Can bereaved employees bring their ‘whole selves’ to work?
Unlike the increasing support for parental leave, there is rarely any discussion about what should be done for grieving employees.
Especially in the last few years, there has been a shift in the cultural conversation around employee benefits. As the pandemic continues to refashion our approach to the workplace, the workday, and work itself, policies like paid parental leave are becoming more commonplace. While the U.S. remains the world’s only industrialized country without a national paid family leave policy, inroads are being made on the state level, and many employers have responded to the growing call for adequate time off for new parents.
There is, however, an important aspect of family leave that is too often left out of this conversation, and which desperately needs to be addressed: bereavement leave. Like the birth of a child, a death in the family is a huge life event that affects every aspect of an employee’s world. It impacts their time, their state of mind, their productivity, even their health and wellbeing. And yet unlike the increasing support for parental leave, there is rarely any parallel discussion about what should be done for grieving employees.
Related: Grief in the workplace & how resilience can help
Bereavement leave, sometimes known as funeral leave, is uncommon in the U.S. Even when provided, it is often inadequate: Only one state, Oregon, has a law mandating bereavement leave, but only unpaid leave, and only for a limited list of relations. (Those grieving a sibling in Oregon, for example, are in the same boat as anyone in the other 49 states.) Nationwide, among employers who do provide some form of leave for bereaved employees, the standard time off is just three days.
This is clearly not enough time, no matter how you view it. Leaving aside the incredible emotional turmoil that grief brings, the bureaucracy and logistical arrangements involved with a loss are astounding. They can take hours per day and often stretch on for months. Employers’ expectation that grieving workers be back at their desks and productive after a few days or a week is unrealistic and serves neither the employee nor the company.
The solution isn’t quite as simple as adding more bereavement leave—though that would be a good start. In addition to giving them paid time off, employers should be thinking more about how they can offer appropriate support to employees going through such a major life change. A comprehensive bereavement policy is one way to encourage workers to bring their whole selves to the office, and in the end make for a more cohesive, happy, and productive workforce.
Troubles bereaved workers face
People sometimes misunderstand grief as a state of sadness that passes in a short time. The truth is that grief is a complex process that involves so much more than just sadness. Grieving people experience a range of different and often confusing emotions, and it can affect their relationships, their memory, their concentration, their energy, their sleep, their health, and more. In a recent report commissioned by my company, Empathy, 31% of survey respondents said they found it hard to concentrate at work after experiencing a loss in the family; 52% reported that their job performance was harmed.
Because grief has no timeline but its own, this acute period can last anywhere from weeks to months, meaning that bereaved employees often have to choose between going to work while still emotionally impaired, or using vacation days, taking unpaid leave, or even risking being let go to take the time to heal properly.
Complicating the grieving process, many people who have experienced a loss in the family also have a huge list of unfamiliar bureaucratic responsibilities to take care of. They must plan a funeral, file a will, and close bank accounts. There are often dozens of phone calls to make, stacks of forms to fill out, and even multiple court dates to attend. These responsibilities can take a long time to finally complete–in many cases as long as 18 months. All of which makes it even harder for them to deal with their grief, not to mention to focus and be productive at work.
We may assume that if a worker is back at his or her desk, that means they have dealt with whatever they needed to deal with and are ready to tackle their work. But without bereavement policies that can account for and adapt to the true effects of loss, this is rarely true. Most bereaved employees are returning to work long before they are ready. This is bad for the worker, but it’s also a net negative for the employer if their employees are distracted, tired, less productive, and lower in morale.
More than just bereavement leave
Bereavement leave is important and necessary, but adding more days of paid leave is not enough in itself. To truly help bereaved workers in the way they most need—and to keep them productive, effective, and loyal—employers must look into changing how they treat them even when they are back at their desks.
Flexible schedules, generous work-from-home rules, an understanding approach to when and how a worker may need collaborative support from other members of their team, and situation-relative evaluation policies are just some examples of how employers may allow workers to deal with their grief the way they need to. Because every person experiences and handles grief differently, the key is to be open, flexible, and listen to their needs: some don’t want any special treatment, some need resources and assistance, and some just need to feel heard.
It is thus also crucial that we train managers effectively on how to communicate with employees when they are suffering from loss and put best practices in place for when this arises. Flowers or a card signed by every member of their department is a nice gesture, but there’s so much that can be done to support those in grief. Managers need to learn from the experts in the field of grief, and they deserve clear guidelines about when and how they should reach out and/or give space, how to have conversations about what kinds of flexibility the worker needs and how best to supply it, and so on.
Finally, we need bereavement policies that recognize that grief is unpredictable and irrational. Current leave regulations often restrict leave to a list of allowed relatives. But we do not only experience acute grief when our immediate relatives die. It is very common to find oneself deeply grieving for a cousin, a friend, or a childhood teacher. Policies that only allow bereavement leave for immediate family not only ignore the true reality of grief, they also communicate a level of distrust to employees by suggesting that they may take advantage of more generous rules.
Whole workers, whole lives
In today’s more demanding labor market, employers have increasingly come to understand the value of treating their workers as individuals, each with their own lives and interests and struggles.
In order to do so, companies need to foster greater awareness of their employees’ life events. If we promote such policies when a life comes into the world, we should do no less when one passes out of it.
In many ways, bereavement is a perfect example of how employers can make their workers feel seen and supported as whole people, through policies that promote work-life balance in line with each employee’s unique experience and needs. If companies truly want their employees to bring their whole selves to work, there is so much that they can improve when it comes to a worker’s experience of loss.
Ron Gura is co-founder and CEO of Empathy.
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