The Culture Behind the Closed Door

It is 7:15 on a Monday morning.

The funeral home looks exactly as it should from the street. The lawn is trimmed. The sign is clean. The front entrance is ready. Inside, the arrangement room is quiet, the chapel is orderly, and everything appears prepared for another day of serving families.

But walk through the employee entrance and you may find a different story.

The director on call has been out twice during the night. He is tired, but there is a 10:00 arrangement waiting.

Someone notices the removal cot wasn't completely restocked after the last call.

There are coffee cups sitting in the back room from yesterday.

One employee walks in and barely acknowledges another. Something happened between them last week. Nobody has talked about it, but everybody knows about it.

Someone looks at the schedule and realizes, once again, that she has been assigned the weekend she thought she had off.

A manager walks through, says good morning, and heads directly into the office.

Then the telephone rings.

A family is on its way.

And almost instantly, everybody knows what to do.

The voices change. The jackets go on. The front entrance is checked one more time. Someone straightens the arrangement room. The coffee is freshened.

The family walks through the door and is greeted with warmth, compassion, professionalism, and care.

Exactly as they should be.

But I want to ask a question that may make some of us uncomfortable:

What happens when the culture we present to families is different from the culture our employees experience behind the closed door?

That is where our conversation about workplace culture needs to begin.

Every Funeral Home Has a Culture

I have spent most of my professional life around funeral homes.

I have worked in them, owned them, consulted with them, taught in them, and walked through their doors as a colleague, a customer, and a friend.

One thing I have learned is that you can usually feel the culture of a funeral home long before anyone explains it to you.

Sometimes you feel energy.

People talk to each other. They help each other. There is laughter in appropriate places. When something goes wrong, people solve the problem instead of immediately searching for someone to blame.

Other times, you feel tension.

People are careful about what they say and who they say it around. Employees retreat to their corners. Information becomes currency. Mistakes are hidden. Problems simmer until somebody finally explodes.

And occasionally you walk into a funeral home where everyone is simply tired.

Not tired from one long night.

Tired from the culture.

That kind of exhaustion does not disappear with a weekend off.

Every organization has a culture. Your funeral home has one right now.

The real question is whether you have intentionally created it or simply allowed it to happen.

We Know How to Create an Experience

Funeral directors understand something many businesses spend millions of dollars trying to learn.

We understand experience.

Think about how much attention we give to a family coming through our doors.

We think about the parking lot.

The entrance.

The lighting.

The temperature of the room.

The placement of flowers.

The appearance of the deceased.

The condition of the vehicles.

The way the telephone is answered.

The words we use when greeting someone.

The timing of the procession.

The folding of the flag.

The smallest details matter because we know something important:

Families may not remember every detail, but they will remember how we made them feel.

Let me connect some dots for you.

Employees are having an experience, too.

Every day.

What does it feel like to work in your funeral home?

Do your employees know what you expect, or are they supposed to figure it out by watching what gets somebody else in trouble?

Can they ask a question without being made to feel foolish?

Can they disagree with the owner?

When they make a mistake, does the conversation begin with curiosity or accusation?

When they do something exceptionally well, does anybody notice?

Do they understand why their work matters?

Do they see an opportunity to grow?

And perhaps most importantly, do they believe the people leading them care as much about the experience behind the employee entrance as they do about the experience behind the front door?

Because eventually those two experiences collide.

The culture your employees experience becomes part of the service your families receive.

You cannot completely separate the two.

Funeral Service Is Hard Work

We need to acknowledge something else.

Funeral service asks a lot from people.

Death does not respect schedules.

It doesn't care that your employee has dinner reservations.

It doesn't know that someone has been awake since 2:00 in the morning.

It doesn't check to see whether Saturday is somebody's daughter's birthday.

The telephone rings when the telephone rings.

And when it does, we expect our people to respond professionally.

We ask employees to walk into homes where someone has just died.

We ask them to care for people following accidents, suicides, unexpected deaths, and tragedies most people will never see firsthand.

We ask them to sit across the table from a widow whose entire world changed six hours earlier and somehow help her make decisions she never wanted to make.

Then the next family walks through the door.

And we expect our employee to be ready again.

Compassionate.

Patient.

Professional.

Present.

That is an extraordinary expectation.

Which is exactly why workplace culture matters so much in funeral service.

If serving grieving people already requires emotional energy, what happens when employees must spend additional energy navigating unclear expectations, unresolved conflict, inconsistent management, favoritism, poor communication, or a leader whose mood determines what kind of day everyone else is going to have?

Eventually, something gives.

Sometimes performance gives.

Sometimes compassion gives.

Sometimes the employee gives us a resignation letter.

And then we say:

“I never saw that coming.”

Maybe we should have.

Culture Is Not Pizza

Somewhere along the way, workplace culture became associated with employee appreciation lunches, casual Fridays, birthday celebrations, gift cards, and pizza.

I have nothing against pizza.

Feed me well and I will probably attend your meeting.

But pizza is not culture.

Neither is putting inspirational words on the wall.

Neither is writing Integrity, Compassion, Excellence and Teamwork on the employee handbook.

Those may represent what you value.

Culture is what happens when those values are tested.

