Kelly Davies on grief, working through tragedy and loss, and supporting our workplace community after bereavement.

Mind/work with Jasmine El-Gamal

For every single one of us, grief is a certain and profound component of the fabric of our lives. And yet grief is one of the hardest emotions to process and the most difficult to discuss, particularly when it comes to the workplace.

A 2021 survey of employees by the Marie Curie support charity found that 29% of employees were not confident in knowing what to say to a bereaved colleague while 14% of HR professionals were not confident they'd know what to say to a bereaved employee.

And even more difficult than talking about it at work, is showing up at work while grieving, and worrying about the impact of taking time off. The same Marie Curie survey found that 58% of employees felt their performance was affected by grief months after bereavement and 54% of employees worried that taking time off after a bereavement would affect their job security.

For those reasons and many more, how the workplace responds to grief can greatly impact our healing process. And as with all aspects of mental health at work, it starts with a kind and compassionate leadership.

In this week’s episode, I spoke to Kelly Davies, a communications consultant at the World Bank who, in 2017, tragically lost her husband Charles, with whom she shared a young child, to AML leukaemia. Kelly shared her grieving process and spoke about how to create a grief-informed workplace, as well as how to ask for what you need at work, how to recognise when someone is struggling and the importance of taking care of our workplace community in both easy times, and those that are not so easy.

Bio:

Kelly Davies has worked on behalf of a variety of organizations dedicated to diverse issues ranging from eradication of poverty to the reduction of learning-poverty to fostering US-Middle East relations in a post-9/11 context.

Over the last two years, Kelly has spearheaded the overall communications program for the World Bank’s umbrella trust fund the Foundational Learning Compact, where she designed and implemented the communications and visibility strategy focused around disseminating knowledge and best practices to key stakeholders and counterparts across global education.

Earlier in her career, Kelly successfully led multiple fundraising initiatives to increase corporate, foundation, and individual support to increase organizational impact and sustainability.

Resources:

Grief and bereavement at work: https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/help/support/bereaved-family-friends/work

The Danger of Neglecting Grief in the Workplace. Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klMgE7_V5Po

Huberman Lab -The Science and Process of Healing from Grief: https://open.spotify.com/episode/75CPy69yUW4SBSMa8eeuVJ?si=eEpxg0j5QyyEd_Ny_SVDxg

Terrible, Thanks for Asking: https://ttfa.org/

Fear, by Tich Nhat Hanh: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/13623836

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/13623836