Humanizing Self, Relationships, and Career: How Personal Loss Affects the Work Domain in the Long Term

Building on an inductive, qualitative study of employees who experienced a significant personal loss due to bereavement, this paper explores how such personal events affect the work domain in the long term. Drawing on 53 in-depth interviews and supplementary archival data, we develop an inductive model that shifts the focus from the predominant in the literature short-term costs of personal grief for organizations to the potential long-term benefits of having employees with grieving experience. Specifically, the model shows that personal loss can humanize professional self, relationships at work, and career as people make sense of the loss, the feelings it made them experience, and the reaction to sharing the loss with colleagues. Consequently, the long-term impact of personal loss results in reallocating work-life balance resources, becoming a more self-compassionate and compassionate employee, engaging in job crafting behavior, and altering career path. Such behavioral changes create a new, resilient to further changes, status quo that addresses the needs that existed prior to the loss.