Funeral Home Management 101: How to Motivate Your Staff

Funeral home management is a delicate and demanding career that requires not only technical expertise, but also a deep sense of empathy and compassion. In this line of work, the staff plays a crucial role in ensuring that families receive the support and care they need during one of the most challenging times of their lives.

Motivating funeral staff is essential for maintaining high standards of care and upholding the reputation of the funeral home. Let’s explore effective funeral home management strategies supported by research.

Real Recognition and Appreciation

Reflect on your early days in funeral service. How frequently did your boss recognize your efforts? Now, apply your experiences to what you’re providing for your staff today. Are they truly feeling like they’re appreciated and valued as employees of the business?

According to research from Harvard Business Review, the top indicators of employee motivation (including satisfaction) were not influenced at all by salary. In fact, their research found that positive recognition from managers can be more effective in most cases. Let’s walk through Frederick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory below.

This doesn’t mean that salary should be ignored. This means that as a business owner, you should look beyond salary to set your employees up for long-term success. up for long-term success. Consider implementing a simple employee recognition program:

• Personal (and oftentimes impromptu) thank-you notes
• Company-branded merchandise or gift cards
• Annual award program to reward milestones and production
• One-on-one meetings and team-building activities

Adopting a multifaceted approach to employee recognition is essential. Above all, consistently express gratitude for your employees’ contributions. That goes far.

Effective Training and Development

Investing in the professional development of your staff not only enhances their skills, but also demonstrates your commitment to their growth. In the world of funeral service, there are plenty of CE credit opportunities throughout the year that are available to your staff in the form of workshops, seminars, or online courses.

Proper training provides a more tangible path for each employee to grow in their career. Therefore, it’s crucial to deliberately allocate time each year for providing effective training to your staff.

Bonus: don’t ever assume that everyone understands how every process at your funeral home or crematory works. Be sure to document every process. If you want to go a step further, record a short Loom video and create a video resource library that walks through specific processes in your business that employees can come back to.

Funeral Home Management Software

For your staff to be motivated to come to work, they need to be equipped with the proper tools – and that goes beyond what is just in the prep room. Ensure that you’re business is investing in modern funeral home management software that helps streamline your staff’s workflow and simplifies family collaboration.

Don’t make this an afterthought – according to a study by Ultimate Software, over 91% of workers said having technology that simplifies their job impacts their happiness with their jobs.

Clear Communication and Values

According to a workplace communication study from Grammarly, 50% of respondents stated that poor communication has increased their overall stress levels, and 34% of respondents stated that poor communication has decreased their job satisfaction.

As a funeral home manager or owner, maintaining open lines of communication with your staff ensures that everyone is on the same page and aligned with the organization’s mission and values. Consider establishing a consistent system or setting up a platform for team communication, and maintain rules of communication in an employee handbook that sets clear expectations for employees.

Additionally, be sure to always communicate updates to your team. If your team is out of the loop and they find out weeks later about a process change, they’re not going to be happy with you.

When it comes to establishing values at your funeral home or crematory, you need to go beyond the cookie-cutter mission and values statements. You need to reinforce your business values with your actions and how you help empower your staff. According to Gallup, only 27% of employees strongly agree that their organization always delivers on the promises it makes to customers.

But let’s take that a step further – do your employees feel like you deliver on the promises you make to your staff? Here’s one healthy exercise that could shed some light on this: set up a 1-hour meeting with your entire team to rework and reshape the values of your business. Spend the first 30 minutes asking your team for their honest thoughts on the important question: what should the values of this business be moving forward?

Once you have more input and insight, you should come up with an action plan that helps reinforce these values that have been set by not only you – but the team around you.

Work-Life Balance

Balancing the demands of work and personal life is crucial for preventing burnout and maintaining staff well-being.

In the world of deathcare, work-life balance is an incredibly important concept to pay attention to. According to a study that the NFDA references, nearly 50% of funeral directors quit the profession within the first 5 years.

While it may not feel like it immediately, investing in work-life balance for your employees can pay large dividends in the long term, especially because you’re more likely to retain them. Think about it – if a burnt-out funeral director or office administrator leaves you, it can take up to 3 months to hire someone in their place. And not only that – one estimate states that the cost to replace an employee is 3 or 4 times the individual’s salary.

Let’s say that an employee’s salary was $50,000, not including bonuses or commissions. This means that it could cost your business $200,000 to replace that single employee.

Prioritizing work-life balance in the funeral home begins with you, whether you’re the owner or the manager.  Consider the following:

• Offer more flexible, defined scheduling options
• Leverage part-time contractors or trade workers
• Provide a paid-time-off or vacation package that is competitive, realistic, and encouraged

Unlock Better Funeral Home Management With Gather

To wrap up the conversation – sure, creating a company handbook helps you manage your staff. Motivating your staff requires a multifaceted (and creative) approach. Pay attention to employee feedback. Next time you go to a convention or talk with another business owner, ask them how they motivate their employees. The answers will vary, but you’ll walk away with more knowledge and tools to help your team succeed.

Another tool that you should consider? Gather.

Gather is an all-in-one funeral home management platform that empowers every funeral home staff to manage every case with ease and simplify family collaboration. Funeral homes and crematories utilize Gather for 4 major business operations:

• Case Management Platform
• Integrated Website Designs
• Body and Belonging Tracking
• Funeral LiveStreaming and Webcasting

Schedule a free consultation with our team to learn more about how to get started with Gather.