Burnout is real. Compassion fatigue is real. In a recent survey from Indeed, more than 50% of the respondents revealed that they’re feeling burned out.

That is no exception for last responders and funeral professionals.

Work schedule and the work environment are some of the biggest culprits – but the situation is not all dire. This is something that we can work on if we commit to it.

As deathcare professionals, it’s important to prioritize our own mental health. While it’s not necessarily the “solve-all” answer, we have one idea to help address burnout: utilizing an efficient funeral management system.
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Learn about some of the ways that the right funeral management system can help your team prevent burnout and achieve a greater work-life balance.

There are many required tasks that both you and your families must complete in order to properly plan an arrangement or service.

Let’s be honest – task management is tedious within itself.

One report from Smartsheet found that nearly 60% of workers surveyed estimate that they could save 6 hours per week if their tedious and monotonous work tasks were automated.
Instead of mapping out tasks that need to be completed every time a new case opens up, you can automate that process with the right funeral management system.
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Some funeral management system options allow you to create a template of action items (both standard and aftercare) that automatically generate for every unique case, such as:

• Scheduling the arrangement conference
• Specifying and recording service details
• Collecting photos of the decedent for the service and slideshow
• Helping the family complete the obituary
• Collecting signatures for required documentation

By saving time on these normally tedious tasks, you can:

• Prevent tasks from being missed or forgotten
• Allow your team to spend more time on higher-value projects for the business
• Reduce stress and headaches related to ensuring that your team is completing required tasks

You may be hearing the buzzword “cloud-based software” more and more nowadays. But you may also be wondering – what does that even mean?

There are essentially two types of funeral management software available to businesses:

• On-Premise Software: popular for several decades, this is software that is locally installed on your computer, tablet, and phone. On-premise software is usually only allowed to be installed on a limited number of devices, and data is not shared and updated in real-time across all the devices.
• Cloud-Based Software: more popular nowadays, this is software that is hosted by a third-party platform and doesn’t necessarily need to be installed to be used. Cloud-based software can be used on any of your devices, as long as you have a stable internet connection and a secure login. Plus, data is shared and updated in real-time across all devices.

So what makes the most sense for funeral homes nowadays? Cloud-based software – and here is why.

Instead of having to run to the office to access your local desktop computer every time you get a death call or a question from a client, you can access your funeral management system directly from any mobile device, at any time of the day, from anywhere.
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As a result, you gain the freedom to change up your daily routine. If you are in a bind with other life events going on, you can easily work from home, access your crucial business info, and still get all of your work done.

Sure, you have weekly team meetings to get an up-to-date report from your team and hold each other accountable.

But you need to make sure that (to a degree) you’re holding your families accountable too.
One study from ASTD found that if you schedule recurring appointments with a partner who holds you accountable, you can increase your chances of success by 95%.
While that study doesn’t pertain directly to customers or clients, it still shows one important finding: holding people accountable (respectfully, of course) usually ends up being a win-win for everyone.

If you find the funeral management system that aligns best with your business, you can use it to hold your families accountable and ultimately take the stress off of your shoulders.

YOU CAN OBTAIN DOCUMENT SIGNATURES QUICKER
Stop playing cat and mouse with your clients and families. Instead of building enormous email threads and scanning documents one by one, you can use a funeral management system to:

• Quickly create a digital bundle of documents that the family needs to sign
• Autofill or auto-populate those documents with unique, identifying information
• In one click, send the documents to the family to sign electronically
• Save the finalized documentation to the cloud-based system for your records

When you collaborate with families directly through a funeral management system, their signed contract and any interactions they’ve completed will be digitally recorded for you.

As a result, they know that they are committed to you. Instead of running the risk of getting a bad review when you send payment reminders, you’re able to communicate with families through a third-party medium.

Not only can you save on printing and paper costs, but you also reduce the chances of error in your service documentation.

At the end of the day, what’s the most important asset to your business?

Your people.

Think about it – when you’re able to effectively manage your team and provide tools to them that make everyone's lives easier, you will likely:

• Offer new development and learning opportunities
• Reduce the number of employee complaints
• Increase productivity and quality of work
• Improve employee retention within your business

Employee retention is no joke for businesses of any size. It’s important to give your employees reasons (and tools like a funeral management system) to keep them happy and make their lives easier.

