Journeys Into Grief: Exploring Redundancy for a New Understanding of Workplace Grief

Abstract

Organizations frequently don't recognize grief experienced by workers, especially the grief surrounding the experience of being made redundant. An exploratory phenomenological study conducted in Australia involved in-depth interviews with middle- and senior-level executives. Ten respondents were interviewed, several more than once, about their experiences of being made redundant. All had been made redundant on more than one occasion. Their journeys into grief as a result of their redundancies are shared here to offer new understanding of grief at work. I claim that the grief surrounding redundancy commences before news of redundancy is confirmed. The journeys into grief involved several stages: something changed, loss commenced, loss confirmed, and afterwards. New understanding of the significance of the grief experience in organizations will assist organizations and workers to better understand and respond to their experiences.

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Notes on contributors

Margaret H. Vickers

Margaret H. Vickers, Professor at the School of Management, University of Western Sydney, has undertaken qualitative research into many aspects of workplace trauma and adversity, including bullying in the workplace, being made redundant, living and working with unseen chronic illness and disability, caring for a child with a disability while working full time, emotions in the workplace, and living with mental illness. She is the author of over 110 international refereed articles, as well as two research books based on qualitative research into the lives of people dealing with disability who work.