I am Supporting a Grieving Colleague
While many of us will have experience of supporting a colleague who is bereaved and grieving, it is still something that employees find challenging. Oftentimes, there can be a fear of saying or doing the wrong thing which can sometimes prevent people from giving the care and support they would like to be able to give.
Follow our guidance below to help you support a grieving colleague:
Things your colleague may be experiencing:
- Grief is a reaction to a bereavement (the death of someone born or unborn) or a significant life loss (e.g. separation, fertility loss) and is not something that employees will simply ‘get over’ quickly. Grief takes the time it takes.
- People will sometimes describe their lives as forever changed after a significant loss and grieving allows a person to accommodate this change (albeit extremely difficult) into their lives.
- Every person grieves differently and this will depend on may factors such as: the relationship they had with the person who died, the circumstances of the death, other stressors in the employee’s life (e.g. caring duties, financial stress) and the support they have available. Not every employee will have access to the same amount of support.
- Grief can be all consuming and impact all aspects of a person’s health and wellbeing. Employees may show signs of stress during this time or be more susceptible to mental or physical illness. This may show up as being overwhelmed at work, emotional displays such as irritableness or tearfulness, or feelings of depression and anxiety.
- A grieving person may experience many difficult emotions – words that employees have used to describe grief – painful, a void, emptiness, numbness, shock, sadness, anger, guilt, loneliness, heaviness, all encompassing, exhaustion.
- People who grieve often describe feeling lonely – this can happen in particular at work when a person is expected to resume their normal duties and be their ‘usual self’ but in reality, they do not feel this way. An employee may withdraw more from people, if they feel they cannot be their full and true self.
- Grieving employees need to able to distract themselves in order to cope with the loss, and work can provide healthy distractions from the difficulties they are experiencing. However, the workplace culture will need to be one of openness, kindness, and care, in which a person can safely express themselves.
Ways you can support your grieving colleague:
Acknowledge
One of the most important things for people is to have their bereavement or loss acknowledged. Don’t shy away from this because you find it difficult. Find an appropriate time and space to verbally tell the person that you are thinking of them.
Validate
To validate someone’s loss means to really listen to what they are saying by empathising and showing a true and non-judgmental understanding of how they feel. You can do this by:
- Letting them speak freely and avoiding interruptions
- Not saying something that minimises their loss e.g. ‘a well at least they didn’t suffer.’
- Not turning the conversation back to yourself
- Providing non-judgmental responses that show compassion rather than an opinion e.g. ‘It must have been so difficult for you to have gone through this…’ or ‘It sounds like you had an extremely challenging few months.’
Support
To support someone who is grieving means to offer support not only in the short-term when they return to work, but to continue to show your support over the longer term, as this is often when people find it most difficult. You can do this by:
- Providing emotional support (a listening ear, checking in)
- Providing practical support (help with a work task, making a cup of tea or picking up lunch)
- Creating opportunities to spend some time together (suggesting a walk)
- Looking up information for them e.g. EAP, IHF Bereavement Support Line
- Remembering key dates (anniversary of the person)
- Using the person’s name who died
- Turning the story back to you or your experience of a death particularly in the immediate aftermath
- Using minimising statements like ‘Well at least he lived a good long life’ or ‘They are in a better place now.’
- Asking questions about the manner in which the person died (particularly if a person died by suicide or by a traumatic accident)
- Avoiding the person – it’s important to ensure they feel supported and can have a normal enough return to work. Act the way you would have always acted towards them but with additional compassion
- Bombarding the person with information or requests. They need time to settle back in on their first week and may find it harder then usual to handle their workload
For more information you can access the following resources below:
– Our 10-minute eLearning course: Loss and the Grieving Process,
– Our Supporting a Grieving Colleague Leaflet, or
– Watch our short video on the AVS model
Managers will be required to take more specific steps to support employees returning to work after a bereavement – if you wish to learn more, you can take our eLearning course, designed specifically for those in management or supervisory roles.
You can also watch our short video on Grief Training for Managers.
