As we entered 2025, you may have set a goal to take better care of yourself, only to find that the excitement of “New Year, New Me” has faded, and your resolution has taken a back seat. This is a common challenge, especially for those in the funeral industry, where the demands of the job can leave little time for personal well-being. The reality is stark: In 2023, the age-adjusted death rate in the United States was 750.5 deaths per 100,000, with a total of 3,090,964 deaths recorded (Murphy et al., 2024). As funeral professionals, we are expected to master emotional labor, which involves managing one’s emotions and expressions when interacting with others. In addition to physical labor, the emotional labor of our work often leads to burnout, compassion fatigue, and a range of stress-related issues.

Funeral directors and embalmers face immense pressure to provide impeccable service and manage personal and financial stress. These pressures can lead to emotional exhaustion, where compassion fatigue manifests as numbness and reduced empathy toward others. This is often a consequence of overuse of compassion skills and lack of self-care.

Likewise, burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged, repeated, and unmanaged stress such as unrealistic time pressures, lack of support, unmanageable workload, unpredictable work schedule, and dealing with heavy grief daily.

The signs of stress in this field are all too familiar: physical and emotional exhaustion, increased anxiety, headaches, stomach issues, anger, irritability, relationship issues, and negative coping behaviors, including drug and alcohol abuse, may emerge along with decreased job satisfaction.

This article will explore simple strategies to reduce stress and incorporate self-care routines that can help restore balance to your life. One such practice is mindfulness—where you connect with your inner awareness to identify stressors, explore healthier coping strategies, and use self-reflection to continuously recommit to your self-care throughout the year, rather than simply setting a goal and forgetting about it.

We’ve all heard about the adverse effects of workplace stress, and a quick online search will show how much it can impact a business. Chronic stress and constant pressure can lead to burnout, with signs like increased tardiness, forgetfulness, low morale, and a toxic work environment. This affects not only team dynamics but also customer interactions and, in the long run, employee turnover (Glomb et al., 2011).

The Cleveland Clinic (2021) points out that when stress becomes a regular part of our lives, it can cause problems like cortisol levels not lowering, leading to adverse effects such as a weakened immune system, headaches, digestive issues, and weight gain. Stress can change how we view things and affect our interactions with coworkers, customers, and competitors. While emotions come and go, our mood and outlook can be more challenging to shift, especially when stress becomes chronic. Recognizing ongoing stress is essential because it can lead to anxiety and depression and impact our ability to adapt to unexpected situations on the job (Centers for Disease Control, 2024).

While stress is a normal part of life, the constant pressure we face at work can make it overwhelming. That’s where practices like mindfulness come in. Taking time for self-care and creating a plan to manage stress can help reduce burnout and improve work performance and personal well-being.

One of the best ways to start a self-care routine is to take some time to engage in mindfulness and find out what your stressors are and what self-care means to you.

Mindfulness is paying attention to our thoughts, feelings, and emotions on purpose and without judgment of what is happening at that moment (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). To practice mindfulness, we can incorporate a more formal routine of activities like meditation, breathing, or yoga to help us become more aware of our thoughts and emotions when we are not engaged in formal meditative activities (Potter, n.d.). When we become more self-aware of how we go about our day, we can become more compassionate with ourselves and care for ourselves like we would our loved ones or families. The care we give ourselves by establishing boundaries for moments to reset helps generate the energy and compassion to continue supporting others (Neff & Dahm, 2017). Here are three ways to use mindfulness, play, and compassion to bring more self-awareness into our lives.

Visualization is a great way to bring a feeling of calm and help you come one step closer to putting some time between stress and work. Start by taking a slow, deep breath through the nose, holding the breath, and slowly letting the air out of your mouth. As a mindful practice, close your eyes and imagine what you see, feel, touch, taste, and hear during a hobby or activity you enjoy. What are some of the things that you find yourself doing to engage in fun or joy?

Once you imagine these activities or ideas, write down statements or affirm that you deserve a few moments of care. Affirm aloud or to yourself with statements like, “I need a 10-minute break so that I can show up the way I want to for myself and my family”, “I’m taking a walk, and the warm sun and a breath of fresh air is what I need right now,” or “Planning time for myself, is just as important as the plans I make for work.” 

Saying these things or writing statements that resonate with you is the second step in moving closer to better self-care and reducing chronic stress. The last part of this is to do what you are affirming. Even if you don’t put these things into practice right away, you might take that break eventually, so try one of those activities you imagined.

