I returned to work five weeks after my sister’s death to a brisk ‘welcome back’ from my boss as she hurried past me in the corridor. I assumed I would be pulled aside at some point later that day to discuss how I was doing following such a major life event – I was wrong.
When I raised the issue with my university supervisor when discussing possible research topics some six months later he looked at me with a somewhat surprised expression on his face and asked me whether she should be expected to care?
It got me thinking whether our move in to the 21st century has caused us to lose sight of the fact that the workplace is a human environment.
Are we so uncomfortable with death that we turn our backs on our colleagues to save ourselves the awkwardness of having to engage with such a raw part of life? How many other people return to work following a bereavement to find themselves set adrift with no support?
With these questions in mind I decided to investigate how New Zealand organisations implement their bereavement policies and in doing so I discovered that many of us are ill equipped to deal with the complexities of grief.
The research study
Six Auckland-based human service organisations took part in the research with participants coming from managerial or human resource positions. Data was collected through each organisations individual employment agreements, outlining their policy surrounding bereavement leave, and through email interviews with the participants.
All follow the Department of Labour (1) guidelines regarding bereavement leave in New Zealand, whereby following six continuous months of service all employees are entitled to a minimum of three days paid bereavement leave following the death of an immediate family member.
All of the organisations involved offer the standard 3 – 5 days of paid bereavement leave, with additional unpaid leave being considered on a case by case basis.
One organisation follows a tiered approach whereby the amount of unpaid leave granted is dependent on an employee’s relationship with the deceased. Three organisations are particularly flexible, acknowledging the individuality of each employee, with one participant stating that the employment contract is a guide but raises questions as to who prescribes our relationships – a close friend could be closer to the employee than their estranged family.
A lack of cultural sensitivity
An interesting comment was made by one participant who stated that they find Maori staff ‘problematic’ due to the amount of time off they require to fulfil cultural obligations and the frequency of their bereavements, which then impacts on service delivery within the organisation.
This reinforces views held by researchers such as Ngata (2) who identify a lack of cultural sensitivity and understanding displayed by some New Zealand employers in relation to Maori bereavement practices and rituals.
The length of time an employee had been with an organisation also impacted on how flexible some of the organisations were prepared to be, with one participant stating that staff that had been there the longest would receive more flexibility than newer staff.
Most participants mentioned outsourced sources of support such as their Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), half mentioned they would conduct regular ‘check-ins’, while the remaining half made no mention of this.
Flexible working hours were deemed by one organisation as ‘nice’ but ‘impractical’. Overall there was a general consensus among the participants that they did not feel they possessed the knowledge or skills necessary to support a grieving employee. There was also a view held by some of the participants that service delivery needed to be their main focus so as to ensure fulfilment of their contractual obligations.
Bereavement is a blind spot for employers
Charles-Edwards (3), in his research in to empowering bereaved individuals in the workplace, cites a 1998 Wall St Journal article which states that bereavement is a blind spot for employers and that our workplace attitudes towards grief and loss remain firmly stuck in the industrial age.
This leads one to wonder; if we as a society know it’s such a big problem, why is management literature and training not addressing it? The answer most likely lies in the very real and complex relationship western society has with grief. A relationship that is shaped by a society embedded with capitalist values and an emphasis on productivity, consumerism and materialism, where competition arguably outranks compassion.
In a world that often appears driven by money, what we have perhaps lost sight of is that an organisation’s most important resource will always be its human resource. Ignoring a grieving employee can prove a breeding ground for the formation of a negative organisational culture and high staff turnover.
‘Grief infiltrates all aspects of our lives’
With most employees returning to work mere days after suffering a major bereavement, training programs need to be established to ensure that employers are emotionally competent and prepared to deal with the sensitive issues that surround grief.
Our move in to the 21st century needs to come with an understanding that our health and safety obligations no longer just relate to managing the possible physical hazards of our job, but that there is a demand for a much more holistic and psychosocial approach in which we demonstrate a realisation that our colleagues are not machines or parts on a production line but human beings.
The reality is that grief infiltrates all aspects of our lives, it does not exist in a vacuum and therefore a grieving individual will also be a grieving employee. We don’t leave the house each morning, lock the door and leave our grief behind; rather we carry it with us wherever we go, often invisible to those around us but ever present as we put on the mask and play the role society has come to expect of us.
Grief can’t be compartmentalised and I struggle to understand why we would want it to be. It is through allowing ourselves to fully experience all the facets of life that we grow as individuals and become the people we were born to be. It does not have to be as difficult, complex or as uncomfortable as we have made it out to be.
Acknowledgement and support
At the end of the day what did I want from my manager?
All I really wanted was for her to acknowledge what had happened and to ask how she could best support me – it would have been unlikely I would have asked the organisation for anything, knowing the support was there if I needed it would have been enough.
If I was faced today with the earlier question posed to me by my supervisor as to whether managers should be expected to care my response to that would be this: I left the organisation a year after my sister’s death, a decision greatly influenced by that one brief encounter in a corridor, so my question to him would be – can they afford not to?
References
- (1) Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment [Internet]. Wellington: Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; 2012 [cited 2012 September 28]. Available from: http://www.dol.govt.nz/infozone/businessessentials/basics/leave/bereavement-leave.asp
- (2) Schwass M, Editor. Last Words: Approaches to Death in New Zealand’s Cultures and Faiths. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books Limited; 2005.
- (3) Charles-Edwards D. Empowering people at work in the face of death and bereavement, Death Studies. 2009; 33(5): 420
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