Tilak Mandadi : 3 ways companies can support grieving employees

 Tilak Mandadi·TED@BCG

3 ways companies can support grieving employees 

Summary 

People think that after experiencing big grief, they couldn’t work. The speaker lost his daughter, though, he suggests that for most of us, our lives mean to get up and get back to work while living with the grief.  Work might start for just productive, however, it will evolve to being truly therapeutic and meaningful for not only the person but also colleagues and employees. 

When you lose the most precious thing in your life, you gain a lot of humility and a very different perspective free of egos and agendas. 

For that, companies have to create a culture of empathy in the workplace. It’s not sympathy and not compassion. It’s not only to be able to support a grieving employee but also to inspire a great deal of loyalty for all people in the workplace. 

The ways are to have policies that let an employee deal with their loss in place 1), to provide return-to-work therapy to the employee as an integral part of the health benefits package 2), and to provide training for all employees on how to support each other 3).

This is one thing that increases productivity that we didn’t realize.