The true goal is to have more mindful self-compassion and self-care for yourself which can improve your work life and, hopefully those around you (coworkers, families, clergy, etc). While these ideas are great, they require action and continual commitment because life can become complicated, and we might lose sight of our personal goals. According to the change cycle, slipping out of new practices within the maintenance stage is common and may be frustrating. Setting regular times to reflect on your work-life balance, understanding why you stopped your practice, recommitting, and sharing your experience with a trusted person can ensure that the change becomes a permanent part of your lifestyle (Salerno & Brock, 2008).

Here are a few other mindful activities to explore for your mindful self-compassion and care:

1. Try a yoga session, mindfulness course, or self-compassion training.
2. Write journal entries about what you are grateful for. Or reflect on times you’re hard on yourself and what advice you have given to a friend under stress, and see if that might apply to you.
3. Try breathing practices or guided meditations.
4. Connect with a friend or family member when you’re overwhelmed. Sometimes, they help remind you of the self-care you committed to, or they can listen.
5. Try talk therapy with a mental health counselor if a friend or loved one is not an option.
   

When discussing succession planning, I always like to start by asking: How many of you are actively engaged in succession planning? If the answer is anything less than “everyone,” it’s a missed opportunity. Succession planning isn’t just for business owners; it’s critical for managers, employees, and everyone in between. It’s about fostering redundancy, nurturing talent, and preparing both individuals and organizations for a seamless future. Done effectively, succession planning allows you to focus on the most critical tasks as an owner, manager, or employee.

A successful succession plan begins with a clear vision of the future. Ask yourself:

• What’s your path forward?
• As an owner, when do you envision retiring? Will you step back partially or fully? Will you remain involved in the business in any capacity?
• What’s the future health of your business? What does it look like one year, five years, or ten years from now?
  

Think of your business as a significant relationship. Is the future bright, or are there issues brewing? Here are some key questions to consider:

The answers to these questions can significantly shape your succession plan. Ultimately, your goal is to build equity in your business and ensure its longevity, even if you step away. To assess your progress, consider having a business valuation done along with a business assessment to assist in crafting annual strategic plans. These tools can help you determine whether your business can thrive without you.

When evaluating businesses, I focus on four key areas:

A well-planned succession strategy aligns with periods of high opportunity and low risk, translating to high value. Businesses with strong life expectancy typically attract the best offers during a transfer. Here are two critical metrics that highlight the importance of effective succession planning:

In conclusion, ignorance may feel blissful, but it’s far from strategic. Knowing your business’s value today, yesterday, and tomorrow is crucial. By proactively creating a vision and tenaciously pursuing it, you can dictate your success. Succession planning isn’t just about transferring ownership; it’s about ensuring that your business thrives long after you’ve stepped away.

For additional guidance or questions, reach out to Johnson Consulting.

President & CEO at Johnson Consulting, Jake Johnson began his career at Keystone Group Holdings (now Dignity Memorial Network) as Associate Director, Corporate Development. This job included financial analysis, bank and equity partner presentations, along with accounting and system setup with acquired funeral homes. Jake then went on to work at Palm Mortuaries and Cemeteries in Las Vegas, NV, which at the time handled 6,500 funeral home families and over 2,200 cemetery cases out of 6 locations. Here Jake conducted funeral directing, funeral arranging, funeral home management, cemetery operations management, and sat on the executive board. Jake’s ability to problem solve business issues contributes to his success in currently owning a funeral home and cremation center in Sun City, AZ, along with a small-town funeral home in Batesville, IN.

The history of funeral service practice is male dominated. Most of our initial undertakers were owners and operators, purveyors, proprietors. They were livery stable owners and operators. They were financiers. When we think about history, though, it’s important for us to understand that is the recorded history in our history textbooks, which might not have been penned by a woman.

The lack of female perspective in some of our history texts—and in general—is well documented. We do have individuals who are putting out new history books from a different lens that doesn’t necessarily end up being a White male-dominated view of the past. As we begin to look at how things were well before the 1900s, I hope we can recall that women were the primary caretakers. They were the ones that were as familiar with the cradle as the grave. They were there as midwives and nurses, helping with the birthing of our next generation. And they were there in sickness and in death to take care of the remains. Of course, the gentlemen were also there to provide the caskets and the transportation or the coffins at the time. But it’s important for us to understand “her story” in history.

I was a teenager fresh out of high school when I began working at a mortuary-cemetery-crematory-flower shop combination. It was owned by a family that had it for three generations. My typical daily schedule began in the afternoon, because I went to school during the day. You were registered as an apprentice or an intern or a trainee, and it took us about 12 months to get through a program.

This was back in the late eighties, early nineties, and it was not uncommon that we would be in class from 7 to 3 and at work from 3 to midnight. Weekends, holidays, evenings. We were on call. That was the way we were groomed for professional practice, understanding that our lives took second stage to what was the main show—and the main show was caring for the grieving families.

