Working through bereavement

When my mother died in 2019, it became clear that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to deal with this situation. When I first found out she was dying, instead of distracting myself with my postgraduate research, I spent many of my work hours searching for support from my department, supervisor and university, without getting very far.

Ultimately, I was not offered any bereavement leave but took unpaid leave instead. When I returned to the office, it was not adequately acknowledged why I had been absent for months. At the time I felt I should have been treated differently and I left this position soon after returning. Although I am now happier as a researcher in a different area, it did make me wonder why bereavement and grief are such difficult experiences for workplaces to manage. How can workplaces become more supportive environments for bereaved people?

After recognising that many colleagues were experiencing bereavement during the Covid-19 pandemic, Erica Borgstrom, a medical anthropologist who runs a death and bereavement research group at the Open University, UK, identified that there is a lack of understanding around employees’ experiences of bereavement leave. Her group conducted a large survey into the experiences of bereaved people in higher education institutions across the UK.