And as research from Legaljobs shows, the implicit risk or reward for funeral homes to lose even a single employee is jaw-dropping:

• The cost of replacing a trained employee can be more than 200% of their salary
• On average, a higher retention rate can maximize a company’s profits up to 4 times

The more you’re able to empower your team to manage themselves, the more you can focus on other strategic aspects of the business.

Most importantly, you can feel less burnout from dealing with employee situations.

SIMPLIFY EVERYTHING WITH SMARTER FUNERAL HOME MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
Burnout and compassion fatigue are very real things in the funeral and deathcare industry, but finding a smart funeral management system can help.

At Gather, we’ve truly designed our funeral management system with you in mind. Our goal is to help you increase productivity, boost your funeral home’s reputation, and simplify your life.
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Start streamlining your team’s workflow, and give yourself the time to breathe again. Book an online demo with our team, our mission is to get you the tools and help you need.

Over the Christmas holiday, I joined a few million other Americans by watching the second season of Netflix’s The Crown. We in the USA have an odd fascination with the British monarchy, reliably gobbling up anything related to the UK’s Royal Family.

The differences between our two governments can be simplified as form and function. The UK has a Prime Minister to govern (function) and a sovereign to serve as a living symbol of the country (form). The American Presidency rolls these two jobs into one.
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But Americans, ironically, divide the two components when it comes to business. Hiring is one of a company’s most impactful decisions for its brand, but is made by one of its most insulated and quantitative departments. Like every election, every hiring decision impacts the corporate brand. So, it’s high time marketing and HR got together. After all, Americans talk a lot about qualifications and experience, but we tend to vote for the candidate we’d rather have a beer with. Below are a few arguments for “the special relationship” between Marketing and HR, inspired by both sides of the Atlantic.

Your audience sees your employees as brand ambassadors, even if you don’t. Americans are less comfortable with pomp and spectacle than our British cousins. That’s why we can’t quite get our heads around the monarchy. We can understand hiring for experience, but hiring for image seems downright undemocratic.

But image—even spectacle—are sometimes exactly what a brand needs. From Branson to Bezos, some of the world’s most successful executives are masters of show business. At every level, your brand will be judged by the people you send into the room to represent it, both internally and externally. Even if you keep him away from clients, that hire with savant-like expertise but abysmal interpersonal skills will take his toll on your company’s culture and morale. On the other hand, the individual with an innate ability to inspire might just be able to learn the technical details.

It isn’t lonely at the top. Like the monarch, CEOs and celebrity spokespeople are the faces most carefully selected and cultivated for their ability to inspire. But commoners change history too. Executives and paid actors don’t have the only—or even the greatest—impact on a brand’s value. I can’t name the CEO of Home Depot, but I can tell you all about the terrible customer service I received last week.

Ritz Carlton understands this. Their “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen” mantra has helped the brand become synonymous with the very best in hospitality and dining. Compare that to the night shift at Holiday Inn: instilling form versus function at every level makes all the difference.

People failures are brand failures. The Crown’s sophomore season dove into the scandals that have plagued the royal family, providing another important lesson for marketers and HR pros: The best spokesperson arrangement in history can’t protect you from the spokesperson. Tiger Woods went from brand gold to brand anathema literally overnight. The Most Interesting Man in the World, one of the most successful campaigns in advertising history, was ultimately toppled simply because an actor wanted to retire.

It’s never wise to put all your eggs in one basket. If every hire is an investment in your company’s brand (and it is), then it’s wise to diversify that investment. A brand embodied by lots of faces means less disaster when one of them screws up or calls it quits.

Good form can enable good function. Repeatedly in The Crown, the precocious queen broke with tradition to influence world events, armed with nothing but her signature grace and eloquence. While her classically-trained advisors wanted to stick to traditional diplomatic channels, they were always left in admiration when she achieved what they were unable to.

Don’t underestimate the hard results of soft skills. Does that sales role really require industry expertise, or do you actually need a masterful relationship-builder? Which would you rather have at your front desk: the consummate hostess or an MBA?

When you’re desperate to hire someone who can do the job, remember that “the job” almost always includes representing your company—whether externally or internally. That goes beyond a résumé, a degree, or a certification. Too many front desks and front doors are manned by the most disengaged, disinterested person in the company. It can be helpful to think of those positions in terms of how much charisma they require, not how little technical ability.

You likely won’t have the luxury of hiring purely for ceremony, but putting Marketing in HR’s seat for a moment might yield some fruitful discussions—and might help you build a brand worthy of kings.