I was one of four women in class at the time and most of them were legacies. You recognized their last names because they were on the side of buildings. You saw that they had this perspective—that it was a grooming, if you will, and they didn’t have a choice. They were going to take over the family business. Some of them were rather reluctant to ascend to that type of position, yet it was an expectation from their family. Now my classroom is 90%+ women—and the men who identify as such were not assigned male at birth.

So—why are we just recognizing the influence or impact or influx of women now? It might be because the number of women find it—post-pandemic—now viable to balance work and life and not have to pack up and move away to go to school. They can do it from their living room on their laptop. Now is the opportunity for so many individuals who were transitioned away from their primary job because of the pandemic and are now looking for something that is rewarding and stable as a second career.

These might be our former nurses who were frontline during the pandemic and have decided now is the time for them to migrate somewhere away from hospitals. It’s our social workers. It’s our police officers. It’s our firefighters. All of those that may have been in a caregiving role that have been called to funeral service.

I think the pandemic was the best thing to illuminate what deathcare professionals do in our communities, because it put us on the evening news every night as to what was being done to help those families that had suffered so much loss in such a short period of time. But at the same time, there’s a host of gender politics that go right in line with that gender gap.

We found that the burden of a second shift, working all day and then caring for family members, fell primarily to women. That has been historical. As they’ve taken on roles outside of the home, women are still expected to maintain the home. Hopefully, as we begin to see more diversity and equity and inclusion in our workforce, the responsibility for both home and family and work becomes more equally distributed and equitable.

We are an intersection of everything that we have done, that we have been exposed to and that we continue to do. So how is this going to impact the way you treat your applicants and your employees?

I hope that you are looking for an employee that wants and has a significant desire to make an impact. And then I hope that you see within yourself a need to mentor the next generation.

No longer are we at the point where 5% of our population of practitioners is women. We’re now more than 40% — and we have a strong desire to comfort the grieving families that come to us. We recognize that there’s an increase in cremation, but it comes with additional celebration and an opportunity for innovation, because we are no longer tied as individuals to being a second generation, a third generation, or the succession plan that our family had.

We women don’t have the same level of expectation for ourselves. We don’t have the same level of burden thrust upon our shoulders from our fathers, our grandfathers, our mothers, our grandmothers. We do things differently. And this is why women are such a natural for funeral service practice. We are innovators, we are revolutionaries, we are here, and we’re so glad that we have the opportunity.

There is a gap between expectations of our graduates and what our providers are willing to give. Here are some of the things that our graduates want. Flexibility. They do not want that schedule that I had: three to midnight, weekends, holidays, after hours. They want a work-life balance.

They want someone that is as interested in the graduate’s own learning and development as they are with the development of their business. They want financial well-being. They want benefits to be offered, but not the benefits that the traditional employee may have wanted. They’re not looking for a retirement per se, but they do want a cafeteria plan.

They want to make sure that the mission of the funeral home and the owners and the managers match the mission and values that they bring. But more than anything, graduates want to be recognized for the skills that they bring to us that might be earned outside of a classroom environment: for what they’ve experienced, for the innovation that is within them, and being willing to collaborate with them in that regard.

They’re not just looking at their paycheck. They’re looking at everything that embodies the work-life experience. They want an owner or a manager that understands that balance and walks it themselves. They want an owner and manager that communicates the importance of unplugging from digital technologies. They don’t want to be bothered on their days off. They don’t want to answer texts at 6 o’clock in the morning. They want individuals that are held in high regard, and they do think of you as their mentors. Whether or not you have opted for that title, they have superimposed it on you. They want to see their manager taking time away from work and enjoying that work-life balance.

They are diverse. They expect equity. They want to be included and they do not take “It’s the way we’ve always done it” as an answer—and they certainly want to overcome the biases that we may have on them being younger and possibly not knowing how we do things because they have found a way to do it better. Our next generation wants to make sure that the mission of the funeral establishment aligns with their values.

Focus on volunteerism, philanthropy, and service above self, because that’s where they’re coming from. And then of course, on the compensation package, because that’s the one area we commonly hear that funeral service is lacking in. They’re not compensating appropriately for the level of engagement and education and experience requirements.

Full time to them is not 40 hours a week. Full time to them is engagement of the brain. They will constantly be engaged, yet they might not be at work. So what are we doing to offer them a benefit package that not only has the appropriate wage but also includes fringe benefits, like student loan repayment programs or flexible spending accounts?

