Workplace Grief

CHAPTER TWO

Moss (1981) comments that managers see the impact of the job on the employee's personal life as ordinary pressure and the impact of personal life on job performance as extraordinary pressure. Individual and organizational interests in the outcome of the coping process may differ widely. Generally, however, Moss believes that companies are discovering that treating all employees supportively and helping them to help themselves make sense. Employee Assistance Departments are dedicated to this end and are now found in almost every major corporation. Moss further states that programs to maintain health are today standard practice for large organizations. These include periodic health examinations, physical fitness and exercise programs, and health education programs. Often these programs are a part of the Employee Assistance Programs within corporations.

In addition to Employee Assistance professionals, organizational development (OD) practitioners have become a fixture in many corporations, helping to change organizational values by serving both individual needs and organizational goals. By examining organizational values and related or unrelated behavior, the OD practitioners may be contributing not only to the well-being of the organization's members, but also to the company's financial profitability (Burke, 1982).

Organizations are now ready--both structurally and attitudinally--to respond to the bereaved parent within the workplace. Employee assistance departments are in place and policy is written. Before the true impact of these developments can be realized, the particular needs and motivations of the bereaved must be understood and communicated.

Most recent literature points compellingly to the responsibility of the organization to enhance the lives of its employees. No longer can they be regarded as units of production maintained in the narrow sense for their contribution to profit. Fortunately, the connection of enrichment to profit has been made. Observing society as a whole, Arthur Chickering (1981) discusses Andre Malraux's description of the crisis of civilization. Gods are dead, the image of man has disappeared and a belief in the hereafter is replaced by the "valley of the shadow of death" with little optimism about walking through and reaching the other side. Chickering is somewhat less pessimistic, asserting that regardless of whether a crisis of civilization is indeed upon us, the problems require that we regain a clear image of the human personality and its potentials of "caring and complexity, interdependence and integrity" (p. 1).

Certainly the organization functions as a microcosm of society, and the charge of management is to bring forth such potentialities in their employees. A supportive organization is a more effective organization. No literature specifically studying the organization's response to the bereaved parent now exists. It is hoped that this study will begin to fill this void and stimulate further research in this important area.