I'm a supervisor with the government, so I have a team that I supervise, and I have never been provided with resources on what to do in case of a loss. If I have an employee who has someone who passes away, they have to go on leave. For example, my colleague's mother passed away last year. There's no booklet. There's no training. There's nothing for us, as the supervisors of employees, on what to do when they return to work.
That was my experience as well as a returning employee. There was no pamphlet given to my manager on what to say when I came back and what not to say when I came back. It's just common-sense resources. Maybe you need to go to the bathroom and cry, and that's okay, or it could be some counselling and advisory information. We have that within my department. It's making sure that employees are aware of the resources they're able and entitled to use, and it's also the fact that they won't be themselves.
I think that's the thing. We just talked about this. When you return to work, you are not the same person you were before. There's a marked difference between before and after. I think it's just being able to provide some sort of support to managers and co-workers about the fact that, after a loss, these are things you may need to look for.
Our counselling and advisory program was very helpful to me when I returned to work, but they also weren't trained in dealing with perinatal loss, so I sought out a psychologist who was specialized in perinatal loss. There's a lot of work we can do there, as employers, for our employees. We have the responsibility to provide services not just to that employee but also to our managers and our directors and the people who are supervising other people to ensure they have the best return to work.