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Canva Photos & Elijah Linder/LinkedIn

Bereavement leave doesn't get a lot of press, and it's awkward to talk about. But this story will make you smile for sure.

When someone suffers an unexpected loss in their family, there is no simple playbook for how to respond. Grief is immense, powerful, and hard to talk about. It's awkward, and as an outsider you're afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. You may even want to help but have no idea how other than vague sympathies and platitudes.

It's even stranger when you're the person's boss. There are professional boundaries to consider. Plus, after all, you've got a company to run and a responsibility to the other employees to make sure work gets done and the lights stay on. You're in the uncomfortable and unenviable position of having to make sure the trains keep running, so to speak, while also showing empathy and understanding.

But maybe it doesn't have to be so complicated. One story recently shared by Elijah Linder on LinkedIn shows there might be a better way for companies and managers to handle bereavement.

 death, bereavement, grief, time off, paid leave, work, corporate policy, HR, heartwarming, kindness, good bosses Grief does not fit a 3-5 day schedule.  Photo by The Good Funeral Guide on Unsplash  

Linder runs a company called Bereave, which aims to help organizations set up better bereavement benefits and resources for their employees. So, he talks to a lot of people about what happens at work when the loved one of an employee dies.

One such story was so powerful, he just had to share:

"A woman lost her mom less than a week ago. She also accepted a new sales job during that same time," he begins in a recent post.

Can you imagine? The pain of losing a parent is overwhelming, even traumatic. Doing day to day functions like getting out of bed, eating food, and caring for your own children become almost impossible for many people. Add to that the unimaginable stress that you may lose the job you just worked so hard to get, and on top of everything else, you might be unemployed or at least persona non grata at your new workplace right off the bat.

The good thing for the company to do in this case would be to honor the offer of employment, but delay the start date to give the woman some time to grieve and deal with funeral arrangements. Ultimately, though, you probably couldn't fault either party for just deciding that the timing was unfortunate and going their separate ways. There's really no concrete timetable for how long it takes to properly grieve.

This manager, however, did one better. According to Linder, the boss honored not only the job offer, but the initial start date as well. Then, he gave the woman six weeks of paid leave right off the bat, before she'd ever had a single day of work.

She would keep her job, she would get paid, and it would all be there waiting for her when she was ready to begin. It's an incredible gesture of sympathy and trust for someone he barely knew.

"She's going to run through a wall for that manager. For that company. ... How's that for signaling 'we got you?'" Linder wrote.

Read the whole post here.

The post went viral on LinkedIn, pulling in thousands of Likes and Comments from people who were moved by the story.

Though we don't know much about the woman or the company, what amazed people was the thought process on display. Companies usually think, What's the least expensive and painful we can make this, for the company? This manager decided to make the tragedy less expensive and painful for the employee, even though she hadn't even worked a single day for him yet.

"Companies think because they can't quantify exactly what this person did into literal dollars and cents that it means it's not worth doing. Yet anyone with a human bone in their body knows how impactful something like this is to people and what it does for their motivation and engagement. It's like employment steroids and companies keep sleeping on it," wrote one reader.

"It’s not hard to be kind. I don’t know why these kinds of stories are not the norm," added another.

The average length of paid bereavement leave in the US is about three to five days for the death of an immediate family member. That is stunningly low—but it's the norm almost everywhere. Sadly, this is one benefit that's not much better in many European or other developed countries.

In another post, Linder shares a "brief" list of all the things someone has to take care of in the event of a sudden death of a close family member, including arranging funeral services, burial specifics, obtaining a death certificate, writing an obituary, and more. And that's to say nothing of the actual grieving process, which has barely begun in just five days.

And then, he writes, you're expected to go back to work a few days later like nothing happened.




Linder's story prompted others to share inspiring moments when places of work became something more, and how good people step in when corporate policies fall short.

"I'd just hired & relocated a guy & his family. I think he was there not much more than a month after the family relocated. One day jogging, he had a heart attack...and passed away. The HR Manager picked up the phone and called Payroll and told them to keep the paychecks coming, to his wife until he told them otherwise," Don Harkness commented. "And knowing she had just moved, she'd left friends and family behind. He gave her a choice. She could stay in her new home. or if she wanted to return to her previous venue, the company would pay to relocate her back. I think she opted to return. It made a deep impression on everyone."

