End of a Phone

It is twenty past eight on a Monday. Somebody on your team died at the weekend, or somebody’s wife did, and in forty minutes the rest of them are going to walk through the door not knowing.

Every decision you make in the next two weeks will be remembered for years by people who are not in the room when you make it. Who gets told and how. Whether you say the word died or something softer. What happens to the desk. Whether the place closes on the day of the funeral. None of it is in the policy, all of it is urgent, and there is nobody obvious to ask.

End of a Phone is me being that person to ask, for the fortnight when it matters. Not a hotline and not an emergency service. A number you already have, belonging to somebody who has done this before and will pick up.

In one sentence

You get me on the phone, quickly, for the first two weeks after a death affects your workplace, to help you make the decisions nobody has prepared you for.

What people actually ring about

These are real, and none of them are in anybody’s policy.

Do we tell everyone by email, or do we get people in a room?
The family have not said how he died. What do we say when people ask?
Somebody has asked whether we are closing on the day of the funeral. Are we?
Who clears the desk, and when is too soon?
Do we turn the email account off or leave it running?

Her whole team want to go to the funeral. All of them. Is that alright?
He came back after four days and says he is fine. He is not fine.
Who tells the customers who still ring and ask for her by name?
The person taking it hardest is not who any of us expected.
Do we send flowers, and whose name goes on the card?

What it is

A phone number and an email address that reach me rather than a queue, for a fortnight, as many times as you need in that fortnight. Mostly short calls. Sometimes it is twenty minutes before you send an all-staff message and you want somebody to read it first.

I will tell you what I would do and why, and where I am not sure I will say so. If what you need is a bereavement counsellor or an occupational health referral rather than me, I will tell you that too and point you at it.

What it is not

It is not a crisis line and it is not counselling for the bereaved person. It does not run through the night, because I am one person and I would rather be honest about that than promise something I cannot hold.

It is also not legal or HR advice. I will tell you where the people question and the process question pull in different directions, which they often do, but the employment law is somebody else’s job.

Why it is called that

I was going to call it On Call, which is what everybody calls this sort of thing. Then I said it out loud and it sounded like a rota, or a service level agreement, or a stranger with a headset reading from a screen.

What you want at twenty past eight on that Monday is not a service. It is somebody at the end of a phone who has done this before and is not frightened of the subject. That is a smaller promise than On Call and a truer one, so that is what it is called.

Set it up before you need it

Nobody rings for the first time on the worst morning

This works best when it is already in place and the number is already in somebody’s phone, because the alternative is finding me, explaining your organisation to me and deciding whether to trust me, all on the morning you have the least capacity to do any of it. It takes one conversation to set up.

Set it up

Or write to ollie@aftergrowth.co.uk. All six things I do.