Culture is what happens when the funeral director makes a mistake at 11:30 on Friday night.

Culture is how the owner responds when an apprentice challenges an established procedure.

Culture is whether the same rule applies to the twenty-year employee and the person who started three months ago.

Culture is what employees say about management when management leaves the room.

And culture is what management says about employees when the employees leave the room.

That is culture.

A Positive Culture Does Not Mean Lower Standards

This point matters.

Creating a better workplace culture does not mean lowering expectations.

Quite the opposite.

I believe great organizations should have high standards.

Families deserve them.

Employees deserve them.

The profession deserves them.

There are times when an employee needs to be told, clearly, this is not acceptable.

There are difficult conversations leaders must have.

There are behaviors that cannot be tolerated.

There are people who may ultimately discover that your organization is not the right place for them.

Positive workplace culture is not about avoiding those realities.

It is about handling them with clarity, consistency, dignity, and respect.

The best cultures I have seen are not free of accountability.

They are filled with it.

People know the standard.

They understand why it exists.

They know what happens when they miss it.

And, just as importantly, they know leadership will help them become capable of meeting it.

That is not soft leadership.

That is strong leadership.

There Is a Business Case for This

Now, if you own a funeral home, you may be thinking:

This sounds good, Jay, but I have calls to make, families to serve, employees to schedule, bills to pay, and a business to run.

Exactly.

That is another reason culture deserves your attention.

Turnover costs money.

Recruiting costs money.

Training costs money.

Overtime costs money.

Mistakes cost money.

Conflict consumes time.

An open position puts additional pressure on everybody who remains.

Then your strongest employees begin carrying the load.

At first, they step up because they care.

Then they become frustrated.

Then tired.

Then somebody calls them with another opportunity.

Suddenly you aren't replacing your weakest employee.

You are trying to replace one of your best.

Culture has a cost.

But it also has a return.

When people know what is expected, fewer preventable mistakes occur.

When communication is healthy, problems reach leadership before they become crises.

When employees are recognized for meaningful work, they understand what behaviors should be repeated.

When accountability is fair, good employees do not feel as though they are carrying coworkers who are allowed to continually underperform.

When we intentionally develop people, we begin creating tomorrow's funeral directors, managers, and owners instead of constantly complaining that we cannot find them.

And when employees genuinely believe they are part of something worthwhile, something changes.

They stop simply working for the funeral home.

They begin taking ownership of the funeral home.

That difference is enormous.

Look in the Mirror Before Looking at the Staff

Here comes the harder part.

When culture is struggling, leaders naturally look at employees.

What's wrong with these people?

Why don't they communicate?

Why aren't they more engaged?

Why can't I find people with a work ethic anymore?

Sometimes those are legitimate concerns.

But before we look around the room, leadership requires us to look in the mirror.

What behaviors are we tolerating?

What expectations have we never clearly communicated?

What problem have we avoided because the conversation would be uncomfortable?

Who gets away with something because they have been here forever?

When was the last time we caught somebody doing something right?

Do our employees know where the organization is going?

Do they believe there is a place for them in that future?

And here is a particularly difficult one:

What is it like to work for me?

Not what do I think it is like.

What is it actually like?

That question takes courage.

It also creates opportunity.

Because if leadership influences culture, leadership can also change culture.

That Is Where This Series Begins

Over the next four articles, I want to explore four areas that I believe can dramatically influence the culture of a funeral home.

First, clarity.

Are we clearly teaching people what excellence looks like, or are we holding them accountable for expectations that exist primarily inside our heads?

Second, communication.

Are we having meaningful conversations with our employees while they still want to stay, or waiting until the exit interview to finally ask what went wrong?

Third, recognition.

Funeral service is filled with invisible work. Who notices the person quietly doing the hundred little things that make extraordinary service possible?

And finally, accountability.

How do we maintain high standards and address poor performance without destroying trust or diminishing the person standing in front of us?

Clarity.

Communication.

Recognition.

Accountability.

Four fairly simple words.

But practiced consistently, they can change a workplace.

Tomorrow Morning, Try Something

Before we begin talking about changing culture, I want you to simply observe yours.

Tomorrow morning, arrive at your funeral home and pretend, for ten minutes, that you don't own it.

Pretend it is your first day.

Walk through the employee entrance.

Listen.

Watch.

Pay attention.

What do you hear?

How do people greet each other?

What happens when something goes wrong?

Who helps without being asked?

Who stays quiet?

Who seems energized?

Who looks exhausted?

What happens when you enter the room?

Does the conversation continue?

Or does it stop?

Don't defend what you see.

Don't explain it.

Don't fix it yet.

Just pay attention.

Then ask yourself one question:

If I were looking for a place to spend the next ten years of my career, would I want to work here?

Sit with the answer.

Because your workplace culture is already telling a story.

Your employees know the story.

Your families may eventually feel the story.

Your future employees will hear the story.

And as leaders, we get to help decide how that story is written.

Leadership is not declared; it is lived.

The same is true of workplace culture.

You cannot put a plaque on the wall and declare that you have a great culture.

You create it.

One expectation.

One conversation.

One act of recognition.

One moment of accountability.

One example at a time.

The question is not whether you have a workplace culture.

The question is whether you are creating one worth belonging to.