Linder even shared another one of his own: "We recently heard about a manager who had a teammate that lost a child... The teammate took 30 days away from work. When he came back, the manager told him to delete all of his emails. Told him not to worry about catching up. Told him to start fresh and that he'd support him in doing so. How's that for signaling 'we got you...'"

One man shared a tear-jerker of a story on a Reddit thread about bereavement: "I lost my wife of 20 years when I was 44. It was cancer, 21 days for diagnosis to death. ... My company said the same...3 days [of bereavement]. I had been with the company for 20+ years. My boss said, 'Take the time you need. You will continue to get paid. If anyone says anything to you, tell them to contact me.' I will always be grateful that my boss stood by me."

Bereavement doesn't get the PR that vacation time and parental leave get, so the policies at large may not change any time soon. It's the leave you hope you never have to use, but let's be clear, it's no vacation. Having at least a few paid days off is the bare minimum a human being needs to function after a loss. But we can do better than a few days, even if we have to do it in some unorthodox ways. That's what people looking out for other people is all about. It's great to see and hear examples of it happening out there in the real world.

Identity

My wife surprised her coworkers when she came out as trans. Then they surprised her.

She was ready for one reaction but was greeted with a beautiful response.

All photos by Amanda Jette, used with permission.

Zoe comes out to her coworkers.


Society, pay attention. This is important.

My wife, Zoe, is transgender. She came out to us — the kids and me — last summer and then slowly spread her beautiful feminine wings with extended family, friends, and neighbors.

A little coming out here, a little coming out there — you know how it is.


It's been a slow, often challenging process of telling people something so personal and scary, but pretty much everyone has been amazing.

However, she dreaded coming out at the office.

She works at a large technology company, managing a team of software developers in a predominantly male office environment. She's known many of her co-workers and employees for 15 or so years. They have called her "he" and "him" and "Mr." for a very long time. How would they handle the change?

While we have laws in place in Ontario, Canada, to protect the rights of transgender employees, it does not shield them from awkwardness, quiet judgment, or loss of workplace friendships. Your workplace may not become outright hostile, but it can sometimes become a difficult place to go to every day because people only tolerate you rather than fully accept you.

But this transition needed to happen, and so Zoe carefully crafted a coming out email and sent it to everyone she works with.

The support was immediately apparent; she received about 75 incredibly kind responses from coworkers, both local and international.

She then took one week off, followed by a week where she worked solely from home. It was only last Monday when she finally went back to the office.

First day back at work! I asked if I could take a "first day of school" type picture with her lunchbox. She said no. Spoilsport.

Despite knowing how nice her colleagues are and having read so many positive responses to her email, she was understandably still nervous.

Hell, I was nervous. I made her promise to text me 80 billion times with updates and was more than prepared to go down there with my advocacy pants on if I needed to (I might be a tad overprotective).

And that's when her office pals decided to show the rest of us how to do it right.

She got in and found that a couple of them had decorated her cubicle to surprise her:

LGBTQ, coming out, work

Her cubicle decorated with butterflies.

All photos by Amanda Jette, used with permission.

Butterflies! Streamers! Rainbows! OMG!

And made sure her new name was prominently displayed in a few locations:

empathy, employment, understanding

Zoe written on the board.

All photos by Amanda Jette, used with permission.

They got her a beautiful lily with a "Welcome, Zoe!" card:

coworkers, mental health, community

Welcome lily and card

All photos by Amanda Jette, used with permission.

And this tearjerker quote was waiting for her on her desk:

Oscar Wilde, job, employment

A quote from Oscar Wilde.

All photos by Amanda Jette, used with permission.

To top it all off, a 10 a.m. "meeting" she was scheduled to attend was actually a coming out party to welcome her back to work as her true self — complete with coffee and cupcakes and handshakes and hugs.

acceptance, friendship, relationships

Coming out party with cupcakes.

All photos by Amanda Jette, used with permission.

(I stole one, and it was delicious.)

NO, I'M NOT CRYING. YOU'RE CRYING.

I did go to my wife's office that day. But instead of having my advocacy pants on, I had my hugging arms ready and some mascara in my purse in case I cried it off while thanking everyone.

