Bereaved Employees, Professional Activity and Pain of Loss
5 septembre 2009 - Marc-Antoine BerthodIn Dennis R. Cooley and Lloyd Steffen (eds.), 2009, Re-imaging Death and Dying, Oxford : Inter-Disciplinary Press, pp. 307-319.
When a close relative dies, what kind of relations do individuals professionally active have with their colleagues at the workplace? How do they live their return at work? Based on a research carried out with various actors (directors, heads of human resources, employees, trade unionists, work inspectors, psychologists and social workers) in about twenty medium-sized and big companies of the French-speaking part of the canton of Valais, Switzerland, this paper tries to answer these questions following an anthropological approach. It presents how the bereaved employees perceive the way their firms rationalize – or do not rationalize – the announcement of death; organize their participation to the funerary rituals; welcome them after their bereavement leave; manage the temporality of bereavement in their structure. It focuses on the experiences of the bereaved employees in order to better understand the influence of the social and professional context on the grieving process at the workplace.
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