John Thompson, a fund-raiser at the British homelessness charity Emmaus, loved his work — and his colleagues loved him.
When he died, aged 54, last November, it affected the entire organisation. “John was so respected. He meant so much to so many people,” says Sophie Hiscocks, communications manager. “In fact, so many people from Emmaus wanted to visit him while he was ill that his daughters had to set up a list to regulate it.”
Hiscocks, who had worked with Thompson for six years, found something was wrong when her director, Tim Page, called her at home. “Tim called and said he had terrible news. John had terminal cancer,” she says. “He hadn’t looked unwell or said he was unwell. It was shocking.”
Her first action was to phone John. “I occasionally called for a chat but I wouldn’t normally have called John at home,” she says. “It was awkward in that you didn’t know whether to be silently supportive or jump in there — I chose to jump in there and express my shock. I felt strongly that I needed to do something.”
The last thing most of us expect to have to deal with at work is the death of a colleague. Stephan Lucks, managing psychologist at business psychology firm Pearn Kandola, says that it can be particularly difficult because we generally cordon off “work” from “non-work” relationships.
“People can underÂestimate their reaction because they underestimate the closeness of relationships people form in the workplace,” he says. “Sometimes you are closer to your colleagues than your family, so of course a death has a big impact.”
And knowing how to react — let alone understanding your feelings — can be difficult. “I think initially we weren’t sure how to behave,” says Hiscocks. “It was quite unsettling, and in an open-plan office it’s very difficult to have a private conversation, but John made it easy for us by being very open. And then the practical people in the office started drawing up lists and rotas to turn the sense of helplessness into practical action.”
But even if you don’t know them well, the death of a colleague can stir up a lot of emotion, as Anjula Sharma, who runs the UK’s Cruse Bereavement Care national helpÂline, explains. “If you have a close relationship you will go through the normal grieving process,” she says. “But even if you’re not close to the person you might start thinking about death in general, or thinking about people in your family dying, or about someone who has died in the past. And if it’s a sudden death, the mind and body often find it very difficult to accept.”
So what can you expect from your employer when a colleague dies? Lucks says that it all depends on the situation and the relationships involved, but management should ensure that everyone is informed quickly, sensitively and as openly as possible. “Whether you get everyone together or you do it by e-mail, communication needs to be very open and honest,” he says. “Managers should make themselves available to staff, but also recognise that they are not qualified to provide counselling — which is where HR should become involved.”
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of bereavement at work is hiring the replacement. Jeremy Hurst, managing director of web design company Slightly Different, has been in the unenviable position of replacing a much-loved colleague. “Two days after I started filling in for a man who had gone on holiday, the company got a call to say that he had died,” he says. “I was in the office when they got the call, it was a small team, they had worked with him for 20 years. Everyone else is grieving and you don’t know the person at all.”
The Emmaus team have ensured that John’s life and work is remembered, as Sophie Hiscocks explains. “Clearing John’s desk and moving all his pictures was difficult and I still come up against moments that catch me by surprise. Although it’s a terrible cliché, it’s true that life goes on and work drives you forward, but there isn’t a day that goes by when we don’t think of him,” she says. “We have set up the John Thompson Award and in the kitchen we have lots of pictures of John at work that we printed for the funeral, and we look through them and talk about him. Because we all shared in the process of his dying, it has made it easier — but there’s still a big gap and work feels very different.” —