By Diane Bergeron
Center for Creative Leadership
Summary
Bereavement (i.e., the death of someone significant) has long been a neglected area in management and leadership research. This may be due to society’s pervasive discomfort with the topic (e.g., the Pulitzer-prize winning book, Denial of Death). Indeed, Google’s former Chief People Officer recently said, “There are many taboos at work and death is one of the greatest.” This is unfortunate because a 2020 McKinsey Quarterly article estimated that one-third of executives are impacted by grief and that organizations are not well-equipped to respond to it.
Because common bereavement leave policy tends to be remarkably short (i.e., 1-5 days) given the average duration of grief (i.e., a few months to a few years), this research looks at bereavement grief, bereavement leave, and organizational offerings (e.g., employee assistance programs, resource referrals) and workplace practices (e.g., flexible schedules, workload support) to understand their relationships to employee outcomes (i.e., job behavior, work engagement, perceptions of the organization as supportive).
Using a survey with a sample of 388 bereaved employees, results showed that bereavement grief had a strong significant negative relationship to job behaviors, work engagement and perceived organizational support. Bereavement leave was positively related to perceived organizational support but unrelated to other work outcomes, suggesting that bereavement leave sends an important signal of care to bereaved employees. Perceived organizational support (POS) matters because it is a bellwether variable widely linked to other important outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, commitment to the organization, employee retention).
Beyond bereavement leave, organizational offerings and workplace practices (as a set) accounted for some of the variability in work engagement and perceived organizational support. However, the relationships between specific offerings and practices had mixed results to outcomes and differed by availability versus actual use. For instance, the availability of a reduced schedule and the use of resource referrals were positively related to work engagement; however, the use of a flexible schedule was negatively related to work engagement. Similarly, the availability of a flexible schedule and the availability and use of an opportunity to talk about needed work accommodations were both positively related to POS. Interestingly, employee assistance programs were not significantly related to employee outcomes. This was the most commonly available (40%), but least used (15%), organizational offering. The offerings and practices that showed the highest usage tended to be those that were more customizable [i.e., flexible schedules (53%), reduced schedules (41%) and workload assistance (44%)].
This research has implications for people leaders, for HR managers, and for C-suite executives who make policy decisions. Specifically, it highlights the importance of paying attention to the impact of bereavement on employees, on offering some type of bereavement leave, and in thinking about what factors best support bereaved employees.
Citation
Bergeron, D. M. (2025). The working wounded: The effect of bereavement grief and organizational policies and practices on employee outcomes. Group & Organization Management. https://doi.org/10.1177/10596011241310272
