Experiencing a personal bereavement is always distressing, especially when it is unexpected.
Stigma around grieving, and a lack of understanding about what happens when you’re dying, mean that too many of us are struggling to cope when faced with life’s inevitable challenges. And the workplace is no exception.
My lovely father died following a relatively short illness, when I had just returned to the workplace following a career break to bring up my children.
Getting back into the workplace had been more difficult than expected. In my early forties, I had the time to give as my children were in their teens, but going back into the legal profession after several years away was not easy.
Three months after I returned to work, my father’s partner contacted me in a distressed state, she needed me to look after my father as she too had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Without hesitation I brought my father from his home in Northumberland to my home in Sussex.
It soon became clear that he could not be left on his own when I was working part-time and, with the trips to hospital for palliative care needs, we needed outside help if I was able to stay at work. I was torn between looking after him full-time and staying in a job I had worked so hard to get.
He did not want me to stop working and we were fortunate to be able to employ a live-in carer but the guilt I felt, even working part-time, was enormous. I cannot imagine what it is like for people who are struggling to hold down a job and care for a loved one who is dying without help.
My father died about six months after he came to live with me.
My employer gave me three days compassionate leave. His funeral was on a Friday, and I went back to work the following Monday, a week after he died. My colleagues and the senior partner were kind to me when I came back to work – but I asked them not to be. I felt it was easier for me to hold myself together when people did not express their sympathy.
Looking back, it was clear that while I was trying to keep a ‘stiff upper lip’, I needed more time. It would have been more considerate and compassionate of my employer if I had been given some more time to grieve.
Research by Hospice UK has shown that 57% of employees will have experienced a bereavement in the last five years and every day, more than 600 people quit work to look after older and disabled relatives . And yet, fewer than one in five managers feel very confident supporting someone they manage with a bereavement .
We spend so much of our lives at work, we shouldn’t have to hide our experience of death and dying from our colleagues. People deal with grief in different ways. It is important for employers to provide support bearing in mind a particular employee’s needs. An open and flexible approach would benefit the employer as much as an employee.
I do not know whether my former employer had any workplace guidance on how to communicate with, or what to do, when an employee is going through a bereavement.
I think it is worth any employer making sure written workplace guidance around death and dying is available, so that both employees and employers have a clearer idea what to expect when facing death, dying or grief.
Since becoming an MP in 2019, two members of my wonderful team have been through traumatic family bereavements – both unexpected and shockingly tragic.
My instinct to give them both as much time as they needed (and on full pay), was the right thing to do. They needed space to be with family and friends and process what they had been through, without worrying about work. I did not shy away from conversations about their loss, I made the
effort to be empathetic to their needs.
One came back to work after three weeks, the other did not return – making the decision to focus on their family.
Grief hits us often when we least expect it or can be triggered for no specific reason, and it is important for employers to recognise this. When coming back to work, employees may need some flexibility until they hit their stride again.
They certainly need empathy and compassion, but how an employer supports employees who are caring for a loved one or grieving can make all the difference – not only to an employee, but to the employer and the workplace as a whole.
When an employee feels supported in their workplace by colleagues and their employer, they are less likely to feel the need to leave work or find a new employer that can support their needs.
Dying Matters Awareness Week 2023 takes place between the 8th -14th May, and this year’s theme focuses on ‘Dying Matters at Work’.
It is an opportunity for us all to have conversations about dying, about death – to overcome the stigma of saying the wrong thing – or, worse, saying or doing nothing at all.
Being able to talk about death, dying and grief in the workplace is important because death happens to all of us and all our loved ones. I know being able to talk about death at work would have helped me. We need to know how we can best support each other, whether employer or employee,
because if dying matters, then it matters at work too.
