It has been six months since Valencia Rias’ fiance died in a car accident, but she still finds herself sometimes closing her office door to quietly cry.
“You never know when a moment or thought is going to come over you that brings all the emotions back,” said Rias, policy associate and organizer for Designs for Change, a school research and advocacy organization in Chicago. “It’s like labor contractions–you can’t stop them.”
Rias already had been mourning three other deaths when her fiance, Eddie Leason, died in February. A family friend, her brother-in-law and a co-worker all died within a short, three-month span.
“I have the obituaries right here on my desk,” she said. “At first, I worked harder and longer hours, but that led to exhaustion. Eddie’s death was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was able to take three weeks off, and when I came back, everyone was supportive. I allowed myself to grieve.”
Businesses are accustomed to putting a price tag on the lost productivity and increased insurance costs associated with conditions from diabetes to from life problems, including substance abuse and depression. But for the first time, an educational foundation in California has put a price tag–$75 billion–on the annual cost of grief in the workplace.
Using government data and drawing on 25,000 interviews with participants in grief recovery seminars and programs about their job performance after a loss, the Grief Recovery Institute Educational Foundation in Sherman Oaks, Calif., predicts the cost of eight major grief incidents–from death of a loved one ($37.5 billion) to divorce ($11.1 billion) to pet loss ($2.4 billion), for example.
“Inadvertently, what created this index was 9/11,” said Russell Friedman, executive director of the 25-year-old, non-profit institute and co-author of two books on the topic. “In those first few months, we saw the economic impact of loss-related fear: loss of safety, control, trust and innocence …We realized we were sitting on this data (from grief interviews) and all we needed to do was compile it.”
Even positive life events, such as moving or having a baby, are included in the index because of the emotional turmoil that can result, Friedman said. A grief event was defined as “conflicting emotions caused by the change of a familiar pattern.”
Measuring emotional pain, of course, is far from an exact science, but the institute’s index attempts to use as many quantitative devices as possible. The foundation used available statistics related to wages, benefits and the cost of training and replacing personnel at all levels, according to the report. For example, in estimating the cost of pet deaths, the researchers used a median number, 14 million pets annually, from studies estimating pet mortality. Presuming only 10 percent of the owners carried their grief into the office, resulting in 1.4 million instances of diminished productivity, the annual estimated loss of productivity to businesses is $2.4 billion.
Friedman says much of the costs associated with grief remain hidden, however. Businesses will calculate the cost of lost work days due to a musculosketal injury, for example, but fail to make the correlation that the worker was injured because grief reduced his ability to concentrate.
Groups such as The American Hospice Association have no comparable data on workplace grief. But they have taken note of the study, saying that the estimates are likely conservative.
Friedman said employers could reduce the cost of grief by understanding that most workers will need support beyond the usual three- or four-day bereavement leave. Employers can help by allowing grieving workers time to talk about their losses, either one-on-one or in a group setting. He also favors more flexible leave time.
“We spend upwards of half of our waking hours at work,” the institute’s report states. “It is impractical to suggest that people somehow find a way to shelve their emotions for up to eight hours. The consequences of this incorrect idea are costing industry many billions of dollars annually.”
A majority of companies offer grieving employees help through employee assistance programs or EAPs, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. In its most recent survey, 68 percent of businesses said they have EAPs. In addition, 12 percent said they offered some sort of grief recovery program. About 92 percent of companies offered paid bereavement leave, usually for four or fewer days.
Employers have made strides, according to representatives from the Compassionate Friends, a national support organization for bereaved parents. The group started an awards program three years ago to honor companies that went “above and beyond” the standard three-day bereavement leave, according to board secretary Susan Chan. The number of annual honorees has risen from 6 in 2000 to 45 this year, from “a mom-and-pop auto lot to large companies such as IBM,” she said.
For example, some employers offer peer support and grief groups for employees. Union Pacific in Omaha was honored for reaching out to employee Russ Lloyd after his 7-year-old daughter was hit by a car. Her death prompted co-workers to work the phones, offering support and suggesting resources for Lloyd and his family. The calls, sometimes a matter of just checking in, continued for at least a year.
Friedman said grievers can gain a sense of control by seeking out their company’s resources, such as an EAP, and by asking for more time off or for reduced hours when they return.
“What grieving employees must want and need to do is talk about their loss,” he said.
Businesses don’t need a written policy to help grieving employees, said Patrick Malone, board president of Compassionate Friends. Some managers seem to instinctively know what to do or say.
Carol Kuc, whose Naperville-based Complete Conference Coordinators Inc. has 10 full-time employees, said she takes a family-style approach to her business.
When a worker’s relative on the West Coast died, the company paid the $500 airline ticket, she said. “We support each other emotionally,” she said of the meeting, conference and trade-show planning business.
Valencia Rias said she was relieved when her boss and co-workers acknowledged her need for time alone. “They told me, allow yourself some time to cry, even if it’s every hour, and I did,” she said. “I’m blessed that I have that support.”
By paying more attention to their grieving workers, employers are reinforcing a sense of community in the workplace, Friedman noted.
“The corporation is not a therapist, a mother or a babysitter,” he said. “We are challenging companies to open their minds about grieving. If they just have a little more sensitivity, the company gets more productivity.”
