Funeral assistants provide help during funeral services and perform numerous jobs around the funeral home. An assistant's responsibilities focus on ensuring funeral processions function smoothly, and on helping the Funeral Director wherever needed.
As a funeral assistant, your responsibilities include being a pallbearer, driving cars in funeral processions, transferring the deceased to the funeral home, arranging flowers, and maintaining the funeral home. Other duties may include greeting people at the funeral home, assisting the public with charitable donations, registering deaths and obtaining burial permits.
You will spend the first few days on the job observing the proper procedures, until you are comfortable with your duties. Learning how funeral services are conducted, becoming familiar with various hospital morgues and nursing homes, and developing personal qualities to help deal with the bereaved, all require time and are best learned through experience.
Depending up the size of the business, you may work either as a full- or part-time assistant. Full- time assistants tend to hold more responsibilities around the funeral home that part-time workers and they are paid a salary. Part-time assistants are expected to be more flexible and to work on short notice; they are usually paid by the hour.
During funeral services, you respond to the instructions of the Funeral Director, who oversees the ceremony. You must maintain a professional attitude at all times.
Funeral homes cater to different religions, so you should be aware of the rituals and customs that may be part of each service. Regardless of the type of service, your primary obligation is to ensure that the service is appropriately comforting and respectful for the bereaved.
In this job, you must be well-groomed, behave in a sensitive and tactful manner, and be able to communicate with a variety of people. Working in a funeral home requires mature, level-headed people who learn quickly. You must understand and sympathize with the emotions that friends and family of the deceased experience. You will do well if you have the ability to adapt to the needs of each particular service.
Most provinces do not allow assistants to handle the deceased. Though some apprenticeship programs are available for those interested in this job, action is under way to create a nationwide licence that would require completion of a two-year college course.