After the sudden, violent death of one of the bank's young executives, two experts explain how to help employees grieve
Erin Piacenti, a 32-year-old vice president in Bank of America's business selection and conflicts division, was killed in a shocking stabbing in New York's Times Square on Monday, just days after returning from five months of maternity leave. She lived in Chester, New Jersey, with her husband, Frank Piacenti, whom she'd met while the two attended Fordham Law School together. A 68-year-old man was also injured before police fatally shot the attacker.
Colleagues at Bank of America are now confronting grief shaped by how sudden, public and violent her death was, circumstances that experts say call for a distinct kind of response.
In the days since, Bank of America has issued a statement about her death.
"We are shocked and deeply saddened by the tragic loss of our colleague. She was a valued teammate who will be greatly missed. Our hearts go out to her family and all of her loved ones," the bank said in a statement to Reuters.
Two experts, Dr. Jennifer Levin, founder of Traumatic Grief Solutions, and Dr. Amy Bradley, an adjunct associate professor of organizational behavior at London Business School who has researched trauma's impact on managers, spoke with HRD America about what actually helps when a death like this touches a workplace.
Acknowledge what happened, then keep showing up
Bradley said the response can't be a single, one-time gesture.
"Acknowledge what has happened, offer support and repeat," she said.
Unless employees have a safe environment where they can express their emotions without fear of judgment or reprisal, Bradley said, grief can become what researchers call "stifled", a state in which people become unable to process their feelings and are prevented from healing.
One practical step, according to Bradley, is giving employees ongoing access to a named staff member outside their direct management line, someone they can talk to in confidence who can also connect them to specialized support. Formal time off only covers so much of what grieving employees need, which is part of why HRD America has taken a closer look at how U.S. companies structure their bereavement leave policies.
Grief doesn't run on a schedule
Levin said there's no such thing as a normal timeline for this kind of loss, and pretending otherwise can do real damage.
"Expecting a timeline does harm. A traumatic loss can retrigger previous losses and traumas that employers may not be aware of," she said.
Bradley said sudden, violent events are shocks to a person's inner world, causing what she called psychological disorganization that requires real time and support to process, not a single conversation. That lines up with National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) research on how adults respond to violent and traumatic events, which finds reactions can last for months and vary widely from person to person.
Bradley made a related point, noting that recognizing grief's common phases, from denial through anger to eventual acceptance, can help colleagues offer better support, so long as they remember that people move through those stages at different speeds and sometimes out of order. Behavior that looks out of character during this period, she said, shouldn't be judged or criticized.
Levin said employers should expect responses to evolve over time. She recommended organizations provide education about how a traumatic death differs from other types of loss, and prepare for the added weight of watching a loss play out in the media.
"Employees need to talk about what happened. They need a sense of community with others going through the loss, and they need to be able to do something to show they care, such as employer generated meal trains, cards, or other group efforts," Levin said.
Watch for signs employees won't say out loud
Levin listed several signs that an employee may be struggling more than they let on. Many overlap with what federal researchers describe as traumatic incident stress, including fatigue, pain, trouble sleeping or eating, and difficulty focusing. She also pointed to what researchers call presenteeism, showing up to work without being able to be truly productive. Irritability, withdrawal and calling in sick can also be red flags, she said.
"Don't let fear of saying the wrong thing stop check ins or communication," Levin said.
She recommended staying available to talk and listen, giving room for a wide range of emotional responses, and asking team members directly what they need. Check-ins shouldn't stop right after the incident, she added; they need to continue over time, and that echoes what HRD America found in its earlier reporting on how coworkers cope after a violent death on the job, where the return to normalcy proved far slower than employers expected.
Bradley pointed to outside research suggesting managers can bring more compassion to the role by asking themselves one simple question: how can I help this person have a better day? She said managers should be proactive, but should also ask employees directly how they'd like to be supported, including whether they want their situation shared with the rest of the team.
In her own research, Bradley said, a well-intentioned manager once chose not to tell an employee's teammates that the employee's child had died, believing he was protecting the employee's privacy. When the employee returned to work, no one on the team said a word about it, and he assumed his colleagues were simply avoiding him.
This isn't a short-term response
Levin said organizations often treat a death like this as a single event to manage, rather than something that unfolds over a year.
"Do not treat this as a short-term event," she said. "Make a response plan for 12 months, and acknowledge the difficulty that occurs during anniversaries, holidays or other events. Train your leaders how to support teams through loss."
Bradley made a similar point about the long arc of grief.
"Remembering and marking significant dates in the months and years after a traumatic event can be an important ritual in supporting individual and collective healing," Bradley said.
Most large employers now offer some amount of paid bereavement leave, and HRD America has previously outlined which family members typically qualify for bereavement leave under most corporate policies. Neither Levin nor Bradley believe policy alone is enough. What employees remember, both said, is whether someone showed up, kept showing up, and didn't expect them to be fine on any particular schedule.
