The death of a colleague can create unique stress for employees.

As with any loss, employees may experience emotional symptoms like numbness, shock, and frustration, and physical symptoms like headaches, muscle tension, and stomach aches, according to Stanford University. Employers may also notice some affected workers have reduced productivity, increased absences, and difficulty making decisions, as work itself may be triggering.

There’s no standard timeline for grieving a loss, but it often takes more than a year to overcome the initial phase of grief. HR leaders can provide support during this time by preparing to accommodate affected teammates and celebrating the departed employee.

Get things in order. “There’s the emotional aspect, and then there’s a bit of a practical aspect too,” Kathleen Navarro, SVP of talent management and chief diversity officer at New York Life, told HR Brew. She recommended that HR leaders have a plan in the event of a coworker’s passing.

Keep reading here.—KP

20% of your workforce will experience the loss of a loved one this year. It’s not a fun stat, of course, but loss doesn’t skip any of us. That’s why it’s vital to maintain your efforts to care for bereaved employees and support your teams when they need it most.

Fortunately, Empathy can help. For Grief Awareness Day, they’re bringing loss out of the shadows and facilitating honest conversations about grief in the workplace with their new Grief Guide Generator tool.

Here’s how it works: Individuals answer a few questions about their loss and current grief. They will then receive a personalized guide that reflects their experience. They can share the guide with their community to raise awareness and communicate their needs.

It’s time to talk about grief.

Race and gender bias still play a powerful part in performance reviews, according to a new study of performance reviews from HR tech company Textio.

Signs of bias. The report analyzed 23,000 performance reviews and surveyed 450 workers and found that managers were inconsistent in who was given high-quality, actionable feedback.

The language used to describe employee feedback appears to be influenced in part by the person’s race or gender. For example, women are most likely to receive low-quality feedback based on their personality. Some 56% of women surveyed said they have been described as unlikeable in their performance reviews and 78% have been called emotional, while 16% and 11% of men respectively said they have been similarly described.

Deep impact. Low-quality feedback that’s not actionable could cost teams money, and is responsible for 10% of employee attrition, the report found.

Keep reading here.—KP

Researchers at Binghamton University will spend much of the next school year testing a pair of workplace hypotheses:

• Companies that announce layoffs are more likely to face a cybersecurity breach.
• Orgs that demonstrate some concern for employee well-being, or what the professors call “corporate social responsibility,” can reduce the likelihood and severity of a breach—a difficult task when former team members are packing up their desks.

“They have to explain about their financial losses, and they have to explain about the market trends, and lots of other things, and the need to restructure the entire company, so that people understand that, ‘Hey, that is not personal,’” Binghamton professor Thi Tran told IT Brew.

According to layoffs.fyi, more than 130,400 tech workers in 398 companies have been laid off in 2024. (In 2023, layoffs in the sector reached 264,220. In 2022: 165,269.)

“Layoffs can create conditions where disgruntled employees, facing stress or job insecurity, are more inclined towards risky behaviors that heighten vulnerability to breaches,” the report, which Tran and his colleagues wrote, concluded, claiming that uneasy employees may not prioritize security best practices, and that “layoffs can lead to dissatisfied former staff members who could potentially access sensitive data or systems.”

Keep reading on IT Brew.—BH

Balance is restored. Looking to foster a culture of accountability *and* innovation? (Who isn’t?) Teamraderie is hosting a free chat with three CPOs—all from Fortune 500 companies like Walmart, Workday, and Mastercard, BTW—and Harvard’s Amy Edmondson to discuss balancing accountability and risk-taking. Save your seat.