There are over 600,000 deaths in the US attributed to Covid, as well as many other uncounted instances of loss and separation due to the pandemic. The result is that—despite a rapidly recovering economy and talk of entering a new ‘roaring 20s’—many Americans are carrying with them a significant burden of grief.
For thoughts on how this presents itself in the workplace and what we can do proactively about it, we spoke with Barri Leiner Grant, a grief coach who works with companies on issues related to bereavement. Below are excerpts of our conversation, edited for space and clarity:
How would you characterize the state of the workforce today in terms of the level of ambient grief and unresolved loss?
For the workforce in general, because we've had such a loss of connection from not being in offices, whether you've lost someone to Covid or you've just been away from the office, it's a loss of normalcy. I've named it all grief. A lot of people don't realize that what they're going through is grief. It shows up in a lot of other ways, but I would say on top of the Covid pandemic, we are now in what I would call the grief pandemic.
If I'm a colleague or an employer, what should I be doing?
First of all, you should have a very clear bereavement leave policy. If you don't have one, it would be a good thing to do in light of Covid. People are in fear of losing their job when they have lost a loved one; they are taking time off or they are not in the headspace to meet the requirements of work. Sixty-nine percent of employers grant three days, that's an average. And if you think about what needs to be done to not only process grief, but to make arrangements for a funeral. Or if it's a loss of a parent, what do we do with the children?
About nine people are affected with the loss of each person. If you think about that in the workplace, it's pretty significant. You'd be surprised—if you asked companies, ’What's your bereavement policy,’ many make you take paid leave. So you have to use vacation days, which I think is highly unacceptable. The best practices really are to have a bereavement leave policy firstly, and to figure out with input from employees what feels right. Maybe there are people who have experienced loss in the company already and they would have some input. Putting together some kind of a committee would be really amazing because there will be some people in the company that have lost a loved one that you may not even know have experienced that.
It's not something that we talk about. That's part of the reason that having these bereavement leave policies in place just offers the bereaved permission. And that's really what we need: permission to be able to take the time that we need to grieve. Some are fortunate where they work for a company that sees this as a compassionate thing to do to give your employees as much time as they need to put the pieces back together of a life that's forever changed. And other companies just don't have anything in place at all.
By Kevin Delaney