I wish we lived in a world where it was no big deal to come out.

Sadly, that is not the case for many LGBTQ people. We live in a world of bathroom bills and "religious freedom" laws that directly target the members of our community. We live in a world where my family gets threats for daring to speak out for trans rights. We live in a world where we can't travel to certain locations for fear of discrimination — or worse.

So when I see good stuff happening — especially when it takes place right on our doorstep — I'm going to share it far and wide. Let's normalize this stuff. Let's make celebrating diversity our everyday thing rather than hating or fearing it.

Chill out, haters. Take a load off with us.

It's a lot of energy to judge people, you know. It's way more fun to celebrate and support them for who they are.

Besides, we have cupcakes.


This article originally appeared on 04.08.16.


By the end of her first week living in Denmark, Helen Russell was worried about her husband's brand-new job.

She explained in an article she wrote for Stylist that she was sure Lego had fired him already because he kept coming home early.

Originally from the U.K., Russell was used to her home country's work customs, where late nights and long hours were worn as a badge of honor. She felt surprised and embarrassed when her husband first came home from work in the early afternoon — she'd hardly started her own day of freelance writing.


The trend continued, she said, and by Friday, her husband was strolling through the door as early as 2:30 p.m. But it wasn't a reflection of his work ethic. It turns out, in Denmark, working fewer hours is ... just what people do.

Photo by Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images.

This healthy work-life balance is such a crucial part of Danish culture that they even boast about it on the country's official website.

It's a major point of pride for Denmark, which has a reputation for being the happiest country in the world. The government encourages a 37-hour workweek, a designated lunch break, a minimum five weeks of paid vacation, extended and paid parental leave, and flexible schedules with the option to work from home as well as incentives for child care. On average, Danes spend less than one-third of their time working — and yet, they're still more productive than most of the European Union or the United States.

You might be thinking, "What's the catch?" But the truth is that Danish values and national attitudes are behind the country's commitment to work-life balance.

Photo by Jon Olav Nesvold/AFP/Getty Images.

1. Workers in Denmark are trusted to deliver on whatever their job is.

Photo by Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images.

By and large, people want to work. They want to do a good job. But many people wrongly assume that others are inherently lazy, that work is a reflection of our moral values, and that time equals productivity. (But, in fact, a lot of jobs that exist today aren't even measurably productive.)

So what if, instead of finding ways to pass the time until the clock hits 5 p.m., we just did what we had to do for work and then called it a day? What if you were actually empowered to take personal responsibility into your own hands rather than relying on the threats of a manager lurking in the corner making sure you put in the physical time at a desk?

That's what Denmark does. As Russell writes that one of her Danish friends explained to her, "Come Cinderella hour — home time — everyone from the receptionist to the CEO goes. We're trusted to do a good job; do our work; then leave." Maybe that's how they get so much stuff done?

2. Family is obviously important, but in Danish culture, people are actually encouraged to value their families — and everyone else respects it.

Photo by Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images.


According to Russell's experience, it's totally normal for people in Denmark to list their child care pickups and other family business in their digital calendars for others to see. There shouldn't be any shame in prioritizing family. (And if you don't have a family? You deserve the same freedom.) Also in Denmark, child care is tax-deductible, and the state provides maid services and pensions for the elderly.

This emphasis on family extends to the country's educational approach as well. Rather than using an exam-based schooling system, Denmark is "hugely child-centered and this leads to well-rounded and enthusiastic children," according to teacher Stephanie Lambert, another transplant from Britain.

The country's focus on fewer working hours frees up educators to invest in the personalized needs of students as individuals rather than stressing about uniform success. And as a result, Danish children have these same values instilled in them from a young age. It's ingrained in them by the time they join the workforce, and they'll pass these same values down.

3. Danes also recognize work and play shouldn't be at odds with one another. Everyone benefits from a little R and R — workers and bosses.

Photo by William West/AFP/Getty Images.

More work means more stress, which means more health problems and less getting done. Maybe that's one reason why the Danes spend so much less on health care?

Studies have shown vacations make our brains more creative, which is why vacation days should not be treated as some rare commodity, hoarded like gold for some far-future payoff, or used to cover for other personal matters. People in Denmark receive a minimum five weeks of paid vacation time, and they actually use it — without any fear of shame or social stigma.

