The meeting starts in ten minutes. Two managers are early to the Zoom call. “I heard Janice is back. How’s she doing?” “She seems fine. She’s been for a few days now.” “Well, that’s good. Hopefully, she can jump back in where she left off.” Thirty seconds. The mother of one of their employees had just died, the employee had returned to work, and that was the entire conversation. They said nothing wrong. Their words revealed a critical gap in leadership: the lack of a plan for the whole team...

Photo by Haewon Oh on Unsplash You Have a Bereavement Policy. But You Don’t Have a Return-to-work Plan. Why return-to-work is the leadership test most organizations fail — and what it's costing them I want to tell you about a manager I met a few weeks ago and his former employee, whom I was able to talk to a few days later. This is their story, and I’m sure it’s the story of many others. The Moment HR Doesn't Think About Daniel has been a manager for 7 years. He was good at his job and...

Grief is a physical change in the brain. This matters for HR leaders and managers because grief doesn’t just affect how people feel. It affects how they think, decide, and perform. And when that’s misunderstood, organizations manage the symptoms instead of the cause. Most leaders are operating with an outdated understanding of how grief works. They, like most of us, want to do the right thing. They want to be respectful. They want work to feel supportive, not intrusive. And yet, so many are...