The Health and Safety Executive have recently released figures that show that workplace deaths are at an all-time low. Between April 2009 and March 2010, 151 people were killed in UK workplaces, down from 178 the previous year. While this improvement is good to see, it leaves me wondering about how well equipped most organisations are in terms of dealing with the challenges involved in supporting employees through bereavement and loss situations. When I was researching my Loss, Grief and Trauma in the Workplace book (http://astore.amazon.co.uk/neilthomp-21/) I was concerned at how few of the organisations I have links with have any sort of plan, policy or strategy for addressing such issues - and yet, of course, loss and grief issues will affect all workplaces sooner or later. It strikes me that this is an aspect of workplace well-being that is being seriously neglected.

Research can sometimes be counterintuitive. That is, the findings go against what we would have expected - they challnege so-called common sense. Helping us to realise that some of the things we take for granted have no basis in truth  is therefore an important role that research plays for society. However, sometimes the value of research comes from confirming what has been taken for granted for a long time - reaffirming that it does have a basis in fact. An example of the latter was recently reported in the Observer in an article that described the research opf Andrew Oswald of Warwick University. His recent study has shown a strong link between happiness and productivity, with negative emotions producing lower levels of productivity. So, perhaps the idea that an organisation's most important resource is its human resource - its people - was the correct assumption all along. Perhaps we really do have to take workplace well-being seriously.