In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Lynn DiBonaventura , Director, Learning & Growth, US Business Operations at CSL Behring.
Lynn is an HR talent professional who is also very engrained in the business. She’s spent the last twenty-five years in and out of talent management and talent development on a global scale. Her expertise is in leadership development and talent mobility.
Lynn’s superpower is being an empathetic leader, really leading an organization and a team forward and doing it through empathy, relationships, and communication.
Lynn and Nicole’s stories first intersected when Nicole’s cat Lily – her companion for 15 years - died in February of this year and she decided to process her grief through writing. For one of her posts titled “Rethinking Caretaking and Bereavement Support”, Nicole conducted research around the current state of companies’ caretaking and bereavement support and found that current practices are not as human-centric as they could be. Lynn read Nicole’s post and decided to reach out to her with an offer to talk when she felt ready. Lynn shared her own story of a period of caregiving and grief which ultimately resulted in her losing her job.
During the Talent Tales discussion, Nicole and Lynn explore how we might normalize conversations about loss, grief, and death at work and allow space for these emotions. How might our HR policies move from a compliance focus to one that extends grace? Currently, we also don’t have a holistic view of caregiving and bereavement while in reality there are several caretaking scenarios that will ultimately and tragically lead to the loss of a loved one. How might we support employees on this continuous journey?
Why should organizations care? Attrition, productivity, wellbeing, engagement, and employee experience are just a few of the business metrics that are impacted by poor caretaking and bereavement support.
Beyond policy, leaders play a key role in supporting their employees during these emotional times. Lynn shares interesting insights from a leadership course she recently facilitated where the women in the class saw their careers disrupted by various caretaking activities. None of the men did. Several studies have shown these inequities to be widespread. How might we address these inequities? How might leaders transform their own experiences with loss and grief to become more empathetic and compassionate leaders? Lynn believes that leaders can and should exercise discretion with their employees based on their individual needs in their caretaking or bereavement journeys. Important here is allowing the person space and trusting them.
Want to learn more about Lynn’s story and how she turned her loss into becoming a more empathetic leader? Watch the entire interview on YouTube or listen to the Podcast.