When an Employee Dies: What needs to happen?
An employee dies. What needs to be done from the company's perspective?
This article shares prompts for action, as well as links to templates, checklists and more detailed articles. Hopefully, this is helpful for HR experts, leaders and people manager that have to deal with the death of an employee.
The last part deals with the question: What happens if your boss dies?
An employee dies. Shock and a certain speechlessness may prevail in the first moments. Questions you might ask yourself as a manager or HR expert: How do I behave? What do I have to do? And what does the HR department have to do? And - maybe as an afterthought: Does this affect me?
This article focuses on the pending tasks of HR and managers when an employee dies. Here is an article with tips for internal communication around an employee's death with direct colleagues / a team, the wider organization and customers or partner as well as with the deceased's family.
Please be aware that this article mentions details for a German setup. Some thoughts might be applicable for other countries, but requirements will vary.
Categories
Grief Management in Organizations: Offers
Be prepared and prep your organization for cases of bereavement and personal crisis:
♦ Workshop on Grief-Management ♦
Deceased Employee: Priorities for HR Experts
This section shares links and infos from a German perspective on:
- Remuneration, vacation and working time accounts, regulations from collective agreements and employment contracts
- Deregistration from social insurance
- Special Case: Occupational Accident
- Return of company property as well as the deceased's property
Death of employee: Checklist on remuneration (with links)
Employees in HR departments face a number of tasks after the death of an employee.
Please find a detailed checklist for German cases on sekretaria.de (in German, though). Here is a brief summary in English:
- Outstanding payments: This includes but is not limited to remuneration up to the date of death, payment of outstanding vacation entitlements or from working time accounts. Also: Check if dependants' are entitled to company pensions. Please find checklist-type overviews in German at haufe.de and anwalt.de
- Depending on the collective agreement (Tarifvertrag) or employment contract, surviving dependants may be entitled to additional benefits, e.g. to cover the cost of a funeral.
- The deceased employee must be deregistered from social insurance, as the employment relationship ends upon death (see, for example, the overview in the TK lexicon).
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Occupational Accident
In the event of death due to an accident at work, special regulations might apply, e.g., insurance benefits or obligatory payments in some sectors (see the article at arbeitsvertrag.org). For detailed information on the professions in your own company, the employers' liability insurance associations (Berufsgenossenschaft) can help.
Depending on the setup, the HR department may be responsible for ensuring the return of work materials provided to the employer and personal items to the family. In addition to a laptop or cell phone, this includes keys, hard copies of documents, a company car or work clothes. Sensitivity with regard to timing is crucial here. There is no hard and fast rule, and if at all possible, it will certainly go down well with the bereaved if the request comes later rather than earlier.
Eine Möglichkeit für den Kontakt ist das Angebot, persönliche Gegenstände One way of making contact is to offer to return personal items belonging to the deceased (e.g. from a desk or locker). One idea is to get in touch to convey that there are things to discuss - and make an appointment for another day. The thought behind this: Many acutely grieving people experience concentration problems. It can be helpful for them if they can prepare for the conversation and possibly have a "stable person" with them during the conversation, who can help them to remember and deal with things afterwards.
It is advisable to have the inheritance certificate presented in order to pay out inherited claims to the correct persons. The situation is different if the death benefit is paid out to the surviving dependants, as regulated in some collective agreements (for details, see the section on "Entitlement to receive benefits" at anwalt.de).
Contact with Family Members and Relatives
For contact with family members, it is worth taking a look at the considerations on communication in part 2 of this series.
The company's reaction - a test for the company's culture!
A discussion with an employment lawyer will provide additional clarity about what the employer must and cannot provide to the surviving dependants. And the legal side is not sufficient preparation: If and how the surviving dependants are offered benefits shows appreciation for employees - and is therefore first and foremost a question of corporate culture!
Want to know more?
Would you like to explore this topic in more depth? And prepare your organization well? Contact me for your workshop on managing bereavement: hallo@trauer-coaching.de.
What Managers Need to Do when an Employee dies
When an employee dies, the direct manager is often the first person to find out in the professional context, next to the HR department.
There are a few specific "duties". Mostly, not putting your foot in your mouth goes along way. In Human Resources Manager, Petra Sutor names seven traps that you want to avoid as a manager.
Creating an safe space for your team's shock AND workload questions
As a manager, you will probably be the person who delivers the death notice to the members of your team or department (here are some thoughts on communication). This should be done as quickly as possible, while at the same time taking as much time as you need to act with tact.
