Five ways to support a colleague navigating a loss.

Written by Lucy Hudson, Managing Director at McCann Demand

The death rate in the UK is 1%, meaning that for every 1,000 people, every year ten of them will die. It is estimated that for every death nine people are left bereaved and grieving, meaning that a significant proportion of everybody around you is grieving at any one time. I am one of those people. You wouldn’t know it if you met me or spoke to me. You really wouldn’t notice it if you had a meeting with me at work or watched me present a pitch. And if you did notice, would you ask me about it…?

We’re really bad at talking about, and acting around, grief – particularly in the workplace. It’s often perceived that grief is for the home, on the sofa, with a box of tissues. It’s certainly not something you associate with the workplace or functioning humans. However, with grief so prolific at all times it is inevitably common in the workplace, despite remaining largely invisible and ignored.

My life collapsed in one day when I took my two-year-old daughter Poppy to a doctor’s appointment and ended up packed into an ambulance, moved into a hospital, seeing her taken into emergency surgery and be diagnosed with a brain tumour within 24 hours. What followed was ten months of surgeries, chemotherapy, tests and heartbreak, living primarily in hospitals, charity-funded homes and the end-of-life hospice where our gorgeous girl died aged two years nine months.

Rebuilding every part of your life after an experience and loss like that is tough, terrifying, slow and exhausting. And work plays a huge part in this. Marie Curie reports that over half of bereaved employees feel their work is still being affected months or years after returning and that many employers underestimate how many people are affected by bereavement. While organisational-level change is key to addressing these issues, we can all individually help to support our colleagues going through this journey.

1. Ask them about it

This often goes against everything you might feel to be natural but please approach their loss head on. Ask them how they are. And then ask again. Ask them about the person they’ve lost. Use their loved one’s name. If they don’t want to speak about it they can explain that, but very often the bereaved are tired of pretending they’re not struggling and avoiding talking about a massive thing that has happened to them. Child death seems to be the ultimate example of this and bereaved parents often find themselves avoided and ostracised, using their energy and mental capacity to make other people feel comfortable around them, to make others feel safe around their loss, dismissing their suffering or pretending to be fine. My daughter's name was Poppy. She loved Hey Duggee, spiders and raisins. She was our world.

2. Understand they’ve lost more than their person

While grief is overwhelmingly about the loss of a loved one, it's rarely acknowledged that the loss often stretches further than a death. For many this can be accompanied by the loss of financial security, their health, a support network or a future they had planned. For me and my husband, we were no longer parents, suddenly without a child to care for, and surrounded by triggers for our grief. I was also astonished at how much I worried about our financial situation. We both stopped working immediately with no knowledge of how long this would be for and were only able to keep our home because of the health insurance payments offered by my employer.

3. Give them the benefit of the doubt

Grief is more than feeling sad, more than crying in the toilets or being distracted at work. It can destroy your immune system, create chronic fatigue, manifest as physical pain, digestive problems, increased blood pressure and that’s before we consider the mental toll it takes. In my case I was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety and depression. I had seen and experienced things that no parent should ever go through and that saw me begin a long counselling journey to try to recover, a journey that continues today. Try to imagine having that much to cope with and then performing in your job every day as well.

4. Give them time

There seems to be an odd belief that grief ‘takes a year’. In fact, overwhelmingly grievers say that year two is the hardest because it's when everyone starts expecting them to be ‘better’ and they don’t feel any different. The journey I have been on has been long and painful – beginning in the early days when seemingly simple tasks were impossible, from leaving the house alone, speaking to others or driving a car to eventually rebuilding my family and returning to my job. This has taken me four years and will never be finished. I will always feel a sense of panic when asked how many children I have, feel that familiar tightness across my chest on key dates and cry when watching videos of my little monster. Remember this: nothing magically changes for grievers when the date gets to 12 months.

5. Let them do it their way

Finally, understand that there is no?‘right’ way to grieve. There is no roadmap and no right or wrong path for your colleagues to follow. Believe it or not judgement is also passed on the bereaved.?You should have time with your family and not worry about work. You should get back into work and forget about it. You should take your time. You should move on. God she’s had more children pretty quickly…?Ask what they need, what they want, what would help. Do not presume to know what is best and do not base their experience on those of others you have witnessed. Grief is different for everyone. Coping is different for everyone. The only thing we share is just how damned hard it is.

As business leaders our job is to never take things at face value – be it interrogating client briefs, digging deep into the numbers or getting to the bottom of staff culture. Yet with grief we shy away from the real truth, the scary and raw reality that so many of our staff are battling with every day. There will never be a one-size-fits-all approach but perhaps by talking more openly, more honestly about death, grief and our experiences we can advance our culture and policies to ensure better care for our staff and our mental health. So how will you personally support colleagues better moving forwards?

This article adds to McCann London’s Atomic Soup series?– a?collection of sharp or quirky insights written off the back of the company's creative brainstorming sessions, Atomic Soup.