Last month I was invited to give a keynote speech at a conference. Nothing unusual there. The topic they requested though was unusual, and the panel convened to continue the discussion, that was remarkable.  

Life, Death, and Everything in Between was the title, and the panel of C-suite execs who followed me on the stage shared their own stories of loss and grief. In front of a huge audience of colleagues and competitors, four brave Australians shared what happened, how they reacted, how they did or didn’t manage to juggle work and grief, and the impact it’s had on them - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Was anyone embarrassed? Was it awkward? Did the event organisers regret openly focusing on loss and grief? Did anyone walk out of the room, too uncomfortable to witness their colleagues’ pain? The answer is no. Judging by the huge applause and the buzz in the room afterwards, the audience respected and appreciated these leaders’ willingness to ‘go there’. Attendees’ interest, compassion, and empathy were palpable.

So many people commented to me afterwards about the lack of support shown to them at work when they were grieving. Lots of people asked me about best-practice ways to support employees through grief and loss, and suggested fantastically practical ways they’d found to show support for someone grieving. Throughout the rest of the day, and into the evening when we went out to dinner, people came to either share their stories, or request more information on how to be there for someone who is grieving.

Personally, I was astounded, and hugely relieved. In fact, my heart swelled. Finally, people were talking about these things.

How often is grief discussed at work? Rarely. This conference gave me hope, and for good reason. We need to be able to talk about significant losses (and other transitions) that cause us to grieve at work because not doing so is causing harm. Harm for the individuals involved who suffer in silence. Harm for the wider team, so painfully aware of the elephant in the room not being addressed. But, if it helps me to talk about the harm for an organisations’ bottom line, I can do that too.

The research is clear. Grief affects an employee’s ability to function at work. How it’s handled has broader consequences for team, culture, and organisational reputation too. Many studies demonstrate the far-reaching impact of poorly managed grief at work on absenteeism, presenteeism, fractured relationships and poor team morale, staff retention and attraction. I’ve seen the studies showing that grieving people feel better supported by their pets than their co-workers; that fewer than one in five managers feel confident supporting a team member who’s grieving; that 77% of 18–34-year-olds say they’d leave their current job if they didn’t get the support they needed.

At Coping With Loss, we’re on a mission to change that. So, seeing this particular work community igniting conversations about hard things, and witnessing the compassionate response from everyone present, gave me hope that change is afoot. I’m so impressed by the forward-thinking, compassionate organisations that pay for their employees to attend our grief courses, who invite us to run workshops on better handling grief at work, who share my TED talk and who continually gift copies of my Resilient Grieving book to staff who need it. Yes, they are still few and far between, but they are out there, and myself, Denise, and the team are being asked for resources to help support those who are coping with loss at work more and more regularly. Hooray for that.

Caring for your employees’ wellbeing - in bad times as well as good – makes sense for your organisation, but there are bigger benefits here, beyond risk management. Doing so forms a critical part of the effective wellbeing and DEI strategies that will get the best from your people; the organisations doing this well are the ones that will attract and retain the best people and enable them to deliver their full potential over the long-term.

For almost a decade I’ve been speaking openly about my grief and listening to others talk about theirs, as part of our mission to change the way societies approach grief. To shine a light on its presence; to give people permission to talk about it; to challenge our largely grief-phobic, grief-awkward, grief-denying and grief illiterate societies.

You can join in on our mission too. Together we can dismantle one of the greatest taboos. Talk about your grief. Share your feelings. Ask others about theirs. Listen, don’t compare. Yes, it may make you cry, and you might fear opening the floodgates, but studies show sharing stories, being listened to without judgment, helps people heal. So, let’s create organisational cultures where these essential life conversations can be had at work too.

Loss is everywhere and affects everyone. It’s universal. It hits us in so many different forms: death, divorce, dementia, infertility, miscarriage, family estrangement, redundancy, physical impairment, life-changing diagnoses, and mental illness. The list is long.

I’ve had enough of hearing how shunned and repressed the grieving feel and seeing firsthand the damage that does. Let’s stop pretending these terrible things aren’t happening; that they’re not relevant to the work domain. Let’s start being wholly human, real, and honest.

Let’s talk about all of it: life, death, and everything in between.

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