Working with the Ruth Strauss Foundation
Supporting colleagues facing one of life's toughest tests.
In 2024, RSPH was commissioned by the Ruth Strauss Foundation to develop, pilot, and evaluate two new eLearning courses for workplaces to increase awareness of how to support colleagues living with a terminal illness, or colleagues facing the death of a loved one from a terminal illness.
The courses also provide knowledge, awareness and understanding of preparing for grief and bereavement, and your legal duties and responsibilities and best practice as an employer when supporting employees impacted in this way. The courses were piloted with over 100 staff from Ruth Strauss Foundation’s corporate partners and will be available as a training resource for partners to access.
Work can provide us with purpose, and a community of friendship and should be a place of support when affected by a terminal illness. We are proud to have partnered with RSPH to create training that helps organisations respond with knowledge, skills and compassion during one of life's toughest tests.
Ines Thiru, CEO of Ruth Strauss Foundation
Evaluation approach
We conducted a mixed methods formative evaluation of the two eLearning courses. The evaluation comprised of:
- Developing an evaluation framework in close partnership with Ruth Strauss Foundation which aimed to assess the effectiveness and quality of the eLearning courses.
- Collecting data before and at end of training to assess learner experience as well as changes in knowledge and confidence acquisition around supporting employees/colleagues living with terminal illness.
- Analysing data through t-test for paired samples and thematic analysis, following convergent parallel mixed methods design.
Findings
The evaluation demonstrated a significant increase of 79% in confidence of individuals in supporting colleagues and employees following the completion of the eLearning course. Individuals found the courses to be informative, easy to digest, with valuable information and practical examples, as well as a good balance of learning techniques.
Learners found the courses did well to address their expectations and they were more likely to recommend them to a friend/colleague than not.
Feedback helped identify areas of improvement centred around the navigation and design of the course which were discussed with the commissioner and changes were implemented prior to further roll out. There were no recommendations for changes on content or ways for improving its effectiveness.
Conclusion
The robust formative evaluation demonstrated the need for learning across organisations in the UK on how to support colleagues/employees living with terminal illness. This was found to be well-addressed by the eLearning course with most learners being likely to recommend the training.
The excellent evaluation designed by RSPH demonstrates the critical importance of evidence-based workplace training on sensitive topics like terminal illness.
Deepa Doshi, Head of Mission Services, Ruth Strauss Foundation
The 79% increase in confidence levels shows we can effectively equip managers and colleagues with practical tools to provide compassionate support during difficult circumstances.
The positive feedback and high recommendation rates indicate we've achieved something genuinely valuable for workplace wellbeing across the UK.
For more information about the bereavement support training for workplaces contact the Ruth Strauss Foundation.