The Impact of Grief in the Workplace

Grief is defined much more broadly than the effects of the loss of a loved one.  People feel grief whenever they experience trauma or change.  A cancer diagnosis can trigger grief, a family member’s battle with addiction, a divorce, the loss of a pet, a spouses loss of a job, a parent diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, failure to get that big promotion, the list of what can trigger grief is endless.  Many are rightfully calling the stress caused by the isolation and unemployment of the “stay at home orders” caused by the Coronavirus, a form of grief.  And now, the uncertainty of people’s safety when returning work is creating fear, anxiety, and other symptoms of grief.

Here are some sobering facts that impact US workers every year.  By no means is this a complete list:

• 2.8 million deaths
• 2.4 million divorces
• 1.7 million cancer diagnosis
• 10.3 million opioid addictions

Assuming only ONE person is impacted by each item on this shortlist of traumatic events, that translates to 17,200,000 people or 5.2% of the population that show up to work in some state of grief.  Stated another way, for every hundred people you have working for you five are grieving.  As you can imagine, these numbers are likely greatly understated, and could easily be multiple times larger as you add to the list of factors or the number of people impacted by each event.

A study conducted by The Grief Recovery Institute estimates the annual loss of productivity due to grieving employees could be as high as seventy-five BILLION dollars.  Here are some other interesting facts from the study:

• Illness or death in a family is the second most common problem affecting workforce performance
• 90% of grieving employees in physical jobs are more likely to get injured due to lack of concentration
• 70% of grieving people surveyed report an increase or new use of alcohol or mood-altering substances to help them cope
• 90% of grieving people surveyed reported a reduction in their ability to concentrate following a loss

Yet leading grieving employees is not taught in any business school or any training program.

GriefLeaders if focused on changing these numbers.

To continue to learn more about leading emotionally traumatized or grieving employees, follow us on LinkedIn.

If you have experienced grief in the workplace as either a grieving employee or a leader of a grieving employee, we would love to hear your story.  Go to the contact us page of our website and submit a “share your story” contact form.

Anthony Casablanca

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