Managers: Here’s how to support a grieving employee

Loss is a fact of life. Sooner or later, every one of us will lose loved ones, and those losses create a rip in the fabric of our lives. To start to repair that tear, we engage in a grieving process that helps us rewrite the story of our lives in a way that eventually allows us to move forward without the presence of the individual we have lost.



The grief process is powerful, but it is slow. It can take weeks or months (and sometimes longer) for someone to feel somewhat whole again. Yet, society doesn’t give us weeks or months to go through that process before expecting us to be able to function effectively in key life tasks, like our work.



If one of your employees experiences a significant loss, there are several things you can do to help this person heal while also helping them to contribute to the work that needs to be done.



Understand the grief process



Lots of people have heard of the “five stages of grief” that were originally described by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross . Interestingly, these stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) were first described for people who had received a diagnosis of a terminal illness, though they apply to all kinds of significant losses, including the death of a loved one.



The most important thing to remember about these stages is that they are not obligatory, and they do not necessarily happen in a particular order. In addition, people are likely to cycle between different phases over time. So, it isn’t a regression if you felt like you had accepted a loss and then, a week later, find yourself angry about it.



Another important facet of grief is that you often feel like you’re doing better than you actually are. That is, if people ask how you’re doing a month after a significant loss, you are likely to say you’re doing fine. When you look back on that period months later, though, you may recognize that you were still struggling.



As a manager, then, you want to remind yourself that a particular individual has suffered a loss and that even six months afterward, they may have bad days in which their performance suffers. Also, grief saps people’s resilience. So, even when they appear to be doing well, a minor setback can cause a significant reaction. It’s important to give people grace in this period. There is no value in calling it out. Let the overreaction slide if you can.



Ease grieving employees back into stressful work



Because grieving people have low resilience, it’s important to be mindful of how much stress they’re having to handle. If you have an employee in a customer-facing role, you might want to give them less stressful shifts or avoid having them deal with high-stress customers and clients.



In addition, make sure that when you are putting a grieving employee in a stressful situation that they have some backup, so that if they need some support it is easily available.



That said, you also want to give people some latitude to decide how much work they can take on during the grieving process. Grief affects people in different ways. Some people would rather concentrate on work as they deal with their feelings, while others need to take the time to process their emotions. Give your employees an opportunity to decide for themselves how they want to engage with their road back to work.



Still, if an employee chooses to take on strenuous tasks, monitor their performance. People do not always make the best decisions when grieving and might take on more than they can handle. If you see signs of impending failure, catching that before it spins out of control will benefit both the organization and the employee.



Listen carefully



Because a central purpose of grieving is to reweave the tapestry of your life story following a loss, there is a lot of storytelling that goes on. When you have an employee who has suffered a loss, they are likely to want to talk about it, but may not know how to.



Often, grieving employees are reluctant to bring up anything in the workplace related to that loss for fear that the conversation is not appropriate. Go out of your way to ask questions about the person they lost and how they’re doing. If they start to tell stories, listen.



It turns out that you don’t need to do much more than that. The storytelling is really for them, not for you. Providing a sympathetic ear creates an environment that actually can speed the healing process by creating more opportunities for the person to develop a new narrative that helps make sense of their life as it is now.



You might think that you need to say something profound or helpful in response to someone’s story. You really don’t. Thanking someone for talking with you and expressing empathy with their loss is the most important thing you can do.