Dying Matters Awareness Week 2023: death, dying and grief in the workplace

Many people still find it difficult to discuss death and dying; such concepts can evoke different thoughts, feelings and meaning to each individual. To help with our anxieties, this month's Dying Matters Awareness has dedicated a week for people around the UK and the four nations to come together and talk about everything death and dying. This year, the Dying Matters Awareness Week, with the theme ‘Death, dying and grief in the workplace’, has been moved to 8–14 May in view of King Charles III's coronation. Hospice UK claims that 57% of employees will have experienced a bereavement in the last 5 years, and everyday more than 600 people quit their work to look after older and disabled relatives (Hospice UK, 2023). Given these figures, Hospice UK claim that only one in five managers feel confident supporting someone experiencing grief and bereavement. These figures make for a difficult reading and only signal the need to train and support managers in the workplace. Therefore, the awareness week opens a good opportunity for managers and employees to have open conversation with others about death and how people perceive it. Talking openly about death before someone dies is a way of softening this somewhat difficult and taboo topic and paving a way for supportive conversation with employees after a death has occurred.