How to Write an Obituary for a Coworker

You've been asked to write something about a colleague who has died, and you're staring at a blank screen unsure where to start. Maybe HR asked you to draft an internal announcement. Maybe the team wants to publish a tribute on the company intranet or submit something to the local paper. Either way, you're trying to honor someone's professional life while respecting their family's wishes — and you have no template for this.

A workplace obituary or tribute is different from the family obituary. You're writing about a specific facet of someone's life — their professional contributions, their impact on the team, the way they showed up at work every day — and you need to get it right without overstepping.

Get Family Approval Before You Publish Anything

This is the step people skip, and it creates real problems. Before drafting a single sentence, the designated family liaison (usually HR or the person's direct manager) needs to confirm with the next of kin:

• Whether the family is comfortable with a workplace tribute being published at all
• What details about the cause of death, if any, they want shared
• Whether they'd like to review the draft before it goes out
• How they'd prefer to be referenced (by name, or simply as "the family")

Under HIPAA, a covered entity must protect identifiable health information for 50 years after a person's death. HIPAA generally does not cover an employer's own employment records, even when they contain health-related information. For a workplace tribute, get the family's approval before sharing cause-of-death details, and have HR review anything drawn from health-plan or provider records. When in doubt, leave it out. A good tribute doesn't need to explain how someone died.

What to Include

A workplace tribute covers different ground than a traditional obituary. The family's obituary handles biographical details — birth date, surviving relatives, funeral arrangements. Your piece focuses on the person's professional identity and their meaning to the team.

Professional contributions: What did they work on? What projects defined their tenure? If they built something the company still uses, name it. If they mentored junior staff, say so. Specific accomplishments carry more weight than vague praise — "she redesigned the client onboarding workflow that cut processing time by 40%" lands harder than "she was a dedicated professional."

Character in the workplace: How did they make the office feel different? Were they the person who remembered everyone's birthday? The one who stayed late to help a colleague debug a production issue? The calm presence in a crisis? Small, true details matter more than grand statements.

Team impact: Acknowledge what the team has lost. This isn't about making the tribute sad — it's about being honest. "Our Monday standups are quieter now" says more than a paragraph of generic praise.

Tenure and milestones: How long they worked at the company, significant promotions or role changes, awards or recognitions. Keep it factual.

What to Leave Out

Personal details the family hasn't authorized: Religious beliefs, political views, relationship status, health conditions, financial circumstances. Even details that seem benign — mentioning a partner the family hasn't acknowledged publicly, for instance — can cause real pain.

Inside jokes or nicknames without context: What feels affectionate to the team can read as disrespectful to a grieving family encountering the tribute for the first time. If you include a nickname, frame it: "Known to the engineering team as 'The Fixer' for his ability to untangle any production outage."

Anything about the circumstances of death: Unless the family has specifically approved this detail, keep the focus on how the person lived, not how they died. For deaths by suicide, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) specifically advises against detailed descriptions of the method or circumstances — safe messaging guidelines exist for a reason.

Comparisons or rankings: "The best engineer we ever had" sets up an uncomfortable dynamic for everyone who follows. Frame contributions as unique rather than superlative.

A Simple Structure That Works

Most workplace tributes follow a three-part structure:

Opening — State the loss plainly. "We are deeply saddened to share that [Name], [Title/Role] in [Department], passed away on [Date]." No euphemisms required, but "passed away" is standard for professional communications.

Body — Two to four paragraphs covering their professional contributions, character, and impact. Lead with the most specific, memorable detail you have. Pull from actual work — projects, clients, milestones — rather than generic adjectives.

Closing — Practical information the reader needs: memorial service details (if the family has shared them), where to send condolences or donations (if the family has designated a charity), and any organizational response (flags at half-staff, a moment of silence at the next all-hands, a memorial fund).

Keep the total length between 200 and 400 words for an internal announcement. For a more formal published tribute, 500 to 700 words gives you room to develop specific stories without losing the reader.

Getting Input From the Team

If you didn't work closely with the deceased, talk to two or three people who did before you write. Ask them for one specific memory or one thing the person did that nobody else could replicate. Those details — the ones that make someone stop and say "yes, that was exactly them" — are what elevate a tribute from corporate boilerplate to something the family might keep.

Don't crowdsource the entire piece by committee. One person writes the draft, a small circle reviews it, and the family gets final approval. Too many cooks produce something so sanitized it reads like a LinkedIn recommendation.

After the Tribute

The tribute itself is just one piece of the communication puzzle. If you're managing the broader response to a colleague's death — team notifications, family liaison, workload redistribution, OSHA reporting, final pay processing — our When Your Employee or Colleague Dies guide covers the full operational and emotional framework. The tribute honors who they were. The guide handles everything that comes next.