Organizational Grief Support & Consultation

When a death or significant event occurs, leaders often have to make decisions while they are affected by it.

Consultation can help leadership consider the needs of the organization, affected employees, teams, and individuals without assuming everyone will need—or want—the same response.

Support may include consultation on communication, immediate employee needs, available resources, the timing of interventions, and decisions about which additional support may be useful.

Still Point provides facilitated spaces for employees or teams affected by a death, traumatic event, or significant loss.

These are not meetings designed to require disclosure, emotional processing, or a particular response to grief.

People differ in what they need following loss. The purpose is to provide access to knowledgeable support while respecting those differences.

 Someone deciding to end their life can create particular challenges within an organization, including questions, uncertainty, guilt, anger, stigma, traumatic exposure, concern for other employees, and very different responses among people affected by the same death.

Postvention consultation and support can be tailored to the circumstances of the death, the organization, and the people affected.

Leaders are often expected to support others while navigating their own response to a death or loss.

Consultation provides a place to think through questions such as:

What do we say? What shouldn't we say? What do our employees need? Should we bring everyone together? What if people don't want to participate? How do we support someone returning after a death? When is additional professional support appropriate?

The goal is not to provide leadership with a script for grief. It is to help leaders respond thoughtfully to the people and circumstances in front of them.

Training can be developed for leadership teams, employees, clinicians, peer-support teams, first responders, and other professionals.

Topics may include grief in the workplace, traumatic loss, suicide bereavement and postvention, supporting grieving employees, cumulative occupational grief, grief and first responders, and other topics developed around an organization's needs.

Bereavement leave is only one small part of how an organization responds to loss.

Still Point can consult with organizations reviewing or developing policies, procedures, and practices related to employee death, bereavement, serious illness, return to work, suicide response, and organizational support following significant loss.

Some professionals encounter death occasionally.

For others, death is part of the work.

Law enforcement officers, EMS professionals, healthcare workers, first responders, and others may experience repeated exposure to death while continuing to perform jobs that require decision-making, responsibility, and ongoing service to others.

Occupational grief may intersect with traumatic exposure, professional identity, peer relationships, organizational culture, moral questions, and losses outside the workplace.

Terri's background as a former paramedic, clinician, thanatologist, educator, and consultant brings both grief expertise and first-hand familiarity with high-exposure professional cultures.