Wellness: Your Job, Your Career, Your Life, 1116 COBJ, Vol. 45 No. 11
| Author | Danny Creager, Sarah Myers, J. |
Danny Creager, Sarah Myers, J.
Coping with Grief in the Workplace
While the holiday season is supposed to be a time of joy and celebration, for many it can also be a time of grief, anxiety, depression, or the feeling of being overwhelmed. Many factors can play a role in creating a “less than joyous” time of year. Divorce or separation, job loss, financial stress, moving, physical illness, and the death of a friend, coworker, or loved one are stressful circumstances that can give rise to a state of intense grief. If you have experienced one or more of these situations in the past year, you might be overcome by the intensity of the holiday season. This time of year provides the perfect opportunity for us to discuss the impact that grief can have in the workplace. Transitions and changes can be hard, and the effects are often seen or shared on a daily basis by our colleagues. It can be particularly difficult when the loss involves the death of a coworker.1
We spend a significant amount of time with coworkers and colleagues in the workplace. In fact, some of us spend more time at work than we do at home, and our coworkers are very much like an extended family. We forge special bonds of trust and friendship that are unlike our other relationships. We can develop a dependency on them from personal and professional perspectives, and our mental or emotional health can often be influenced by those whom we spend so much time around. Stress, for example, is contagious in workplace settings where deadlines, workload, and difficult clients can affect our communication mannerisms, our performance, and our health.2 Our experiences in the workplace are shared experiences, for better or for worse. Because we share so many experiences with our coworkers, when there is a death in our workplace, it becomes a poignant loss for us personally and a profound loss for our firm or organization.
The Grieving Process
Most of us have experienced the loss of a friend or family member. That loss initiates some level of grief. How we cope with a loss depends on many factors, including our personal beliefs and other stressors in our lives. While many people think that the grieving process is linear and has a “finish line,” the truth is that we might fluctuate back and forth between...
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