calm-hearted
REMEMBERING FORWARD
FOR HR, LEADERS, AND COWORKERS
When an employee loses a baby, your workplace becomes part of what happens next.
A calm-hearted workplace does not need perfect words or previous experience with pregnancy or infant loss. It needs to understand that every response carries weight. The first message, the handling of personal information, the return-to-work plan, the way coworkers are guided, and the dates people remember can either preserve trust and connection or add harm at one of the most vulnerable times in an employee’s life.
Why this matters
After family and friends, a workplace is often one of the first places entrusted with news of a pregnancy or infant loss. An employee grieving a pregnancy or infant loss may already be navigating medical recovery, funeral planning, paperwork, trauma, physical postpartum changes, financial logistics, and the impossible reality of returning to a world that keeps moving. The last thing they should also have to worry about is whether or not their workplace will handle their news, their absence, or their return with care.
Most workplaces are not cruel; they are unprepared. Pregnancy and infant loss may be unfamiliar territory for many workplaces, but unfamiliarity does not remove your responsibility to seek guidance and respond thoughtfully. Care cannot be left to HR alone. It is shaped by leaders, managers, colleagues, and the culture around them. Policy and process still matter, but they need to be applied with empathy, judgment, and an understanding that every response carries weight. Handled with care, work can remain somewhere the employee feels safe returning to. Handled poorly, it can become another part of the experience they have to recover from.
EVERY LOSS DESERVES CARE
Pregnancy and infant loss can happen under many circumstances. Follow the employee’s lead, recognize what has happened, and offer care without requiring them to explain or justify why their loss matters.
ASK BEFORE YOU COMMUNICATE
A personal update is not automatically a workplace announcement. You have a responsibility to respect privacy and ask what may be shared, who may receive it, and which words the employee wants used.
SILENCE IS NOT NEUTRAL
Giving an employee space does not mean disappearing. A brief, imperfect message acknowledging their loss can communicate care without expecting a reply or leaving the employee to interpret everyone else’s silence.
This affects your people and your business
15-25%
of pregnancies in Canada are estimated to end in miscarriage.
90%
of managers noticed some impact on a bereaved employee’s performance.
73%
of managers said they needed training on how to support a bereaved employee.
50-200%
of salary can be the cost of replacing an employee — making support after loss an important part of retention.
Sources: Public Health Agency of Canada (2020); SHRM, The Myth of Replaceability: Preparing for the Loss of Key Employees (2025); Center for Creative Leadership, The Humanity Gap: What Most Leaders Miss About Bereavement at Work (2026); theHRDIRECTOR, Managers admit they are unsure about how to support bereaved employees (2026). Bereavement research cited includes U.S. studies involving bereaved employees, managers, and coworkers.
Support for workplaces that want to get this right.
A NOTE FROM NATHAN'S MOM
Calm-hearted brings care and structure together. I draw on more than a decade of experience in learning, change, and communications, alongside lived experience of loss. I can guide immediate workplace decisions, support communication between employees and employers, and prepare teams to respond with greater clarity, confidence, and care.
Workplace Liaison Support
With the employee’s consent, Calm-hearted supports communication between the grieving parent and their workplace after a loss. This can include clarifying what can be shared, setting contact preferences and boundaries, navigating immediate decisions, and planning for leave and return to work, reducing how much the employee has to coordinate.
Workplace Readiness and Training
Calm-hearted helps managers, HR teams, coworkers and leaders respond more thoughtfully before or after a loss. Practical, tailored learning can support communication, privacy, return to work and the everyday decisions that shape workplace culture so people can respond with greater confidence without needing to become grief experts.
Workplace care in practice
Clear communication, consistent support, and ownership of workplace logistics can provide some stability without adding to what the employee already has to carry after pregnancy or infant loss.
Recognize first, organize second
Acknowledge what has happened before moving into leave, coverage, or timelines, so necessary practical decisions do not make the employee feel reduced to a workplace process.
Name one point of contact
Choose one person to stay connected, coordinate internally, and prevent the employee from repeatedly explaining who knows, what has been shared, or what is happening around them.
Take ownership during leave
Manage coverage, customer communication, handoffs, and changing priorities without relying on the employee to keep work moving, even if they instinctively offer to help or protect it.
Keep care separate from work
Keep condolences or messages about care separate from updates and protect against requests to connect about work topics, so the employee does not feel expected to solve anything or shift back to work.
Treat the return as a process
Prepare managers, coworkers, and direct reports rather than leaving the employee to manage discomfort. Provide dedicated check-ins, revisited workload, and permission to change the plan as needed.
How to be bereavement-ready
Written for BCBusiness, this article explores what it means to be a bereavement-ready workplace before pregnancy or infant loss happens. After loss, the article looks at practical ways employers can protect privacy, prepare managers, create clarity and support employees through leave, return to work and beyond.
When work becomes part of the grief
This writing reflects on what happened after a workplace was entrusted with the news of a baby’s birth and death, and how decisions about privacy, communication and coverage before the return to work changed the relationship with that workplace. It explores the gap between intention and impact, and what employers can do differently when an employee is grieving.
BEYOND THE CARD AND FLOWERS
Help Texts x
Calm-hearted
Help Texts offers personalized, expert-written grief support by text, with messages tailored to the person’s loss and delivered over time, including around meaningful dates. Employers can gift a 12-month subscription directly to an employee, offering support that continues well beyond the first days and weeks after a loss. Calm-hearted is a Help Texts affiliate, and using the coupon will generate a small commission when a subscription is purchased, at no additional cost to you.
LET CALM-HEARTED HELP YOUR WORKPLACE HELP YOU
For grieving parents
What you are going through is already enough. Telling your workplace what happened, deciding what information can be shared, and explaining what you need can feel like another responsibility placed on you at an impossible time.
You do not have to navigate those conversations alone. Let Jess from Calm-hearted be your liaison.
With your permission, Calm-hearted will contact your workplace, communicate only what you are comfortable sharing, help explain what support may be needed, and offer guidance to the people responsible for supporting you.
You remain in control of what is shared, who is contacted, and how involved you would like Calm-hearted to be.
Scope of workplace support: Calm-hearted provides education, communication guidance, liaison support, return-to-work planning, and practical workplace tools related to pregnancy and infant loss.
This support complements, rather than replaces, an organization’s HR, legal, occupational health, total rewards, disability management, or employee assistance responsibilities. Calm-hearted does not provide legal advice, medical guidance, clinical counselling, crisis intervention, formal workplace investigations, or representation in employment disputes. Liaison support involving a bereaved employee is consent-based, and information is shared only as they authorize. A complimentary 15-minute conversation is offered as an initial discussion to understand the situation and determine fit. Any recommended services, deliverables, timelines, and pricing will be confirmed afterward in writing based on the needs of the employee and workplace.