Good Grief

Making Grief Work At Work

Have you ever had to grieve while still, you know, making money for living? From personal experience, it’s painful, and it only adds to the emotional exhaustion that comes from going through the healing process.

Navigating grief is challenging from an employer’s perspective, too, with overlaps into professional engagement, boundaries, and the ongoing impact on their personal life. Comfort Communication, a new approach for managing this pain point, is attempting to transform how companies address this sensitive issue.

Co-founders Jason Seiden and Lisa Arroyo Seiden (Cervenka) both personally touched by traumatic loss, saw a need for a different approach. "We both struggled in our healing because others didn't know how to effectively communicate with us," they shared with me. This sparked their drive to create a company that could make a tangible difference in how workplaces can handle grief in a practical way.

Comfort Communications Company (Comfort) was built as a response to what Jason and Lis viewed as fundamental flaws in the way many organizations currently address grief. They pointed to three core problems:

• A Lack of Safety. Employees are often uncertain about how to offer support without crossing professional boundaries.
• Issues of Scalability. Current solutions, which often rely on individual managers or limited counseling resources, simply can't meet the needs of larger organizations.
• Effectiveness Concerns. Traditional resources like Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and mental health apps can lack the depth and nuance needed to truly address the complexities of grief.

Comfort offers a different path. They use protocols to help provide practical tools and resources that empower both employees and managers to navigate difficult conversations around grief with empathy and understanding. By providing clear guidance and custom consulting, they can foster a workplace culture where grief is acknowledged and supported rather than ignored.

"Our mission is to normalize conversations around grief," they emphasized. "We want to equip people with the tools they need to offer genuine support."

Comfort represents a potential shift in how organizations address loss in the workplace. By fostering open dialogue and understanding, Jason and Lis hope to create an environment where employees feel supported and empowered to navigate grief with compassion and respect.

Have a new idea to share with work leaders? Get in touch!

Quick hits from around the web

What else is happening??

More Meetings, More Loneliness: How to Fix Workplace Isolation, by me for Reworked . Surprise: Endless meetings are making employees lonelier and more isolated — just what everyone needed.

5 Ways HR Leaders Can Turn Their Innovative Ideas Into Action, by Dawn Kawamoto for HR Executive . Mary Faulkner and Kimberly Carroll show that while innovative ideas are great, they also need action plans to avoid gathering dust in notebooks.

Anthropic's Chief of Staff Avital Balwit on AI and Remote Work, by Orianna Rosa Royle for Fortune . Avital Balwit of Anthropic discusses the double-edged sword of AI and how it might affect remote workers.

9 Future of Work Concepts That Need More Attention, by Lisa Morgan for InformationWeek . Good stuff here that isn’t just AI, AI, and AI.?

What Makes a Successful Talent Acquisition Strategy, by Amanda Schiavo for HR Brew . Spoiler: hiring the right people takes more than just good intentions. Here is some guidance from ServiceNow ’s Jacqui Canney .

The Rise of Mandatory RTO: Talent Acquisition Opportunity for Remote Businesses, by Anisha Chawla for BenefitsPRO . The return-to-office mandates are remote organizations’ golden ticket to top talent.

The Next Frontier in Remote Work: Working from a Blimp, by Adam Overland for The Minnesota Star Tribune . Just when you thought remote work couldn't get weirder—here comes the blimp office.

Zoom CEO on AI Clones and Digital Twins, by Nilay Patel for The Verge . Zoom 's CEO envisions a future with AI clones and digital twins — because regular video calls aren't creepy enough.

Even Among Gen Z, More Men Than Women Use AI. Here's Why That Matters, by Jena McGregor for Forbes . Gender disparity strikes again: even tech-savvy Gen Z shows a gap in AI usage, and it's a big deal.

Does U.S. Manufacturing Have a Child Labor Problem?, by Ryan Secard for IndustryWeek . Child labor in U.S. manufacturing? Yes, it's an issue, and it's uglier than you think.

Need Some Help Writing Cringe LinkedIn Posts? I Got You

Bret Starr isn't the only person who can create cool GPTs. If you’re looking for help creating the cringiest content for LinkedIn, let me introduce you to my newest custom GPT: General Business Social Network Cringe Creator. Put in the most benign accomplishments, personal oversharing, or life lessons from your dog or kid and this GPT will litter your post with emojis, fake stats, generic business lessons, bad AI images, and clickbait lead-ins.?

If you use it, please tag me and let me know if you feel your soul leave your body while copying and pasting the outcome.

That's it for this week!?

Lance

[Shameless Plug]

About The Starr Conspiracy

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