At the same time, you are responsible for ensuring that important tasks are taken over or completed by another person and that upcoming tasks or projects are redistributed. It helps to ensure good timing and a presentation that does not seem irreverent,
- if you can assess the mood in the team: Does it fit when you bring up the topic of workload? Or do shock or sadness still need space?
- if you prepare well how you approach the topic: How do you justify when an important or urgent task should be quickly taken over by someone else?
- if you provide an outlook on how you will remedy the issue of workload (if necessary): How will the additional workload be distributed in perspective?
Show empathy in conversations with employees
When it comes to death and dying, behavior that is perceived as less than empathetic can quickly cost you the trust of team members. As a manager, you are the person who creates space for mourning or commemoration - or not. There is no one-size-fits-all rule for what teams or individual employees need.
- Rely on your knowledge about the individuals in your team and your team as a whole - AND take a close look at how they react in the situation.
- Then decide on the space you can give to shock and the commemorating.
- In case of doubt, ask what the colleagues concerned need for now.
Be aware of your own limits
Before you start, it's worth taking a look in the mirror: What do you need to do well for yourself? So you can be there for others.
After all, news of a death can upset anyone, even you. Ask yourself: Which person in your internal company network can you share your initial shock with? Is there perhaps a manager at the same level with whom you can discuss tricky issues and whose confidentiality you can rely on? You can also approach the company's formally appointed confidant or a coach with whom you work or have worked.
As soon as or when you are emotionally composed, a conversation with your manager or your HR contact person might be a good step. Consider if you would like to have this conversation before take another steps. That way, you won't end up in a situation that is difficult to reverse.
After this, start the communicating with employees as quickly as possible.
And if Your Boss Dies?
If a company manager dies please distinguish: Is it your manager that died, and there is other personnel in the organization taking over responsibilities? Or is the boss the owner of the organization?
This applies if the owner of the company dies
First of all: Even if the boss dies, the organization continues to exist from a legal point. So do employment contracts (with all rights and obligations). This is because the employer is usually not the private person, but the organization itself. And that still belongs to someone, e.g. to a group of owners or to the heirs of the deceased person.
This means that employees must continue to work and the employer must continue to pay wages or salary. Termination without notice is only legal in exceptional cases.
How things go in the medium term depends on how heirs wish to proceed. If there are other owners who buy up shares in the organization or take on new partners, nothing formally changes.
And there will probably be changes, especially if a founder or someone with a central role drops out. In Germany, an interim director can be appointed if the sole director dies.
However, if the deceased was the main owner (and there are no succession arrangements), it is also possible that the heirs will sell or dissolve the organization, and in this case, terminations may also occur, albeit with regular notice periods. It is only these that end the employment relationship, not the death of the boss.
And who will take care of employees and ongoing business in the meantime??
That's an interesting question. Maybe the existing management team fills the gap or brings in reinforcements. Ideally, managers and heirs will inform employees proactively and listen carefully to their concerns – because ultimately, this is the basis to ensure business continuity.
Even if it seems of secondary importance to heirs or executives, good communication is important in this situation, as uncertainty is directly detrimental to employee productivity and loyalty. External consultants are useful for overcoming one's own speechlessness, prioritizing the mountain of tasks and developing suitable rituals for the orphaned team.
If a (employed) manager dies
In this situation, other managers in the organization are called upon: often these are a deputy and the next higher management level, i.e. the manager of one's own manager.
If there is no deputy manager to take on the management role (for whatever reason), it is possible that another manager will temporarily take over responsibility for a team, location, department, etc. Often the position will be filled at a later date, or the colleagues will be distributed among other managers. Depending on the corporate culture, employees are involved and continuously informed.
And how can employees grieve for their managers?
Employees should be given the opportunity to grieve for a deceased manager. This aspect is just as much a part of successfully managing the situation as clarifying professional and personal responsibilities.
What is appropriate depends on the corporate culture. There are several options, from a book of condolence to a farewell party or a get-together.
Are you looking for ideas? Contact me!
This is part 1 of a series of articles.
- This Part 2 adds shares guidelines for communication .
- Part 3 offers suggestions for employees after a colleague dies,
- Part 4 deals with the case when a colleague is grieving.
- In the Workshop on Grief Management , you prep your organization for actual cases.
Click here to see more
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