After a death by suicide at work

Someone has died, and you are the person holding this. What follows is deliberately procedural. Work down it in order.

In the first hours

Confirm before you communicate. Act only on information from the family, the police, or a coroner. Rumour moves faster than fact and a wrong announcement cannot be withdrawn.

Ask the family what may be said. Specifically: may the death be described as a suicide, and may the person be named. Until they answer, say neither. Some families are clear immediately; some need days; both are normal.

Identify who must be told personally. Their team, their closest colleagues, anybody who worked with them daily, and anybody currently on leave who will otherwise find out from social media. Personally means a conversation, not an email.

Do not send an all-staff email first. People finding out about a colleague's death from a group message is one of the most commonly reported harms afterwards.

The announcement

Say these things:

• That the person has died, and when
• That you are thinking of their family
• Practically, what happens next — work, cover, the funeral if known
• Where support is available, with a working number
• Who to speak to for more information

Do not say these things:

• How they died. Not the method, not "at home", not any locational detail. This is the single most important line in this document. Method detail in an announcement to a large group is followed by measurable harm, and there is no version of it that serves anybody.
• Why. You do not know, and a stated cause hands a template to anyone in the organisation currently in the same situation.
• Anything about their personal circumstances, their performance, or an ongoing process they were in.

Keep it short. Long announcements read as management communication.

The first fortnight

Do not process-manage grief. Offering counselling is right. Requiring attendance, tracking it, or asking people to report their wellbeing to a manager is not.

Expect uneven reactions. The most affected person is frequently not the closest colleague. It may be someone who barely knew them and is going through something similar.

Watch for people who are conspicuously fine, particularly anyone who feels responsible — a manager who had a difficult conversation with them, whoever declined their leave request, whoever they last spoke to.

Cover their work properly. Redistribution decided by default lands on whoever is least able to refuse.

Leave their desk, their accounts and their photograph alone for now. Clearing them quickly is experienced as erasure. Ask the team before touching anything, and ask the family about personal belongings.

Memorials

Agree a position and apply it consistently. The considerations:

• Prominent, permanent memorials at a workplace carry risk, and are hard to reverse once installed
• A book of condolence, a donation, a tree, a moment at a team meeting are all lower-risk and are usually what people actually want
• Whatever you do for one death sets a precedent for the next one, including deaths from other causes

Follow the family's wishes on naming, always.

The months after

• Diarise the anniversary, and the birthday if you know it. A brief acknowledgement a year later matters more than anything in week one.
• Check on the manager and the team leads. They are usually the last people offered anything.
• Expect resignations. Some people cannot stay in the building. That is not a failure of your response.
• Do not launch a wellbeing initiative in the first month. It is well-meant and it lands as a lesson learned from a person.

Support for those affected

Bereavement by suicide is different from other bereavement, and people are often carrying guilt alongside grief.

If someone has died by suicide → · Crisis lines for your country →

And you

You are coordinating this while grieving, and probably while nobody has asked how you are.

Tell someone. Take the day when you need it. The organisation will manage.