Working While Grieving: Still Taboo after 2020?

This article is longer than what I typically write, because the issue of COVID-related grieving while working has seldom been addressed.

“2020; what a year! A hot mess. A dumpster fire. An excuse to eat cookies all day!” I have read many insults about 2020: on Twitter (where 2020 insulters use ALL CAPS inappropriately), on Facebook (where 2020 insults are shared with everyone you know), on TikTok (where 2020 insults also need a dance), and on Instagram (where 2020 insults have arty backgrounds). I used to laugh at 2020 insults but what is the point of insulting 2020 when we are all having the same experience? We’re all just trying to survive this pandemic. We are all just getting through each day, often by suppressing our fears and anxiety! We are all just dealing with with an amorphous, unbounded, gray, sense of loss.

Instead, I am looking for reasons to praise 2020. While thinking this way I found a hidden 2020 silver lining. Admittedly, I had to search really hard to find this one!

The virtual world makes grieving an abstraction

On a crisp Florida day in May 2020, I attended the double funeral of an elderly relative and her husband who both died of COVID-19 in New York City. In any other year that statement would elicit the typical “I am so sorry to hear about your loss”. In 2020, there was nothing typical of that funeral. There were two caskets, the funeral was streamed on Zoom, the immediate family members at the funeral home were all wearing masks, and there were none of the usually pre- or post-ceremony social interactions that occur when relatives gather to celebrate a life well-lived.

The most abnormal part of that day though, was that, just before the Zoom funeral I had participated in just another work meeting on Zoom. And, after the funeral, I continued to work for the rest of the day. More Zoom meetings in which I followed my patented Zoom protocol; good lighting … check, an interesting blouse … check, muted microphone … check, dispassionate face … check. No one with whom I worked knew anything about my angst. No one said “I am sorry to hear about your loss” because no one knew I had suffered a loss. I did not know how to share these feelings or how to seek support, in a virtual work world. But, as you will read a little later, the grieving was very, very real!

I attended two other live-streamed funerals for relatives this year. Grieving during a pandemic in which I am practicing social distancing feels like being in the 100th dimension of altered reality. Doing so along with the loved ones and friends of almost 300,000 COVID-19 victims has changed my life. I no longer think of the pandemic deaths as big, abstract numbers on a TV or computer screen. Grieving during the pandemic has actually shrunk the social distance. I feel a connection to the loved ones of the 300,000+.

Many who are dying of COVID-19 are in their prime

As of this writing (December 5, 2020) the death toll from COVID-19 in the United States since January 21, 2020 stands at approximately 275,000. From late January 2020 to early October 2020, the U.S. had approximately 299,000 excess deaths (the number of persons who have died from all causes, in excess of the expected number of deaths for a given place and time). Most of those excess death are attributable to COVID-19.

When reviewing these CDC data, I learned something that surprised me: there is a greater proportion of excess deaths among adults in their prime working years (25 to 44) than in other age groups. I had assumed, incorrectly, that the excess deaths would be greater among the elderly. This is one of the reasons, no doubt, why the CDC included frontline essential workers (non–health care workers) in Phase 1b of their COVID vaccine guidance. [Yes, this is a plug for the value of letting data and science guide public health policy. Sometimes what we think we know is actually fake. Science can help us dispel our ignorance.]

Those who died surely had loved ones, neighbors, and friends who were impacted by their deaths. Given what I just mentioned, they probably also had coworkers, supervisors, managers and leaders who were impacted by their deaths. It is very likely that their deaths were grieved not only in their personal networks, but also by those with whom they worked.

A large number of people are dying this year, but there is little mention of the grieving associated with these deaths. How come the grieving is invisible at work?

Are any of us coping well with all this grief in (corporate) America?

“I am outstanding!”, my stock response to “how are you doing?”, was not good enough this year. No matter how hard I tried, it was obvious that I struggled in 2020. So much callous disregard for the truth. So many deaths that could have been prevented. So many headlines that threatened to widen the already socially-distanced gulf.

As I dissected my 2020 grieving experiences, several things became clear. Given the high death rate from COVID, it is likely that a leader will, at some point, have someone on his/her team who will be dealing with a COVID-19 related death. Those odds go up if the team is racially/ethnically diverse, because people of color are being infected and are dying at higher rates than other Americans.

My own experiences this year made me realize that colleagues who are grieving remotely might not know how to get the emotional support from colleagues they would get when co-located in an office.

Supporting a grieving colleague in non-COVID times was hard, but more real

The death of a loved one is a personal event and each employee should be given the space to decide if they even want to share the experience with their coworkers. There is a spectrum of likely responses: some employees will share everything they are experiencing, some will mention the death but offer no more information, and others will share absolutely nothing. Each person’s response needs to be respected and those who are well-intentioned about wanting to help, need to respond in a way that matches the preferences of the person who is grieving.

When working in shared physical spaces, colleagues will, through verbal and non-verbal cues, let their colleagues know if they want support, of if they would prefer not to deal with their grief at work. In the physical environment, coworkers also pick up a lot of information that guides them to the best response.