It's a simple truth that many Danes recognize, from day laborers to high-end executives: Happier workers are better workers. "We think everyone has a right to be respected, from a CEO to a janitor," Danish psychotherapist Iben Sandahl told The Local. "We try to teach our children to focus on the good in themselves and others rather than on status or labels."

Denmark's model of work-life balance is proof that time is not the same as productivity, and treating people well is actually better for everyone.


Granted, there are some people who think the Danish secret to happiness is actually just lowered expectations. Yet, being humble, realistic, and appreciative isn't such a bad thing.

Either way, the Danes have proven a healthy moderation of labor and leisure is not only possible, but it's measurably preferable to forcing people to live to work and work themselves to death. Maybe it's time the rest of us followed their example.


This article originally appeared on November 23, 2016





Pop Culture

Gen Zer's teary video after going around town with a stack of resumes gets wave of support

Gen Z often gets a bad rap in the workforce. But job hunting is difficult right now, regardless of your age.

Canva

People couldn't help but feel for a young woman who broke down in tears after going around town with a stack of resumes.

It can be easy to write-off younger generations as entitled, lazy and unwilling to work hard, without taking into account the very real challenges being faced.

Just like their “whiny millennial” predecessors, Gen Zers often find themselves in this predicament—unable to land a job, much less one that reflects their personal values, all while being labeled as“difficult” for wanting something better.

But the truth is, even hard-working people are struggling right now. That goes for people who are employed (many of whom are living paycheck-to-paycheck, despite having well-paying jobs) and those looking for employment.

Job hunting is particularly grueling, as looming fears of recession have caused companies to make candidates go through more obstacles than a contestant on “American Ninja Warrior” just to get one interview. Followed by six more interviews. Followed by crickets.

With these types of barriers set in place, how is an age group, likely just out of college, with virtually no workplace experience, supposed to stand a chance? And furthermore, how can they not be distraught when their survival is on the line?

This is why a video shared by 26-year-old Lohanny Santos has struck a chord with so many.

In the clip, tears stream down Santos’ face after going around the city with a “stack” of resumes and being rejected by every potential employer she reached out to.

The college grad explained how she had two degrees—one in communications and one in acting—and spoke three languages. Not even this was enough to get her an interview.

“It’s honestly a little bit embarrassing because I’m literally applying for, like, minimum-wage jobs,” she says. “And some of them are being like, ‘We’re not hiring’ and it’s like, ‘What?’ This is not what I expected.”

Far from being entitled, Santos concluded the video by wiping her eyes and saying “ … I'm just going to keep trying."
 
 @lohannysant I got tear stains on my resume 😔😔😔 #nyc #unemployed ♬ original sound - Lohanny 
 
 

Luckily, this is where the story turns around. After her video went viral, with over 23.4 million views on TikTok, Santos received a wave of support from viewers.

“Never feel embarrassed. You should feel proud that you’re pushing your pride to the side and being realistic,” one person wrote, commenting on the fact that Santos had begun her job search after her aspirations for being a TikTok creator weren’t paying the bills.

“This is precisely how you apply for jobs before the internet. nothing to be embarrassed about as this gives you real world sales experience,” another added.

Some even provided some tips. One person suggested: “Don’t ask if they’re hiring. Just say you want to apply & speak to a hiring manager. Be assertive.”

“GIRL APPLY TO BE A FLIGHT ATTENDANT!!! BARELY AND EXPERIENCE NEEDED AND WITH THREE LANGUAGES THEY WILL WANT YOUU,” another exclaimed.

Not only that, But Santos revealed with Business Insider that her following skyrocketed overnight, that she was being offered opportunities not previously available. In a follow-up video, she even shared that she scored a brand deal.

A brand deal which…..may or may not have taken her out to London? Not a bad gig. And it certainly seems like those TikTok dreams aren’t so unattainable after all.

 
 @lohannysant I woke up like this for real. Brb let me wake up. #nyc #london #travelday ♬ original sound - Lohanny 
 
 

Most people want to be contributing members of society. But times are tough for a lot of folks out there, regardless of age, background and education. A little compassion, as we see here, does in fact go a long way.