Now that COVID is moving into its endemic phase, we’re all breathing a sigh of relief. Everyone’s tired of pandemic life. Funeral home staff, especially, have been asked over and over to go above and beyond. Understandably, you’re tired, you’re numb, and many of you are probably traumatized.
But as we look to the future, there are also opportunities presented by what we’ve collectively learned over the past two years. Here are some ideas for seizing this unique opportunity to forge stronger bonds with your community, improve your service offerings, and thrive.
During COVID we learned that everyone needs and relies on funeral service. But many don’t understand the value of rituals and the elements of the funeral ceremony. You can be an educator—an evangelist, even. Take the goodwill you’ve built over the past two years and use it as platform to educate both the families you serve and your community at large about both the history and innovations in funeral service and ceremony.
To educate families, you must first teach yourself. Read up on the history of funerals. Hold staff in-services on the topic. Discuss how COVID funerals had to be diminished and the ways in which that hurt families served ability to integrate grief into their lives.
As you know, funerals that include as many of the elements of ceremony as possible are usually the most healing and transformative. But families who don’t understand the value of, say, the visitation or the committal will often “skip” these pieces. During the arrangement conference, you have the opportunity to educate families about what each element involves and why it is meaningful. You can also proactively give community talks, hold seminars and webinars, and evangelize on these topics wherever and wherever you can. Don’t forget to record teaching videos and add them to your website.
Funeral directors sometimes tell me that their role is to help families make decisions. The problem with this understanding is that decisions can be made with limited information. An example of a decision families are often asked to make is, “Would you like to have a visitation?” The answer to this question is yes or no, black or white. But if you are helping families make choices, instead, you first take the time to educate them. The more information a family is given about each of the elements of ceremony, the more their decisions become true choices.
When we are grieving the death of someone loved, we have six needs that must be met in order for us to heal:
The meaningful funeral gives mourners a good start on all six of these needs. It puts them on a healthy path to healing. During the pandemic we saw that missed or abbreviated funerals complicated families’ grief. Use what you experienced during COVID to teach the next families.
If you’re not already in the habit of doing it (and most funeral directors aren’t), learning to articulate why we have each individual element of the funeral and how that elements helps meet the six needs of mourning will take some practice. Schedule a staff training and take turns role playing. Have someone play the uninformed (or even defensive/unreceptive) family and walk through a mock arrangement conference step by step.
Are you an efficient or an effective funeral director? If you are efficient, you get things done quickly and competently, perform your surface-level duties with speed and reasonable attention to detail, try to be polite yet not waste time, and focus on reaching “the end.” If you are effective, on the other hand, you do what you do with a higher purpose in mind, care deeply about the lasting impact you have on others, interact with genuine compassion and empathy, and understand that time spent helping families create a meaningful experience is never wasted time. COVID has given many people a new awareness or purpose and passion. Use this to reinvigorate your staff and funeral home’s mission and vision.
Families who are uneducated about the value of funeral service often have objections to including some or many of the elements of ceremony. Again, the key to overcoming objections is to educate. We also know that with enhanced awareness of one’s mortality comes a heightened awareness of the value of pre-planning funerals.
Aftercare is your best opportunity to not only stay connected to families and help them at a time when they need help, but to continue to educate them about the role of funerals and other ceremonies for people who are grieving. You can create a truly exceptional funeral experience for the family, but unless you follow through, you haven’t made the experience all it can or should be. Families affected by COVID deaths, especially, need and deserve your compassionate aftercare services. They in turn can become word-of-mouth ambassadors for your funeral home.
I’m sure COVID stretched your staff resources to the limit. But you also likely forged new ways of doing things because you had to. As the proverb says, necessity is the mother of invention. Take the innovations you developed during the pandemic and build on them to offer today’s families the funeral experiences they want and expect. Add to your services list, and improve old processes. This means leveraging technology in myriad ways—to enhance communications with families, provide service upgrades, and more. Maybe you weren’t great at technology in the past, but you clearly need to be now. Now is the time become your community’s funeral innovator.
This article is a contribution of Dr. Alan Wolfelt, who has been recognized as one of North America’s leading death educators and grief counselors. His books have sold more than a million copies worldwide and have been translated into many languages. Well respected for his inspiring teaching ability, Dr. Wolfelt is a past recipient of the Association for Death Education Death Educator Award. He is known around the world for his compassionate messages of hope and healing as well as his companioning philosophy of grief care. He is known as a change-agent in his consulting role to funeral service.