• Awareness of the employee experience: Colleagues may hear about the death through the grapevine. They may even hear about the date of the funeral and may together come up with ways to support and shows respect to their colleague.
• Empathy: When the colleague is away taking care of the related family arrangements everyone knows they are gone and is everyone is attuned to their likely emotional tribulations.
• Emotional support: When the colleague returns to work, colleagues can tell from their day-to-day interactions if their team member wants / needs additional support.

In non-COVID times, team members’ emotional pain would be more obvious. Even when leaders did not know what to say, they would at least have a chance to more accurately evaluate their team members’ support needs. During the pandemic it is possible that some leaders might not even know when a member of their team has suffered a loss in their family.

Supporting a grieving colleague while working remotely is harder

When colleagues are working remotely, it is possible that leaders will have none of the visual and non-verbal cues that signal the colleague’s need for support. Unless the colleagues specifically communicate that they have had a death in the family, how would the leader or colleagues know? How will leaders know that their employee is suffering emotionally? When the colleague returns to work, how will the leader know what support is needed? How will colleagues know?

As with everything else about the pandemic, essential workers have it even worse; they have to grieve while following social distancing protocols that lessen connectedness. Healthcare workers have to grieve in an environment where the virus is omnipresent. Where the risk is unrelenting.

A recent Fortune magazine article made me feel as if the author, Maria Aspan, had been living inside my head for the last six months, undetected. In this article, Jamie Coakley, the vice president of people for the New York utility company, Electric, said: “How do you wake up in the morning and pretend you can come to work after experiencing something like that? You can’t.” The “something” Ms. Coakley was referring to was the death of a work colleague, James Stepney, in March 2020. Mr. Stepney had not died of COVID-19 but the timing of his unexpected death, and the supportive way in which it was handled by Electric’s leaders, offers a lesson for any leader who has to help him/herself or a colleague deal with grief at work.

This article gave me hope that grieving while working might become less of a taboo. We all know about the circle of life. Death is inevitable. When it happens on an imaginably large scale, could this shared experience help us all deal more effectively with the human-ness of death?

I study human behavior at work so it is typical that I would be thinking long and hard about all aspects of the COVID-19 workplace disruptions. I think about the coworkers of those we are losing to COVID-19. And I think about their leaders. How are leaders supporting grieving team members who are working remotely? And, I wonder, how are organizational leaders themselves coping?

A perfect response

My mother died in January 2018. The emotions are still vivid, and became more so in 2020. In 2020 death is everywhere.

Reactions to me during my period of grief were varied. Most felt they needed to say or do something, but did not know what to say or do. Some were so afraid that, to this day, they have not acknowledged that my mother died. Others sent a card, a text or an email to let me know they were thinking about me and that I could reach out them if I ever needed anything. Others were more smothering and more specific. The most common offer of help was “Do you want me to bring you some food?” [For the record, lentil soup is always welcome.] Each of these varied responses was OK with me. I understood that reaching out to a person who is grieving is a scary thing to do. I can also say for sure that a person who is grieving will remember, and appreciate your outreach, even if they do not have the emotional energy to say so.

This year, when I told my colleague Mark Gonzales about the death of my uncle, in London, he responded,

“tell me something about your uncle that makes you smile!”

That response was perfect. I broke down … with laughter, thinking about my uncle’s obsession with his garden, and his … ahem … fondness for a good single malt with his boys at the pub.

It turns out that the best way to help a person who is grieving is to make the human connection. Even better if you can make them smile. Soup is funnier than you might think. Sometimes memories are the best medicine.

Taboo broken? I hope so.

Lesson learned? Yes. Don’t do what I did. Get the support you need.

2020 silver lining? Definitely!

Resources to help with grief (especially in the work context):

I particularly recommend the work by Jenny Doman Lisk.

• Aspan, M. (2020, September 27). 5 better ways to help your employees mourn at the office. Fortune. Downloaded from https://fortune.com/2020/09/27/coronavirus-mourning-grief-at-work-covid-19/
• Aspan, M. (2020, September 27). The biggest risk in business right now is grief. Fortune. Downloaded from https://fortune.com/2020/09/27/covid-grief-at-work-business-coronavirus-mental-health/?showAdminBar=true
• Bento, R.F. (1994). When the Show Must Go on: Disenfranchised Grief in Organizations. Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 9 №6, pp. 35–44. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683949410070197
• Giannini, G. A. (2021). Negotiating grief through work-life relationships: A qualitative analysis of bereaved employees’ emotional constraints, organizational roles and responsibilities, and the intersections of social support at home and work on adjustment following loss. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 82(3-B).
• Kessler, D. (2020). Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. NY: Scribner.
• Lisk, J. (2021). Future widow: Losing my husband, saving my family, and finding my voice. Bluhen Books. Website and podcast: https://jennylisk.com Goodreads:https://bit.ly/2Jwo4eR Amazon: https://amzn.to/3mPIvSb
• Mallick, M. (2020, October 5). It’s Time to Rethink Corporate Bereavement Policies. Harvard Business Review. Downloaded from https://hbr.org/2020/10/its-time-to-rethink-corporate-bereavement-policies
• Petriglieri, G and Maitlis, S. (2019, July-August)). When a Colleague Is Grieving. Harvard Business Review. Downloaded from https://hbr.org/2019/07/when-a-colleague-is-grieving