Our students and applicants are compassionate individuals that believe that they should be judged not on their appearance, but on their conduct and demeanor. And they are professionals in that regard. They want to be recognized and respected for their contributions and applauded for what they give.

Thanking them at the end of the day for the work that they’ve done might seem so superficial and yet, they need to hear “You did a good job. I appreciate that you were here and I really hope you’ll come back tomorrow.” When they are in an environment where they do not feel that level of support and appreciation, they’ll be the first ones to ghost you. Gone. They found another position and they do not feel beholden to a two-week notice.

Historically, we expected individuals to have family ties to funeral service. That’s not true today. In such an amazing way, you have people that are coming into funeral service because they have a fire within them, compassion at their core, and they want to make a difference. They don’t feel obligated to hold the family tradition. They want into our ranks, but they’re women who haven’t historically been in our space.

“Where are our applicants? I can’t seem to find any applicants.” Trust me, they’re there. The problem is—are you ready to meet them where they are? Because they are willing to change the world and they are ripe for what funeral service brings next.

Jolena Grande, CFSP, has more than 30 years of professional practice as a California-licensed funeral director, embalmer, cemetery manager, and crematory manager. Beginning her funeral service career in 1989 working for a large mortuary/cemetery combination operation in Southern California, she is also a longtime faculty member in the Mortuary Science Department at Cypress College where she has served as an instructor since 1995. She serves on various committees with the California Funeral Directors Association, is the current secretary of the National Associated Colleges of Mortuary Science, and immediate past president of the American Board of Funeral Service Education. She is also involved with the California Department of Consumer Affairs Cemetery and Funeral Bureau Advisory Committee and is an item writer for the International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards.

A quick search on Google about horror stories in the office yields results that are often related to the work environment, company culture, and, worse, their manager. The workforce has had much to say about how managers and leaders handle their teams.

They have every right to – after all, your employees are the backbone of your company. Without them, business owners, especially those who have only just entered their respective industries, can face insurmountable challenges in operations, service delivery, and customer relationships, among others.

As such, it is essential for startup and well-established companies to invest in management training that matters. Regardless of experience, managers are expected to refresh their skillset and knowledge base in order to adapt to the new demands of the workforce.

Management education and training provides you with the tools you need to not only hire the best people for your team but also take advantage of every new talent you add to your company. If you need more reasons as to why you should be getting management training, then this article is for you. It will show you what proper management can do in hopes of emphasizing that learning is an essential part of being an effective leader.

Over the past few years, the workforce has become increasingly diverse as technology has made it possible for people all over the world to connect with each other.

For managers, this trend can mean one of two things. For one, the increased diversity could pose unexpected challenges due to differences in culture, perspective, and work ethic.

However, with the proper management skills, company leaders can maximize this diversity to bring out your team's potential for innovation, which is an invaluable asset in an era of knowledge and technology.

You can motivate them to grab the opportunities instead of waiting for it to happen, become more assertive, and hone themselves into becoming future leaders. A good manager can also empower their team, which not only increases their productivity but also their reliability and sense of responsibility.

An incompetent manager can be detrimental to your team's productivity and creativity. Your employees may find themselves bogged down by inefficient processes, fatigue, and job dissatisfaction – factors that can increase your attrition and causing your company to lose the money you've invested for their hiring, training, and onboarding.

Management training helps you identify the signs and prevent the problem before it can happen. It can teach you what to do during coaching and one-on-one sessions as well as any other employee interaction you may have.

As a result, it can ensure that you're inspiring employee loyalty instead of inviting resignation letters to land on your desk.

Once you have a workforce that you can rely on, the next thing you may want as a manager is to ensure that you're doing things right on the business side of things.

Proper management training teaches you how to devise better business strategies that can benefit you in the short- and long-term. Such strategies may have something to do with your workforce, like what, when, and why you should implement an effective rewards system.

It may also teach you how to identify the market you want, reach the customers you need, and keep them coming back to your company for your products and services. The best training modules out there might also include how to handle finances, which is a key responsibility of leaders.

Imagine if you had a workforce that you have to replace every once in a while because people don't want to keep working for you. As a leader, this scenario means that you have to keep hiring people, investing in training over and over again. It also means that you have no one to rely on but yourself.

If you want to start focusing on growing your business, then consider getting management training for the simple fact that it ensures that you're hiring and training a team that will be with you throughout your growth as a company.

It also enables you to delegate tasks, which is something you'll find yourself grateful for when growing inevitably means more paperwork, tasks, and decisions. Having the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve this is essential for startups, especially if you want to hit the ground running.

As a general rule of thumb, remember this: happy workforce, happy leader. If your team spends their time trying to come up with efficient strategies and thinking up solutions to your problems, it's more than likely that you, as a manager, are leading an empowered team that can support the growth of your company. Invest in management training because your workforce is as much an asset as it is your capital.

