Thoughts on Cost of Grief in Organizations
Coping with bereavement in the workplace – is this really an issue?
Employees grieve for partners, parents, children, siblings and friends, and sometimes also for colleagues.
This article looks at the potential follow-up costs of poorly managing grief among employees (and other crisis situations).
Are There Employees Affected by Bereavement? (Yes!)
Let's take a look at some facts about why organizations should care about berevement management in the first place:
2024 sind in Deutschland 1.007.758 Menschen gestorben.
Ca. 140.000 Menschen, die gestorben sind, waren zwischen 20 Jahren und 65 Jahren alt – und damit potenzielle Kolleg_innen. Und Familienangehörige oder Freunde, die viel zu früh sterben.
Außerdem sind 6.768 Kinder (unter 27 Jahre) gestorben. Sie hinterlassen Menschen, die um ihr Kind, Geschwister, Enkel, Nichte oder Neffe trauern.
Hinzu kommen
- 2.900 still geborene Babys (offizielle Statistik, ab der 24. Schwangerschaftswoche),
- geschätzte 6.000 still geborene Babys zwischen der 13. und der 24. Schwangerschaftswoche,
- und ungezählte kleine Geburten (Schwangerschaft endet vor der 13. Woche).
.
Auch hier trauern Eltern, Geschwister, Großeltern und weitere Angehörige.
Das bedeutet: Je nach Größe des Unternehmens ist es statistisch betrachtet ziemlich wahrscheinlich, dass eine_r der eigenen Mitarbeitenden einen Todesfall auch im engeren Umfeld erlebt.
Und wer sagt, dass Menschen nicht um ihre Eltern oder Großeltern trauern, auch wenn sie mit 70 Jahren oder älter sterben?
Oder dass nur Trauer um verstorbene Menschen zählt – und nicht auch um geliebte Tiere, geplatzte Träume (Stichwort: ungewollt kinderlos) oder einen anderen Verlust?
Alles das bringen Menschen eventuell mit zur Arbeit.
Grief Management in Organizations: Offers
Grief is not always visible...
Many of these deceased individuals are mourned, and fortunately, many bereaved individuals find a way to cope with their grief.
Research shows that roughly three out of four bereaved individuals cope with a death by the means they already have. This does not mean that they simply continue their lives as if nothing happened, or perform as employees as they did before. Even a normal grieving process can be exhausting and could affect an employee's performance, at least short term, just like any other personal change.
As a manager or HR expert, it helps to be prepared for cases of bereavement. Even if the deceased appears to be someone distant or the employee seems to be coping well.
… and some cases touch us deeply
In addition, there are some deaths that throw relatives and loved ones off track. For example, if an employee
- goes trough one of the tens of thousands of pregnancies in which the child dies during pregnancy, often resulting in the loss of a sense of lightheartedness
- is a parent, grandparent, aunt, or uncle of young adults that die before their 20th birthday every year. In 2023, there were 4,371 children, adolescents, and young adults. For these people, it is not uncommon for their view of the world to change.
- is a relative or loved one of one of the more than 10,000 suicide victims per year in Germany. They often experience shame or feelings of guilt in addition to grief.
- they become a widow, orphan or and colleagues of someone who have dies after a long illnesses (for example, approximately 235,000 people died of cancer in Germany in 2023, to name just one example). Many of these bereaved people struggle with exhaustion after long periods of caregiving.
Many of the latter deaths might affect the well-being of employees over a longer period of time. Absences from work can for several months are not that uncommon, for example when child or a partner die. Lack of concentration and temporarily reduced resilience are also not uncommon in the first few months and even up to a year after a death, even in “normal” grieving processes. Surprised by how long it takes? Find out more about the duration of grief here: duration of grief.
At this point, at the latest, grief becomes an issue for managers and human resources management. After all, these employees might expect their employer to create healthy work conditions for them.
For example, by holding a workshop on bereavment management to establish guidelines that managers can follow if an employee is grieving.
What Is the Cost of Grief in Your Organization?
Bereavement management means preparing for dealing with bereaved people in the organization, just as one would prepare for other life events. This is in the interest of employers and employees.
And let's get one thing straight: this is not about forcing employees back to work as quickly as possible. It's about creating conditions that enable employees to experience their professional environment as supportive and helpful, especially in times of personal crisis.
Many people find it helpful when they can work. It gives them structure, distracts them for a short time, and gives them a sense of achievement, and they are relieved if they can fall back to the security of their work routine. Also, financial aspects might lead a bereaved person to come back to work.
It's a shame when employees are absent longer than they would like to because they don't feel “fit enough" to work as if nothing had happened. Or because they don't dare to ask for adjustments. Or because they feel they would lose face or status if they admitted to not always feeling well or being sad (and no, sadness is not a weakness!).
This absence will result in unnecessary costs for the organization.
Each poorly handled bereavement case in Germany could result in average costs of more than €8,000 in pure remuneration costs.
To illustrate this, I published a striking calculation on LinkedIn in January 2025. See the screenshot below for more details.
As mentioned above, these are only remuneration costs. There are additional direct costs if work has to be redistributed, reprioritized, or replaced, for example for:
- overtime worked by others to compensate for absences,
- overhead costs for prioritization and management,
- productivity loss, postponed projects, etc.
Screenshot of my German LinkedIn post about the costs of grief, posted on January 7, 2025.
Click on the image to go to the post on LinkedIn.
Indirect costs due to poor handling of grief
Added to this are the indirect costs of poor treatment of grieving employees. These are much more difficult to quantify, but are probably more significant.
These indirect costs are:
- dealing with consequences from overburdening other team members to compensate for the absence of the bereaved individual
- loss of productivity within the team due to uncertainty in dealing with the topic of grief or with the bereaved individual, which a team leader, for example, is unable to compensate for due to a lack of preparation/support.
- less resilient 1:1 relationships with managers or “work friends,”
- Long-term consequences of unacknowledged/suppressed/denied grief,
- Declining satisfaction among employees with their employer–not only among the person leaving but also among colleagues (e.g. because they feel that the employer is not supporting them in a personal crisis),
- employee loyalty to employers is declining,
- loss of productivity from the bereaved individual after returning to work, e.g. due to lack of concentration, which would be at least reduced by other measures.
These costs arise for organizations as a result of poorly managed grief and crises among employees. Some certainly, some possibly.
Within this line thought, you can calculate when it becomes financially worthwhile to invest in grief management.
The other side–the benefits–can be found in this article on the benefits of grief management (in German) as part of a living corporate culture.
EN 
DE