My wife did not want to talk about it. I had come home and waited patiently through dinner. Our young daughters had run off to play and now I was ready to share.

I had spent my day at a local funeral home (the funeral home I now work for). I had decided early in my career that if I was going to be writing articles and presenting to funeral and cemetery professionals, then I would need to spend more time “in the trenches.” As a grief psychologist, I had a lot of knowledge about the bereaved, but I would need to experience the challenges and rewards of funeral service first-hand. The funeral home owners had allowed me to sit in on some arrangement conferences that day. After asking permission from the first family, I was ready to witness the process of planning a funeral.

The first arrangement conference of the day was to plan the funeral for a two-month-old. I will spare you the details, but the death was tragic and accidental. As a former therapist, I’m no stranger to tough, emotional conversations – but I was not fully prepared for this. Thankfully, the funeral director I was shadowing was ready. He handled the entire meeting with empathy and professionalism. I marveled at his ability to know when to shift from allowing the parents to share their pain to offering personalized options that would allow them to begin to heal from this tragic loss.

When I arrived home, I wanted to share the experience with my wife. As a former child therapist, she has experience with difficult conversations and has dealt with painful, emotional topics. But she did not want to hear about the funeral arrangements for a baby. And yet I wanted to talk about it. That’s when it struck me. This is exactly what you, as funeral and cemetery professionals, deal with every day. You regularly see and hear things that other people never want to think about. You are the “odd one” in your community – and in some cases, even to your own families.

I could imagine the funeral director I had shadowed that day going to a barbeque with a group of friends later that night. While the accountant could complain about the stress of tax season and the teacher could share stories about unruly children and disgruntled parents, he already knew that no one wanted to hear about his day at the funeral home. Even his spouse would not want to hear the details of his day. And so, he would have to keep it inside – like the thousands of other funeral and cemetery professionals who perform the same duties each day.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had witnessed. In hindsight, the events of that day were the seed that grew to become my presentation on preventing burnout in funeral and cemetery professionals.

As I began working in a funeral home and cemetery, I discovered the additional challenges of dealing with family arguments during the arrangement process. Few situations are more stressful things for a funeral professional than being a referee to a family who cannot agree on how to plan a service. This is why I created my Defusing Conflict in the Arrangement Room presentation.

Given the challenging two years we have all had, I want to share three tips for dealing with the challenges of funeral and cemetery service:

It may be impossible to shake the “odd one” status within your community. That makes it critical that you seek out fellow funeral professionals who really understand the pressures of your field. Whether it is within your region or in a professional organization, you must find “your people.” When you are with them, take time to share stories and support, learn new strategies and tools, and ask your colleagues how they deal with various challenges of the profession. This opportunity to connect personally and professionally is invaluable.

There is no substitute for taking time away from work. Owners and managers must have reasonable expectations and workloads for their staff members. Given the nature of funeral and cemetery service, there will always be busy days and busy weeks. But too often I hear about professionals that never have slower weeks nor do they provide adequate vacation time. Achieving “psychological distance” is difficult because cell phones can keep you tied to the business even when you are away, but look for creative solutions and schedules so you can find times when you can turn off your phone.

While serving the needs of bereaved families is critical, I have seen too many situations where employees were treated like they were expendable. While poor service for a family may result in losing a few future calls, burned out employees will negatively affect every call. Owners and managers should also remember that employees are critical for marketing and are very expensive to replace. Support your employees by providing them with stress reduction resources, educational opportunities, and reasonable work conditions.

Funeral and cemetery professionals deal with extraordinary stressors and work conditions. Not everyone is able to survive these unique demands. But I hope that death care professionals can go beyond simply “getting by” in this challenging field. It is time to take some of the attention and concern that you show every family that walks through your front door and begin practicing better care for yourself and your colleagues.

What is the true definition of culture and why is it important in business and our profession?
The dictionary defines culture as a collection of behaviors and beliefs associated with a particular group. It is also the quality of a person or group of people that comes from appreciating excellence.

As an owner since 1989, after reading Dr. Gustavo’s book, I began to realize that our company culture was not effective and that it was upside down. I had been raised and always thought that our customers were our most important asset and that we should do everything to make them our #1 priority.  I had a business coach and consultant come in and conduct a 360 on me and others in management. What we learned was that our staff was afraid of failing and afraid of failing me as the owner if they made a mistake in service to our customers. Wow, what an eye-opener that was! Our culture was one of getting everything right for the customer each time and doing our best to not have our staff fail. Thus, each day, team Baue functioned with a fear of failing.

This culture was not working. No staff can be motivated by fear of failure. They needed to be supported, trained to know it was ok to fail. We as owners and managers had to change our behaviors and share our failures with them too. We learned they needed more praise, encouragement, and enhanced training. They also needed to feel supported, understood, and know that they mattered to us as our first priority in every decision we made.

Today, during the worldwide pandemic, many staff and funeral service professionals around the country and the world continue to feel isolated, fearful, and alone. Some have experienced their own losses and are exhausted. We are seeing and reading about employees who are leaving our profession and companies in larger numbers more than ever before.  Our profession is part of the “Great Resignation” and at the same time, deaths are increasing, not just from the pandemic, but from an aging population.

The question we should be asking ourselves, is what are we going to do about this? We struggle to find new hires, new licensees, and those that continue on our team are tired and could be considering leaving in the future. The next generation of Millennials and Gen Z (those born after 1993) are not entering our profession, nor enrolling in mortuary schools in large enough numbers to fill the losses we are experiencing. Something must give, and somebody must do something. That somebody, I believe is us! That somebody is looking back at us in the mirror every morning.

Wake up funeral service! Admit we have made mistakes and go fix them!!!

As a profession, we must acknowledge that we are not managing our cultures correctly, nor do we have our licensing laws aligned with the desires and skills for future employee retention. The licensing law topic is a blog for another day. Suffice it to say that most of the licensing we require, along with the training we provide, is not aligning with what a future hire wants to attend, nor what our client family’s needs are. Is it occurring to any of us that we are misaligned in our efforts and the culture we have created? Does it concern us that our clients are arranging direct burials and direct cremations in increasing numbers, and not choosing us to help with the service or they are choosing no service at all?

I believe that we can and must do things differently going forward. My “wake up call” was in 2014. I chose to behave differently as a leader. I chose to do something about our culture to better care for our team members and show them how much they were appreciated. I chose to listen to their development and work environment needs. We changed our focus from our customers to our staff and began on a path to help them become the best leaders, caregivers, and the best event planners they could be. I do not think it was by accident that our company volume grew, nor that we became the “employer of choice” in our region for years to come. It convinced me back then as it does today, that a strong positive culture of caring more for our team members than we do for our customers was and is the right thing to do.

In June of 1912, our 26th President of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, stated “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” This quote was shared while he was speaking in Chicago, IL.

For more ideas from Chicago, I interviewed Barbara Kemmis, Executive Director of the Cremation Association of North America (CANA), headquartered in the greater Chicago area for my Elevating Women in Funeral Service Series on the Your Funeral Coach Talks podcast. Barbara shared her thoughts on mentorship, leadership and the growth CANA has experienced in membership, finances, and programs. She also consulted her crystal ball to discuss the future growth of cremation and trends in our profession. I hope you will listen in. 

Be well, spend some time this week showing others in your organization how much you care, want to hear their ideas, concerns, and fears.
And most of all, I hope you discover your “wake up call” as you look in the mirror tomorrow morning and think about what you want for your company’s future culture. Better yet, ask your team what they think!