Every day I search out articles about Death Care services to provide me with information on topics of interest in our profession/industry.  One of the things that has been extremely disappointing to this life-long funeral director and funeral home owner is the amount of negative publicity our profession piles on itself because of what I call “bad actors” in the profession.

Virtually every day there are newspaper articles written about the negative effects funeral homes have had on the families that they are supposed to be serving.  Those articles are generally about unfulfilled promises but many times are much worse — such as having unsanitary conditions for the storage of bodies or even worse. . . such as just not doing what they said they did.  Many of these instances happen to be telling families that their loved ones have been cremated when, for whatever reason, the deceased is still on the funeral home premises and has not been cremated.

In fact, these incidents are so regular worldwide that Funeral Director Daily has quit writing about most of them.  If we did I’m guessing that you would hear of some type of negative incident weekly.  And, simply reporting on, and calling out the bad actors, is not something I find of interest to my readers.

However, every once in a while I am moved to say something.

The latest incident that I read about was an incident from Maryland which I learned of on January 27.  Here is an article and news story out of Baltimore on the situation.

This article from the BBC tells of a situation in Great Britain last year that shocked the British public.  The article from November 2024 states that it is prompting a review of the “funeral sector”.

One community, The Wealdon District Council, recently completed their assignment from the Ministry of Justice and Minister for Local Government which asked for “visits to be carried out as a matter of public reassurance in the largely unregulated industry”.

The Wealdon District Council released their findings to the public a couple of weeks ago.  In that release titled “Report shows confidence in funeral directors”  a total of 25 funeral directors, some with more than one branch in Rother and Wealden, were given public reassurance following assessment of hygiene, facility conditions and capability, traceability and transparency, dignity and condition of deceased people in their care and pre-paid funeral plans.  Here is that release.

That article also went on to say this “all but two of Rother and Wealden’s funeral directors were given letters of public assurance.  Officers were unable to carry our check on Aurora Funerals in Crowborough or Fenix Funeral Directors, listed in Bexhill, and public assurance was not given.”

Related Article — Just to prove my point about the number of these types of article, this article titled “Complex investigation into Glasgow funeral directors continues eight months after police sweep” was published by STV News the same day the Wealden District Council report was published.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  I find it really sad that this type of “assurance” had to be given to the general public about funeral homes and funeral directors.  We should be better than this.

I’ve never been perfect in anything in my life, however, every single family that I served over 33 years got 100% effort and trustworthiness from me. . . . And, that included familes I knew that I would not get paid from.  To me, serving families in need with everything I had to offer was simply a part of my humanity.

We are entering a new generation of funeral consumers who can now facilitate their choices for disposition, celebration, and memorialization without the use of traditional funeral homes. If traditional funeral homes want to stay relevant with the consumers we hope to serve we cannot sink so low that we need government offices telling those consumers that we are “OK”.

It’s simply time to “Raise our game” to a level that there is absolutely no question in consumers’ minds that we will do what we say we will.

The Funeral Director Daily article published last Friday was about the World Economic Forum (WEF) recently held in Davos, Switzerland.  The world’s business leaders met there and one of the concepts for business growth that came out of that forum was “Trust”.  I think it is time that funeral directors, as a whole, re-establish ours.

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Sometimes we make the process of gaining business or market share more complicated than it has to be.  We pay for focus groups and surveys and hiring marketing companies to tell us how to grow our businesses.  All of those methods can help and paying experts in those fields to do just that is many times worth the money paid.

However, I find it interesting that when the world’s biggest company executives and financiers met at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland last week that one of the most common words used to tell how to earn business in today’s political, cultural, and economic climate was “Trust”.

Here’s an article on the WEF from Yahoo Finance that, in a way, portrays that topic.  When writing on what he learned at the WEF, Yahoo Finance Morning Brief editor Brian Sozzi put this as his number one answer:  “Don’t compromise your values as a leader”.

Doing some research on the subject of “Trust in Business” I came across this 2024 analysis by Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) about findings on a “Trust in Business” survey.  One of PwC’s statements in the analysis stated this:  “Consider that 90% of business executives think customers highly trust their companies while only 30% of consumers actually do.”

PwC also made this comment which points out why trust is so important in the perception of your business:  “Trust:  Consumers buy it, employees feel it, and investors demand it”.  Most funeral homes don’t have outside investors, but that statement weighs at least a ton when a funeral home owner realizes how being “trustworthy” moves consumers and employees in their positive perception of the business.

A Newton’s Cradle

We are in 2025 and for about a quarter of a century I’ve felt like America lives in a “Newton’s Cradle” world.  A Newton’s Cradle is the device you see above whereby the concept of energy transfer is shown by the silver balls on either end moving to the extremes while the three middle positioned balls do not move at all.   My take is that the Conservative position is one extreme and the Liberal position is the other extreme. . . . In American politics over the past quarter-century we have seen the extremes move while the vast majority of Americans remain still in their views of moderaton represented by the three silver balls in the middle that don’t move at all.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

One of the casualties of this political reality is that many businesses have moved in a direction, back and forth, when they feel the situation will benefit them.  The easiest way to see this is with social media companies who have moved their rules and restrictions back and forth depending on who is the resident of the White House.

I think in furthering the point of “Trust”, those media companies lose the trust of consumers because of that seeming chase of approval by the party in power.  That comment is actually made in the above-linked Yahoo Finance article.

I also think that that ever-changing philosophy is easily seen by consumers who then lose faith, loyalty, and trust in those companies.  That’s when a switch to another provider of choice may happen.

Like the graphic leading off this article, I think local funeral homes that want to build their business need to exhibit the values of:

• Integrity
• Consistency
• Sincerity
• Reliability
• Competence
• Commitment

It’s my opinion that those funeral establishments and Death Care suppliers that operate in a field of consistently being ethical, sincere, and trustworthy will be the companies that stand-out to their eventual consumers as the company that those consumers will choose.  It’s a process of playing the “long game” where others without this “authenticity” may win a little business in the short-run but never win in the long-haul because of their shifting of values.

Finally, when you look at some of the longevity in years, decades, and centuries, of some family-owned funeral homes this reality is probably already pretty well-known in our profession.

Related:  Here’s a quote from the Edelman Trust Barometer:

“Our work has proven that an organization’s ability to succeed or fail is defined by trust in their mission and leadership, and our industry-leading research explains why.”

Related Article:  “Standing out in a world where trust is in short supply”.  The Rough Notes Company

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