All language subtitles for [English] 3 ways companies can support grieving employees [DownSub.com]

About three years ago,

I lost my daughter.

She was sexually assaulted and murdered.

She was my only child

and was just 19.

As the shock wore off

and the all-consuming grief took over,

I lost all meaning and purpose in life.

Then my daughter spoke to me.

She asked me to keep living.

If I am not around,

she will have one less heart
to continue to live in.

With that, my partner Susan and I
started our desperate climb

out of this deep hole of trauma and loss.

In the journey back to the land
of the living with grief,

we unexpectedly found

a rather unlikely and very helpful ally:

my work.

At first, I wasn't even sure
if I should go back to work.

I had a lot of self-doubt.

As a senior executive,

I'm responsible for thousands of employees

and billions of dollars.

After all that trauma,

is my mind still sharp
and creative enough for that job?

Can I still relate to people?

Can I get past the resentment
and regret I felt

about all the time I spent working

instead of being with my daughter?

Is it fair to leave Susan home alone,

dealing with her own grief and pain?

At the end,

I made the decision to go back to work,

and I am very glad I did.

We all experience grief
and loss in our lives.

For most of us,

that means, at some point,
getting up and getting back to work

while living with the grief.

On those days,

we will continue to carry
the incredible burden of sadness,

but also a hope that work itself
can restore for us

that much-needed feeling of purpose.

For me, work started out
as just a productive distraction,

but evolved to being truly therapeutic

and meaningful in so many ways.

And my return to work proved to be
a good thing for the company as well.

I know I'm not indispensable,

but retaining my expertise
proved to be very beneficial,

and my return helped all the teams
avoid disruptions and distractions.

When you lose the most
precious thing in your life,

you gain a lot of humility

and a very different perspective
free of egos and agendas,

and I think I'm a better coworker
and a leader because of that.

For all the good
that came from it, though,

my reentry into work was far from easy.

It was very hard.

The biggest challenge

was having to separate my personal
and professional lives completely.

You know --

OK to cry early in the morning,

but slap a smile on the face
promptly at eight o'clock

and act as if everything
is the same as before

until the workday is over.

Living in two completely different
worlds at the same time,

and all the hiding and pretending
that went with it,

it was --

it was exhausting,

and made me feel very alone.

Over time, I worked
through those struggles

and I gained the confidence

and the acceptance to bring
my whole self to work.

And as a direct result of that,

I found joy again in it.

During that hard journey back to work,

I learned the power of having
a culture of empathy in the workplace.

Not sympathy,

not compassion,

but empathy.

I came to believe

that a workplace where empathy
is a core part of the culture,

that is a joyful and productive workplace,

and that workplace inspires
a great deal of loyalty.

I believe there are three things
a company can do

to create and nurture a culture
of empathy in the workplace in general

and support a grieving employee
like myself in particular.

One is to have policies

that let an employee
deal with their loss in peace,

without worrying
about administrative logistics.

Second, provide return-to-work
therapy to the employee

as an integral part
of the health benefits package.

And third,

provide training for all employees
on how to support each other --

empathy training, as I call it.

In the first category of policies
to help deal with the loss,

the most important policy
is regarding time off.

It's true that there is
no expiration date to grieve

and time cannot undo a loss,

but time away from work helped me

figure out how daily life
can coexist with grief.

We don't want a grieving employee
to have to cobble together vacation days

and sick days

and unpaid leave and whatever else.

A formal time-off policy

that also allows the employee
to come back to the same role they had

before their time off --

that policy will make a real difference.

Personally, I was so grateful
to come back to my old role.

The familiar work, familiar people,

provided a lot of comfort.

The second category of help
companies can provide to employees

is return-to-work therapy.

Therapy helped me muster
the courage needed

to bring my whole self to work

and merge the two parallel worlds
I was straddling into one,

and just have one life.

A couple of years ago,

I spent a weekend scattering
my daughter's ashes in the Pacific.

It was a --

it was a horrific time.

When I returned to work from that
that following Monday,

one of the first meetings was to arbitrate
a very passionate debate

on office wallpaper.

I needed therapy to figure out
how to be considerate

of others' normal lives

when my own life is so very different.

Therapy helped me give myself
permission to be vulnerable.

Even if vulnerability is not often seen
as a strength in the corporate world,

when seemingly unrelated
and just trivial things

triggered deep feelings of sadness

right smack in the middle of the workday,

therapy helped me deal with them.

And when painful anniversaries
and events tried to hijack the day,

like when I got a call from Texas Rangers

regarding an arrest in my child's death,

I was at work.

Therapy helped me stay productive

while still remaining true
to the unique realities

and the painful realities of my life.

During the course
of the return-to-work therapy,

I had realized something.

I had realized that many
of those learnings,

they would have been very helpful
for me at work all along,

independent of my loss.

And that realization
brings me to the final category

of things companies can do.

Provide empathy training to the employees.

Look, I know it sounds odd,

but empathy can be a learned behavior.

For some, showing empathy comes naturally.

A colleague came to see me;

I had this electronic
photo frame on my desk,

rotating through pictures of my daughter.

As she was leaving, she simply said,

"Tilak, when you're ready,

I would love for you to tell me
the story behind each of those pictures."

She didn't ignore my sadness;

she didn't dwell on it.

She simply gave me
permission to be myself

and made a human connection.

This was her version of empathy,

of which I'm sure there are many.

But not everybody
is a natural with empathy,

and traditional work cultures
don't always emphasize empathy.

One person said to me,

"I can't believe you made it back to work.

I don't think I could have done it."

Boy, did that make me feel awful.

Is my love for my child not strong?

Another person decided
to be my spokesperson,

guiding other folks on how
and when to interact with me,

all without my knowledge or consent.

A few folks just maintained
absolute stoic and deafening silence,

which in some ways trivialized my loss.

Some spent a ton of water-cooler time

speculating if I would be
any good at all at work,

coming back from such a devastating loss.

Time, frankly, would have
been better spent

in figuring out how to help me instead.

And then there was that moment
where I had to console someone,

very distraught,

who said, "I understand your loss.

My dog died last year."

Empathy training can help avoid
that inherent awkwardness

in dealing with loss.

It can give people the confidence
to bring their whole self to work,

and the people around them,

the awareness to accept
them for who they are.

And together,

we'll all be better for it.

Empathy training can help
people acknowledge

that a coworker is a very different person
after a life-changing loss,

and ask that simple and direct question:

what would you like me
to do differently to help you?

There will come a day
when I finally see my daughter,

my little girl,

again.

And as she always did,

she's going to make fun of me
for working so much.

But she knew.

She knew that she was the top priority --

number one priority.

And she will be thankful that work
helped Dad live a purposeful life

after she was gone.

It is such an incredible relief

that the loss I experienced
is not as common.

A child dying ahead of the parent
is just absolutely horrific --

the most nightmarish
and unnatural thing to happen.

But loss in itself is not uncommon.

When done right,

returning to work can help us
survive loss and grief.

And companies can help do it right,

by fostering a culture
of empathy in the workplace.

It's not a burden
or a lot of effort or expense.

And creating such a workplace,

where empathy is core to the culture --

it will be one of the best
investments a company can make.

Thank you.