The loss of talent is one of the biggest challenges organizations face. In a competitive job market, managers can help ensure stability by intentionally creating a culture that people will be more likely to stay in. And, contrary to what is often assumed, it does not have to cost a lot of money.

Here are 10 ways managers can create a culture people will want to join and thrive in: 

Denise Reid and Martha Webb-Jones provide consultation on Human Resources policies and processes through Raven Plume Consulting. The mission of Raven Plume is to change the way people think about funeral service by sharing knowledge and expertise with funeral home and crematory professionals, clients, and the public.

With Cremation Strategies & Consulting, part of Raven Plume Consulting, you can get a discount in developing your SOP Manual and reduce liability, improve employee training, and ensure operations are done correctly, efficiently, and consistently. Available free to CANA Members, the Crematory Management Program provides step-by-step instructions to build a Standard Operating Procedures Manual with the help of experts. Not a member? Learn more about why CANA keeps growing!

During the multiple heat-related illness cases relating to the United States Postal Service (USPS), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was able to establish extreme heat being a major workplace hazard. However, the agency neglected to provide effective abatement techniques in the case.

Due to this, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Review Commission (OSHRC) supported the decision made by the administrative law judge to vacate citations in all but one case.

These citations were related to seven employees working during the summer of 2016 in five cities. Every letter carrier experienced illness when they were out delivering mail in the extreme heat and had to get medical treatment. OSHA claimed that six of these workers became ill due to excessive heat. Five citations were filed against USPS for these alleged violations.

The Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) vacated the five citations after finding that OSHA neglected to prove the workplace conditions were hazardous and that effective and feasible measures were accessible to abate the conditions.

In four cases, the OSHRC agreed the agency established that the extreme heat conditions posed a hazard for the workers under the general duty clause but found the abatement suggestions OSHA made for the hazardous conditions for these cases fell short.

For the fifth one, the OSHRC found that USPS indeed neglected to offer proper heat-related illness training to the supervisors. Therefore, this case was remanded for additional review.

According to OSHA, the USPS was in violation of the general duty clause as it failed to implement a proper program to manage exposure to extreme heat. Thus, OSHA suggested the following measures:

• Rest and work cycles
• Employee monitoring and emergency response plans
• Monitoring USPS data on heat-related illnesses among employees
• Decreasing the outdoor time of employees
• Equipping delivery vehicles with air-conditioning
• Acclimatization
• Providing heat-related illnesses training

However, the USPS proved that it was already following most of these measures or was already in the process of implementing them.

This recent incident highlights the significance of a detailed heat illness prevention plan. Employers must not only have a written plan implemented but also provide sufficient training to their workers. Based on guidance provided by OSHA, supervisors must be trained to:

• Identify heat hazards and control them
• Spot early signs of heat illness or stress
• Provide appropriate first aid
• Quickly initiate emergency medical services

Aside from this, the guidance also recommends employers create a heat illness prevention plan that:

• Those employees returning from a break or new employees are acclimatized and gradually build up to work a full day in the heat
• Temperature and work exertion levels are monitored, classifying levels of physical exertion as heavy, moderate, and low
• Employees are provided easy access to water and have sufficient water to stay hydrated, along with proper breaks to rest
• Shades are installed to ensure employees can rest, or cooling systems or air conditioning is provided if feasible
• The buddy system should be implemented to encourage workers to monitor each other for heat-related illness symptoms
  

Training must be provided to workers to spot stages and signs of heat illness, steps to report them, provide appropriate first aid when needed, and understand how and when to get emergency medical assistance.

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.

There’s been a revolt against hiring for cultural fit. Business Insider says it leads to a homogeneous workplace. The Harvard Business Review calls it a “misguided hiring strategy” and says to stop doing it. Forbes even published an obituary for the concept, saying it’s “fraught with bias.”

With all due respect, they’re wrong. Companies will always have a culture, and culture will always be set by the people you hire. If you’re not actively building a healthy one, you’re passively building a sick one. But the antidote for bad culture is to build good culture—not to pretend you’re building no culture at all. My worst hiring mistakes (and I’ve made doozies) have come when I’ve forgotten culture and hired for something else instead. Determining cultural compatibility is tough to do and tougher to do well—which is why only the best have mastered it.

A shibboleth might help.

