For Employers: Supporting bereaved parents after loss
In this blog, I want to talk to you all about how it feels to return to work after baby loss, and how businesses can create a more psychologically safe space for bereaved parents. I will specifically touch on stillbirth, neonatal death, and early infant death, however, much of the advice will be useful for supporting any bereaved parent, regardless of the age of their child when they passed.
Work, life and baby loss
Work is often a huge part of people’s lives, with many of us spending a 1/3 of our waking hours working. Most of us need to work to earn money to buy just the essentials; clean water (because even that isn’t free), food and shelter. Living costs money. We only need to look to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to see that before humans can achieve personal growth and development their physiological needs need to be met, and these all require an income.
This does not change when you lose your baby. Eventually, you will need to return to work and that can be incredibly daunting for a bereaved parent. Usually this is unprecedented for the workplace as well; smaller companies may never have experienced supporting a bereaved parent, but similarly large companies will likely be split into various smaller departments who singularly may not have supported a bereaved parent. Regardless of the HR systems involved and the number of employees, it is the people on the team and the direct line management that really need the support to make the workplace as psychologically safe for the returning parent as possible.
In a recent report from the Office of National Statistics (ONS, 2025*) they investigated the impact of adverse pregnancy events, including miscarriage, ectopic pregnancies, stillbirth and neonatal deaths, on bereaved parents’ subsequent employment outcomes. The report compared earnings one year before the adverse event to the subsequent five years post. In all cases, earnings were significantly lower for at least five years, with the following average total loss as follows:
Stillbirth – £13,581
Neonatal death – £12,441
Missed miscarriage – £3,511
Spontaneous miscarriage – £4,101
Ectopic pregnancy – £2,040
While the report emphasises that they cannot identify the reasons for the loss of earnings, there was enough data to suggest that the main causes were changes to employment status and changes to pay due to having to move to part-time employment or different types of employment. This report emphasises the challenges bereaved parents face, and how important it is to offer the right level of support during such a traumatic time.
When an adverse pregnancy event occurs, a parent’s whole life can be turned upside down and their understanding of the world shatters into a million tiny pieces. Losing your baby is a traumatic event, where the world no longer feels safe, and nothing makes sense anymore. Life keeps moving forward, but bereaved parents often feel stuck in the moment they lost their baby. Eventually, they will need to return to work, but without support and psychological safety, it can be very difficult to perform the role they once left and interact with colleagues that have no understanding of the trauma they have endured.
So, what can workplaces actively do to support parents when an adverse pregnancy event occurs?
My top advice for supporting bereaved parents
Engage with experienced organisations
Reach out to charities and social enterprises who advocate and provide support for bereaved parents. There are several organisations in the UK who either support bereaved parents generally or support with specific issues such as stillbirth, miscarriage, or ectopic pregnancy. They have spoken to and supported many bereaved parents in their time and will be able to give advice and hands on support depending on the organisation.
One of the main asks I have found from bereaved parents is that they want to deal with people who understand what they are going through. Therefore, one of the best ways to support a bereaved parent is to consult with a provider of peer support and mentorship.
Ensure you provide the right level of support
Whether it is an internal or outsourced HR team, ensure that it is a senior member of the team that looks after the welfare of the bereaved parent. If the management is inexperienced, ensure that there is extra support put in place. It is important that support and guidance is also extended to the team and any other colleagues who will be interacting with the bereaved parent on a daily basis.
Treat the leave as you would if the person was off due to psychological distress
Often, when an adverse pregnancy event occurs, the leave is still categorised as ‘maternity / paternity leave’ (due to the parent still legally qualifying for such leave), or as compassionate leave. Due to this, the correct expertise can be missed to fully support the individual, or the correct financial support can be missing. Occupational health should be provided to ensure the employee is truly fit to be returning to work.
Ask them what they feel comfortable with
Do they want to talk about their baby?
Would they prefer to see their colleagues on more informal ground before returning to work, for example over lunch or coffee outside the office?
Would they prefer that people know of their loss before they return to work, or do they want to share it themselves? This will also depend on whether their colleagues knew of the pregnancy to begin with.
If you generally allow people on maternity leave to bring in their babies to the workplace, postpone it
If another member of staff has had a baby and would like to introduce them to the team, ask them to arrange for that to happen outside of the office environment. In an environment, often work, where you would not expect on a day-to-day basis to encounter a baby, it can cause damage and distress to a bereaved parent, leading to work feeling like an unsafe environment for them.
Be flexible and show empathy
Your employee’s understanding of the world has shifted. They are navigating a new reality and with that comes a new uncertainty of themselves and their environment. They may ask for something that they think will be supportive one day, then the next day there is a U-turn. This does not mean that you must cater for all changes in attitude, but by approaching any issues with empathy and flexibility the bereaved parent will feel seen and heard.
*Reference:Office of National Statistics. (2025) ‘The impact of adverse pregnancy events on monthly employee earnings and employment, England: April 2014 to December 2022’. Available at The impact of adverse pregnancy events on monthly employee earnings and employment, England - Office for National Statistics
