. Use your meals as an act of self-care. When you eat, pause to notice you are taking time to nourish yourself. Rather than seeing how fast you can consume your meal (a nasty habit I picked up in the military), chew your food slowly. Savor the flavor as you add fuel to your body. One of the reasons for saying a blessing of thankfulness is to help us slow down. So, try it!
6. Get the rest your body needs. Seven to eight hours is a great goal and has been proven repeatedly to renew and refresh. Insomnia has been a significant issue in the past two years of Covid. Combine a 24-hour news cycle with other consequential disruptions, and sleep loss is the first thing you get. Do your best to go to bed and wake up simultaneously every night/morning. Try to stick to your routine.
7. Have a time of stillness and quietness in the morning. It could be a time of mindfulness, prayer, and meditation.
8. Limit your screen time and your news intake. Remember the old saying, “What you put in your brain is what comes out of it.” In other words, garbage in, garbage out!
9. Ask for some help. No, I do not necessarily mean therapy, although a good therapist could help. Here is a thought: experiment with giving someone else a chance to help you. It might be a friend, colleague, ministry leader, or mentor who can come alongside you to help, be an accountability partner, or just an encourager.
Leadership Summary
As a leader, you play a crucial role in how well your team manages the grieving process. In organizations, grief can be disenfranchised, stifled, hidden, or denied, or the driving process can manage it well. Flexible policies for time off, employee grief training, and institutional support such as grief counseling can help create a compassionate organization.[vii]
You can be that compassionate, influential leader with a reputation for caring for your people.
Additional Resources
Grief at Work: A Guide for Employees by the American Hospice Foundation link
How to Support Employees through Grief and Loss by Lisa Rabasca Roepe link
Call or contact John for a free consultation
John Thurman, LPCC, CCRS
Resilient Solutions International, LLC
505-306-0395
[i] Hazen, Mary Ann. “Grief and the Workplace.” Academy of Management Perspectives 22, no. 3 (2008): 78–86. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27747464.
[ii] Hirsh, Arlene. Helping Employees Cope with the Death of a Co-worker. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/helping-employees-cope-with-the-death-of-a-co-worker.aspx?fbclid=IwAR27UBq8T7KtSYE0yyVkxpfqouVmQRhCg9oZ8bJW14YbEbXCCAMsCdZYBSI. Accessed July 2, 2022
[iii] Field Manual 22-100, Washington, DC, 1990. https://armyoe.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/1990-fm-22-100.pdf, accessed, June 26, 2020.
[iv] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/improvise. Accessed July 2, 2022
[v] Hirsh, Arlene, Helping Employees Cope with the Death of a Co-worker, https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/helping-employees-cope-with-the-death-of-a-co-worker.aspx?fbclid=IwAR1oOe83_4JZxApQ4GFHcZ3p0cqQozPiRVFunho06K2FmsRMOc6Xdiizg1g, accessed June 20, 2022
[vi] Reese, April, “The Fog of Grief; The five stages of grief can’t begin to explain it: grief affects the body, brain and sense of self, and patience is the key. https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-brain-responds-to-grief-can-change-who-we-are. Accessed July 22, 2022
[vii] Hazen, Mary Ann. “Grief and the Workplace.” Academy of Management Perspectives 22, no. 3 (2008): 78–86.http://www.jstor.org/stable/27747464. Accessed July 7, 2022
