This platform is helping employers normalize grief at work

Mindy Corporon lost her father and her son in 2014 when a gunman opened fire outside the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas. The same year, Lisa Cooper published a memoir about the lessons she learned about life and death in the wake of her mother's passing. 

The two met in 2016 at an event for Corporon's foundation, where they connected over their shared experiences as managers who had survived grief despite the various workplace obstacles they faced in the process, most notable being leadership's overall inexperience when dealing with death.

"I started realizing that there was this huge gap in how leaders reintegrated employees after they had a grief event," Corporon says. "When I lost my father and son I was the leader of a company, so I had to wear my leader hat, my CEO hat and my griever hat. I was able to compartmentalize and see that I had to train myself how to talk to people and train my team how to talk to me."

Read more: Managing the logistics of loss: A new benefit provides support

Throughout this process, Corporan realized that employers genuinely did not know how to deal with their grieving workforce, and had no resources available to them to help them navigate it. To find the solution that companies were facing, she had to create it. She enlisted Cooper to get her idea off the ground. 

In 2022, the pair co-founded and officially launched Workplace Healing, an employer-facing grief recovery platform that allows employers to create grief plans for those who have either lost a loved one, a pet, or are currently caregivers of loved ones. The platform, which started from an online coaching service, simultaneously educates employers on what to do — and what not to do — while helping them build a support system for employees. 

"Everybody's talking to the griever," Corporon says. "But as a griever you're just derailed. You can't think straight — you don't know what you want, you don't know what you need. So we focused on talking to the employer and leadership development." 

Read more: This CEO believes employers should validate all kinds of loss and grief

One in four employees are grieving at any given time, according to research from Workplace Healing. And yet organizations still typically only offer three to five days of time off per loss of a loved one each year, according to Peoplekeeper, a digital benefits provider. Some companies will offer more for immediate relatives and fewer for extended relatives, regardless of the relationship between the deceased and the employee. 

Cooper and Corporon believe this amount of time is far from enough. Despite advocating for employees going through bereavement, they were still shocked to hear how slow progress has been, while listening to personal accounts at a conference in June. 

"Everyone, including me, was shocked to learn that if your best friend passes away, it's only one day of bereavement," Cooper says. "And that best friend could be like a mom, or like a sister or brother. Bereavement just clearly has not caught up to where we are in corporate America in terms of culture and mental health."

Read more: Three days is not enough: 4 things employers should know about bereavement

Grief is not an isolated event that can be properly processed in just a few days, and the side effects will vary both in severity and in length. Workplace Healing found that those who lose a loved one can experience extreme brain fog for eight to 12 months, depending on the scale of the tragedy. Mothers who lose a child, for example, tend to fall in the higher range, which was certainly the case for Corporon.

"I didn't understand what that was at the time," she says. "But I found out that I couldn't do math for about three months. I didn't know how to use a calculator. I couldn't look at the Excel spreadsheets that I had helped create or even understand them. I knew I was supposed to, but it was like a black hole was in my brain." 

A lack of understanding and outdated policies are why many employers struggle to retain employees in the aftermath of a loss. Data from Workplace Healing found that 56% of grievers will leave their company if their situation isn't acknowledged, and for those who stay, it could cost employers an estimated $113.27 billion in lost or reduced productivity, according to the Grief Recovery Institute. But retention would be easier if employers knew how to manage grief better on their end. 

Read more: Why bereavement leave isn't enough: What employees need after losing a loved one

"Historically what's happened is companies have been all on the 'head side' or on the 'heart side,'" Cooper says. "If you're on the head side, you're doing all the employee benefit policies and taking all the appropriate steps to send an employee to an EAP. But you're often not acknowledging the emotional well-being of that employee. But if you're all heart-based, the work doesn't get done. So we help companies find that balance." 

The Workplace Healing plan allows employers to select from a dropdown of 'head' options, that include things like explaining available bereavement and leave benefits, as well as actionable strategies such as setting empathetic expectations when it comes to outcomes. They also have an identical 'heart' drop down that has guides on how to speak to grieving employees — such as the best messages to include in a condolence card and why they should replace 'how are you?' with 'how much capacity for work do you have today?' Employers can also choose to have a loved one's death anniversary added to their personal calendar so they know to check in. 

Workplace Healing also provides a guide on how different religions and cultures treat death and mourning  to be as sensitive as possible. The team shared a prospective client's experience where the employee only had three days of bereavement leave, but her culture's funeral traditions dictated that she had to bring her mother's body back to India, which couldn't be done in that timeframe. Education and resources on diverse experiences could influence an employer's willingness to reassess their bereavement policies and better accommodate employees.

Read more: Reminding employees about their mental health benefits reduces stigma and improves engagement

"There was no way that she could have made it all happen with a three-day bereavement plan," Cooper says. "So in this situation her manager would select 'death care funeral services,' which provides links to educate the team on what that employee is going through and bring awareness." 

Workplace Healing is also careful not to limit grief to death. The team plans to implement plans for employees going through divorce or other forms of relationship transitions that may also come with  feelings of grief and change. The goal is to normalize grief in corporate spaces by giving employers the tools to address it correctly. 

"It's about helping us come to work as a whole," says Corporon. "We don't have to go cry in the parking lot anymore — we can come in and know that it's okay to not be okay because I can have a recovery plan built on behalf of me."