A Timely Insight
We often talk about change in the workplace. We rarely talk about grief.

But job loss, like any major transition, is layered with emotion. It can carry sadness, guilt, anger, confusion, relief, and disbelief. And when a loss is sudden or undeserved, those feelings become harder to name.

In organisational life, we are taught to perform resilience. But many of us are carrying quiet grief. Not just for roles or teams that ended, but for the version of ourselves that existed before they did.

And it’s not just those who leave who feel it. People who remain often grieve too.

They miss colleagues who became friends. They worry about being next. They carry guilt that they stayed when others did not. And over time, they may notice something else, people they were once close to begin to go quiet. Messages stop. Slack threads dry up. And a painful truth surfaces: work is not family.

Even in human-centred cultures, there are limits to what we share, and how long we are remembered.

Toolkit: Making Space for Grief

Try these prompts, either privately, or with a trusted colleague or coach, to reflect on loss in all its forms.

For individuals:

• What have I lost that others might not see?

• What version of myself am I grieving?

• How has this loss affected the way I trust, risk, or relate?

For those who remain:

• Who do I miss? Have I said it?

• What feelings have I suppressed to stay professional?

• How might I honour a colleague’s departure in a way that feels kind and human?

For leaders:

• Where in our team has grief gone unspoken?

• How do we mark endings?

• What could we do to support recovery, not just performance?

Grief doesn’t need to be solved. But it does need to be seen.

In the workplace, grief is often overlooked because the workplace still centres performance, not emotion.

But Nancy Schlossberg’s Transition Theory shows that major life changes disrupt more than routines. They affect identity, relationships, and our assumptions about the future. When those changes are not processed, they can lead to a loss of meaning and motivation.

William Bridges also framed transitions through three phases: Ending, Neutral Zone, and New Beginning. His work reminds us that letting go comes first, and it’s often the hardest step.

And yet, most organisations rush past this phase. Colleagues disappear from directories. Slack channels go silent. Everyone is told to focus on what’s next.

That silence has a cost. Grief that is rushed becomes grief that is buried. And what we bury, we carry.

Grief also takes different forms. There’s acute grief, like the death of a loved one. There’s ambiguous grief, when something ends without clarity or closure. And there’s disenfranchised grief, the kind that isn’t recognised by others as legitimate.

Job loss often contains all three. And when it coincides with personal loss, as it did for me, the impact is exponential.

But when organisations name grief, honour transitions, and humanise endings, they offer something rare and valuable: the permission to heal.