Supporting Employees Through Grief: How EAP Programs Help in the Workplace

Grief doesn’t wait for a convenient time. It shows up at work in the middle of a team meeting, during a routine email check, or in the quiet moments between tasks. For HR professionals and company leaders, supporting employees through grief requires understanding how loss reshapes a person’s ability to focus, engage, and perform.

Yet many workplaces still operate under outdated assumptions about how grief works. The belief that people move through predictable stages in a tidy progression has shaped bereavement policies for decades. Contemporary research tells a different story. Grief is messy, non-linear, and deeply individual.