The word “shibboleth” comes from an Old Testament story about the Ephraimites, who devised a test after they were infiltrated by an enemy tribe. Anyone who couldn’t say “shibboleth” with the local pronunciation exposed himself as an imposter. Today, the word is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a word or saying used by adherents of a party, sect, or belief and usually regarded by others as empty of real meaning.” A business who knows itself well will establish certain ideas and concepts that are central to its identity, but meaningless to the outside. Your best hires will be the people who recognize and share your excitement for those concepts.
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Here’s the really good news: establishing a shibboleth for your company will allow you to better focus your business, invigorate your team, and increase diversity. Here’s how:

The hard part—and the real importance—of a shibboleth isn’t finding someone who recognizes it, it’s picking one in the first place. To say exactly who fits your brand requires first understanding your brand. And most companies don’t. But that’s exactly why finding a concise articulation of your identity is such an important exercise: it requires the clarity that is essential for you to succeed.

Former IBM CMO Abby Kohnstamm put it this way: “The larger the company, the greater the importance there is to get to a clear, simple brand idea. Ours became a rallying point for the entire organization. It shapes the culture, it shapes business decisions, and it shapes behaviors.”

Think about that. A single litmus test against which a firm can evaluate everything. Every hire, every new product decision, every investment opportunity, aligned to a single idea. You know exactly what the most successful brands are about, because they’ve put in the sweat equity to figure it out for themselves. You can’t afford not to do the same.

It’s the second half of the definition of Shibboleth that’s really important: “usually regarded by others as empty of real meaning.” My firm, which specializes in advertising for stalled, stuck, and stale brands, has helped hundreds of companies find the essence of their identity. Usually, the identity we land on seems boring to outsiders—it hardly ever ends up in ad copy, and nobody outside the company ever knows about it. But that’s why it works: if you get it, you’re attracted to it. And if you don’t, you’ve already disqualified yourself.

The idea Kohnstamm (not to mention IBM’s 380,000 employees) was so excited about? “Solutions.” Not exactly a revolution. But solutions to business problems were what IBM’s customer wanted, and that’s what drives IBM. “Solutions” is a boring word to which IBM gave its own special insider meaning. So it became something that IBM employees could get excited about, because it provided a way of articulating what makes them special. And if solving problems isn’t your thing, you’re probably not what IBM is looking for.

Like a family in-joke, the whole point of a shibboleth is that the world doesn’t get it. It’s for you, so that when the going gets tough, your team can remind each other why they’re here.

The worst backlash against “culture fit” is from the people who assume it’s discriminatory. Patty McCord, former Chief Talent Officer from Netflix, argues that “culture fit” is shorthand for ‘people just like us.’ It’s a fair concern, and the practice can be abused that way. Weeding out anything feels a bit discriminatory, so it’s easy to assume that if we all have to agree on culture, then we’ll suffer from groupthink and bias.

But in fact, the opposite is true. Every hiring decision is inherently discriminatory. You’re picking one person out of thousands. If you have to discriminate, it’s better to discriminate on the right things. And mathematically, you’ll have the broadest talent pool if you discriminate on only one thing.
An organization that lacks a single point everyone can agree on isn’t diverse, it’s divided. On the other hand, the organization who can pinpoint the single concept that defines it has actually opened the door to the most diverse company (and thinking) possible, because it’s eliminated all other incidental or unintentional barriers. You can hire any age, race, background, or expertise, because none of those things are what define who you are.

In my own firm, we have a former realtor in our media department, an ex-political-consultant in accounts, and a psychology major in strategy. Our creative director will tell you that recent hires he’s made from outside the agency world have been a lot more successful than those he’s poached from other agencies. The reason those particular team members have panned out—even as seasoned agency pros have come and gone—is that we’re inspired and unified by a single idea. If we can all agree on that one thing, then we can bring diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and strengths to the table in its pursuit.
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To modern businesses, like the biblical Ephraimites, sifting out those who are not committed to your cause is a matter of life and death. It’s worth taking the extra time to make sure you’re doing it right. And when you do, you’ll stop wasting time on guesswork about whether a person, partner, or project is a fit—because you’ll know who you are.

How can you engage your employees' purpose to improve their performance and retain them? Eric Layer will share proven research and strategies from inside and outside the funeral business during his Keynote session — sponsored by National Guardian Life Insurance Co. (NGL) — at CANA’s Cremation Symposium this February 8-10 2023!
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Join Eric and others to share ideas on re-energizing passion and purpose in funeral service. This year, the event is focused on staffing efficiencies and retention with a host of experts to discuss. See what we have planned and register to attend: goCANA.org/ignite
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This post originally appeared in the McKee Wallwork Insights blog in April 2018, reprinted with permission.

#ActYourWage, Do Your Job, Working at Work, Morale Adjusted Productivity. These are all different expressions for the same concept – Quiet Quitting. If you haven’t heard the phrase taking over social media in the last few months, rest assured that your employees have. And that they are talking about it. But what is it? Is it a real thing? And how should you respond?

