What’s your “Open file” load?

December 6, 2021/Business/

I graduated from mortuary school in 1980. It seems to me that life was a little easier back then, traditions were pretty normalized, and funeral services consisted of a pretty “run of the mill” body preparation-visitation-funeral service-burial logistic sequence. Of course, prior to that service sequence a funeral director had to also meet with the family to prepare the “file folder” from whence all information was compiled.

When I graduated I went right to work. I don’t know where I got the number but it sticks with me that a rule of thumb at that time was that a funeral home needed one full-time funeral director for every 75 annual calls. That number would then give out an average that each funeral director had about 1 1/2 “files” to work on every week. . . . That sounds like a relatively easy pace by today’s standards.

From this report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor you can see that, according to their numbers, that there is approximately 24,560 funeral directors/morticians who took care of about 3.2 million deaths in America last year. That would equate to about 130 “cases” or “files” per funeral director per year as compared to our rule of thumb of 75 per funeral director. If you abide by my 1980 rule of thumb, the math equation would indicate the each funeral director is taking care of about 75% more “files” per year than I started out at.

In effect, that statistic makes it appear that funeral directors of today are more efficient than when I started. . . or maybe they are so pressed that they aren’t given enough time to adequately take care of the families they are serving.

One might say that with the growth of cremation and, especially direct cremation, that there is less work for each file for each funeral director. I think that is stated because the body (non-embalmed cremations) preparation work is obviously less. However, I also noticed that what I would refer to as “non-traditional” services seem to take more and more time. The old fashioned traditional funeral was pretty run of the mill in setting up. . . . A few phone calls to the church, the cemetery, the obituary call, and the vault company and you were ready to proceed. With non-traditional calls there can be visits with an unusual venue not always prepared for memorial services. There can be different caterers that the family has decided to use out of your ordinary group. . . .and there can be more of just “items” that are seemingly in the protocol of a traditional funeral but have to be dealt with on a one-on-one basis of a non-traditional type service. . . requests such as dove releases and the like.

So, where am I going with this. This website from Data USA seems to indicate that while funeral directors will grow in supply in the next couple of years, over the next ten years our profession will decline by an average of almost 2% per year when Baby Boomer retirements hit in full. We also know that the number of deaths, as the Baby Boomer generation dies off, will increase. Again, the math in that situation indicates to me that the “file” number of the funeral director is poised to grow in coming years.

I can remember the day when I had three or four “open-files” on my desk in a busy time period. I was corresponding with that many families on the arrangements of their loved ones at the same time. That many open-files was unusual for me and it was a harried time when I know that I didn’t get to see my kid’s Little League games, piano recitals, and was probably not going to be home for supper. All I could think of was getting those funerals over so I could put my feet up with a little less stress.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

And, the more stress we have, the more we think about leaving the profession. . . . which causes the situation to get even busier for those left in it. And, it can’t all be about raising rates to be able to raise pay, because the American consumer will find a lower priced option.

As funeral directors, we’ve all been there. When you have multiple “open-files” mistakes can happen. . . and even if they don’t, you don’t get to put your full energy into the families you are serving because you have to carve up your time. That can lead to less fulfilled families who may be dis-heartened with the service you provided.

The idea for this article came to me on Friday when the November USA jobs report came out. According to that report, the U.S. is still about 4 million filled jobs below its pre-pandemic period. And, there seems to be valid reasons that people don’t want to re-enter the work force.

So, I am of the opinion that funeral businesses need to be in the mode of a continual recruitment of students to let them know the values of our occupation. We need to be at high school career days and with many of our profession’s foundations who have taken a lead on this, we need to be providing scholarship dollars for these students.

I’m not telling funeral home owners and managers anything that they don’t know. However, I am asking all of us to re-dedicate our efforts on getting more into our profession so we don’t give the current funeral directors unlimited “open-files” that they cannot get respite from.

Related: How to become a mortician and other jobs in the funeral industry. Yakima Herald (WA)

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