Well Being Services

Bereavement Workshops

Our partner offers workshops which are designed to give businesses the confidence, knowledge and practical tools to support employees with compassion, while helping managers feel equipped to have difficult conversations and respond appropriately when grief affects their teams.

Every organisation is different, which is why there is a range of workshop options available. Choose from:

Lunch & Learn (45–60 minutes online)

Half-Day Workshop (3–4 hours)

• Understanding grief and its impact in the workplace.
• Effective communication and compassionate conversations.
• Supporting bereaved colleagues before and after a loss.
• Manager guidance and practical workplace strategies.
• Group discussions and real-life scenarios.

Full-Day Workshop

Other workshop options include:

• Anticipatory grief
• Supporting bereaved colleagues
• Communicating with compassion
• Managing grief within teams
• Supporting customers experiencing bereavement
• Building a bereavement-friendly workplace

Supporting Women Returning to Work

Each of those scenarios can bring identity change, a dip in confidence, disrupted routines and practical constraints – sleep deprivation, medical appointments, childcare logistics. That combination can amplify mental health risk. The return is not just a date. It is a psychological transition, and a talent and productivity risk if employers treat it as an admin exercise.

What the evidence shows

Bright Horizons research, reported by People Management, found that 29% of working parents report high or extreme levels of stress, and 62% of mothers said childcare disruptions had affected their ability to work. That strain does not stop on day one back. It can show up as persistent fatigue, reduced concentration, a higher risk of sickness absence, and a higher likelihood of cutting hours or leaving.

ONS figures show around 69% of women with a dependent child aged 0 to 2 are in employment. Separate ONS analysis for England (April 2014 to December 2022) found that between one and five years after a first birth, women’s monthly earnings were 37.9% to 42.0% lower than the year before birth – a loss of £948 to £1,051 a month. A sustained earnings penalty is often a proxy for reduced hours, a role change, stalled progression, or exit from higher-paid tracks.

The next generation of women will expect employers to take meaningful action, not just publish a policy. Employers that do not modernise risk losing people to organisations that offer better flexibility, better manager capability and a psychologically safer culture. Yet many still treat this as someone else’s problem.

What poor re-entry looks like

A People Management report on returning parents described experiences including being undermined or “gaslit”, feeling like an inconvenience, being excluded from key discussions, and unexplained changes to role or responsibilities. Those experiences worsen anxiety and reduce psychological safety.

Women often leave, step down or stall because several pressures stack at once:

• Role design that assumes full-time, always-on availability
• Childcare logistics and disruption, which still fall disproportionately on mothers
• Confidence and identity shift after a major life event
• Line manager behaviour, culture and motherhood bias
• Career penalties: fewer stretch projects, less visibility, slower progression

When that happens, women may step off leadership tracks, reduce hours, move into lower-paid roles, leave the employer, or leave the labour market altogether. Negative return-to-work experiences also drive quiet disengagement. Even where someone stays, poor support reduces productivity.

What employers stand to lose

Pregnancy and maternity is a protected characteristic. Poor handling of returners can create risk around pregnancy, maternity and sex discrimination, flexible working disputes, harassment (including “banter” culture), inconsistent line management, and a workplace culture that quietly penalises motherhood.

How we can help

We help employers put a proper return-to-work plan in place before the first day back, not after things have already gone wrong. That typically includes:

• Keeping in touch days so the employee does not come back cold
• A phased return to work where the role allows it 
  • Reasonable adjustments, where the employee requires them
• Flexible working requests handled clearly
• A short manager briefing so line managers do not treat a returner as an inconvenience, or confuse adjustment with capability
• A review of your maternity leave, flexible working and return to work policy so they match what you are actually prepared to do

Where confidence, anxiety or family stress is part of the picture, this sits alongside our counselling package on this page. Where the time away has been linked to ill health or injury, we can also involve occupational health so the medical and the people side are not treated as two separate problems.

This support can sit inside a retainer or be arranged as a one-off piece of work around a specific return.