According to this NPR article, the phrase originated from a TikTok user’s seventeen-second video where he explains that quiet quitting happens when you’re “not outright quitting your job, but you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond.” You still get your work done, but you’re rejecting the hustle culture mentality that your life has to be your work. He emphasizes that “your worth as a person is not defined by your labor.”

In other words, quiet quitting has nothing to do with quitting. It’s more a philosophy for doing the minimum work necessary to keep a job. Those who identify as quiet quitters reject the idea that life should revolve around work, and they resist the expectation of giving it their all or going beyond the job description. They believe in setting boundaries and completing the tasks assigned to them within the time they are paid to do them. No more working off-the-clock and checking messages every time the phone dings. They argue it is a way to safeguard their mental health, prevent burnout, and prioritize family and friends.

Critics say that it’s passive aggressive behavior, won’t accomplish what workers really want and puts more burden on their co-workers. Hamilton Nolan, writing in The Guardian, notes that workers in past generations felt this same sense of “collective malaise,” but rather than coasting at work they channeled their frustrations into creating unions. They didn’t quit and they weren’t quiet. They loudly fixed what they knew was wrong.
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According to Gallup’s 2022 Employee Engagement Survey, the proportion of workers engaged with their job remains at 32%, but the proportion of actively disengaged workers increased to 18%. These are the “loud quitters” who have most of their needs unmet and spread their displeasure and are also the most vocal in their own TikTok posts. The share of those in the middle, who are just not engaged at all, is 50%. They meet Gallup’s definition of people who do the bare minimum and are psychologically detached from their jobs. It is important to note that the increase in dissatisfaction is primarily among remote millennial and Gen Z workers. But these generations are becoming disengaged for the same reasons as anyone else, which we’ll cover shortly.

If Gallup’s data doesn’t show a significant change in how workers feel about their jobs over the last few years, then is quiet quitting even real? Many suggest that it’s just a new name for an old behavior and it is a normal feature of the American workplace. It’s actually less about an employee’s willingness to work harder and more creatively and more about the manager’s ability to communicate effectively and with empathy, build rapport, establish reasonable expectations, and provide the workflow efficiencies needed for everyone to do their jobs well.

We’re also likely talking about quiet quitting more than it’s actually happening. A recent Axios poll of younger workers found that only 15% were doing the minimum at work, despite a lot of them admitting that it sounded “appealing.”

Maybe those who coined the term and evangelize the idea of quiet quitting are realizing what those of us with more years in the workforce eventually learned – sometimes a job is just a job and doesn’t have a deeper meaning. And to get fired, you have to be bad at your job, not just coasting along. With employers constantly saying they can’t find enough workers, there is unprecedented job security for employees right now, reducing the incentive to work harder. Companies can’t afford to fire employees, and there are plenty of jobs open if someone does get fired.
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The reality is that whether we call it quiet quitting or burnout or something else, the behavior isn’t new. And low employee engagement is a symptom of poor management.

Managers need to learn to have conversations with their employees and get to know them as individuals – understand their life situations, strengths and goals. Then they need to have an honest conversation with each employee about the expectations of the job, using a job description as the guide.

No job description? Then that is the first thing that needs to be addressed. A job description is the most effective tool you have to clearly articulate  expectations to an employee. In addition to the knowledge and skills they’ll need to be successful, it should list the primary and secondary responsibilities of a person in this position, the number of hours they are expected to work each week and whether and how often that includes nights and weekends.

Second, managers need to create accountability for their entire team as well as all the individuals that make up that team. If you have an environment where some are held accountable and others get away without meeting expectations, disengagement will be common. Employees also need to see how their work contributes to the team’s goals and the organization’s larger purpose. Your culture should be one where every employee is engaged and feels they belong.

Finally, support the quiet quitters who define it as setting healthy boundaries and reclaiming their personal lives. Those employees who grind around the clock with limited time for self-care lose the ability to be their best selves, impacting the success of the organization. These are the workers who burn out and burnout can look a lot like quiet quitting. It appears as disengagement and often comes from expending too much effort for too little reward.

You support them by having a conversation and coming to agreement on whether the assigned work can be completed to the expected standards during the time they are being paid to work. If it can’t be, what resources are available to them to increase efficiency and prevent them from having to work overtime? Work-life balance is a key expectation now and it is not reasonable to rely on employees constantly going above and beyond the job description. If you want more, then explicitly convey that and expect to compensate the employee accordingly.

