Support in the Workplace
Grief Relief’s support, education and training in the workplace is tailored to the needs of your business or organisation. Claire works with individuals and groups through facilitated conversations, presentations, and workshops throughout the Wellington region and New Zealand in person, by phone and Skype.
If you have a critical incident in or outside of the workplace, have suffered a personal loss or are supporting a work colleague or staff member who is grieving, Claire can help you navigate your way through rough terrain or just a bumpy patch.
Understanding grief prior to a loss
Having a workplace or community group educated about grief, prior to a significant loss, is much like civil defence training. It can help reduce some of the common difficulties people encounter by having everyone better informed beforehand about what is helpful and unhelpful. This benefits everyone, from the person returning to work after a bereavement or living with loss in their lives, to managers, colleagues and staff. Having prior knowledge enables people to feel more comfortable about what to do when a situation arises and those grieving will feel better supported.
When these situations are not managed well, it can lead to dissatisfaction and strain on workplace relationships, reduced productivity, an increase in absenteeism, sick leave, accident or resignation.
Understanding the implications
Claire has a solid and practical understanding of all the implications involved when faced with a loss, particularly a sudden and unexpected death. With knowledge of the legal, medical and funeral processes, Claire can support you from the outset of your loss through that process to returning to work, managing your grief, workload and workplace relationships, the on going adjustments to living with your loss/s through to marking significant milestones by ritual and memorials, preserving and creating new memories.
Managing death and loss in the workplace
- Understanding your experience of grief against current thinking
- Tools for managing your current loss, ongoing and additional losses
- Looking after yourself and others through grief
- Recognising how grief is impacting on you and your work and what you can do about it
Please contact Grief Relief for further information.
“In April 2013 we tragically lost our company MD in a motorcycle accident. Not knowing what to do for ourselves and our staff, we contacted Claire from Grief Relief in the hope that she could help us through the process that was to come. Thankfully, Claire was able to see us quickly and we put it to all staff that they could join a group session with Claire.
Having never been in a situation where we have needed to discuss something so tragic and meaningful to all, we were unsure whether staff would be open to this type of forum.
We were very pleased with how comfortable Claire made our team and how she took real time to get to know the person we were grieving. I think the process of explaining to Claire who he was and why we loved him, really helped. We felt genuine and sincere care from Claire for our loss. We were very surprised at how open and willing everyone was to share their feelings and this is a credit to Claire and how she facilitated the group.
Although our grief was an ongoing process, Claire helped us to deal with the initial shock and also better understand that different people deal with loss very differently which enabled us to better understand and support each other through the next few months.”
Kate Gibson, Divisional Manager Retail, Black Diamond Technologies Limited, Lower Hutt, 2014