Your employees are your number one asset, and the funeral profession sees up to 30% of graduates leaving the profession after five years. Reasons cited for this include long hours, low pay and poor company culture. But these reasons are in a manager’s control. The answer to quiet quitting is out-loud conversations about your company’s culture, expectations, and goals. Employees will voluntarily go above and beyond when they feel valued, and that is how we retain and engage employees.

Who, in their right mind, would make the choice to be on call 24 hours a day, sometimes for days on end? Who would agree to leave their families at any hour of the day or night – or during holiday meals, or in the middle of a baseball or soccer game – to go and assist people that they’ve never met who are often in the middle of a crisis?

Ours is definitely not a career that would top most individuals’ lists of ideal jobs. We live the life described above every day and many of us never question why.

I believe this career chooses us. We are caregivers, essentially, and that is ingrained in a person. Being a caregiver is not something that can be taught. We are all in the funeral profession, but many of us can’t articulate a “why.” There is no why. It’s simply because it’s where we know we are supposed to be. It’s in our minds, and, more importantly, it’s in our hearts. I use the word lifepath for this phenomenon. Some may use the word calling. I agree with both descriptives, and both reflect that this is not typically a career that is chosen.

Too often, the public perception of a funeral professional is as someone who “gets used to death” or isn’t bothered by it. Little do they know how far from the truth that is. I often reply to those mistaken perceptions by saying that “the moment that this doesn’t bother me is the moment that I need to turn around and walk out that door because I would not be able to serve you as I should.” If death doesn’t affect me any longer, then I am no longer a benefit to the families I aim to serve. My emotion is what allows me the compassion to serve people as I do. Do I have to hide my emotions on a regular basis? Yes. But that doesn’t mean I’m not affected.

This industry is not for the faint of heart. You need the compassion to deal with grieving families, but you also need to have self-confidence and leadership skills to be able to handle the menagerie of scenarios that are thrown your way. Over the years that I have been involved in the business, as we all know, family dynamics have changed drastically! These dynamics play a role in how we approach families, and it can be a game of tiptoe through the minefield. The arrangement conference can be a place where issues that have accrued over many years come to a head, all in front of a funeral director who doesn’t necessarily need or want to know all the family secrets. However, we are forced to play referee in the boxing ring.

On top of all that, we then address the financial side of a funeral. Money is never an easy topic to discuss. It’s even harder when a family does not have the financial means to have the funeral they want for their loved one, and we are the ones that have to tell them that.

Following the arrangement conference, a funeral director has to confirm clergy/celebrant; contact the cemetery; write obituaries, have them approved by family, submit them to the newspapers and proofread for accuracy; file the death certificate and burial permit; go to the health department to pick up the certified death certificates; order merchandise; print memorial items (i.e., register book, memorial cards, thank you cards); remove, dress, casket, and cosmetize the deceased; set up the chapel; schedule staff for viewings and/or services; clean the facility; clean the vehicles; order flowers and arrange for catering; and “other duties as assigned.” All in about 3 days! And, just for one family served! Our minds are going in all different directions trying to make sure that each family feels like they are the only family we are serving.
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So many times, I have families say, “I didn’t know you did all this” or “I didn’t know you did that.” Yes, we do. We are here to make this as easy as we can for you.

It’s essential to remember that caregivers need someone to care for and listen to them. Not only do we navigate the emotion and reality that death brings to the families that we serve, but we also deal with the day-to-day struggles of the workplace, life outside the office, family, our own personal struggles and emotions. Work-life balance takes on new meaning as we try to not let the personal interfere with the lifepath that has chosen us in the death care industry.

If someone knows that they aren’t the only one dealing with a situation, could a sense of solidarity give them the strength and vision to continue to follow their calling? It's not just you. Many of us have been there. I have been there. Knowing that our industry runs high for mental health injuries, it’s important to bring options to those who are questioning if they should stay or go. When employers focus on the mental health of their employees, it leads to increased productivity, improved job satisfaction, higher retention rates and less burnout.
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We need to place our own mental health at the forefront so that we can serve the families that request our services to the best of our ability and give them the best that each one deserves.

The only people that can truly understand what we funeral professionals do and deal with on a daily basis, are others in the industry. This is why Funeral Professionals Peer Support is such a wonderful and welcome addition to our world. It’s for peers, by peers. We are there to educate, to guide, to provide feedback and sometimes just to listen. It’s a safe place for funeral professionals to come if they need someone who understands.

The benefits of peer support have been recognized for years. Some of the benefits that have been found in many settings, such as workplace, addiction counseling and educational have been:

I am looking forward to meeting some new people at the CANA Convention and I am very excited to continue to spread the word about the benefits of Funeral Professionals Peer Support!!