I had the same reaction: “You needed to ask this, REALLY?” The right answer is “Of course. Are you sure two days is enough?”
Some companies need to learn that saving money by screwing over employees almost always ends up costing more. Deny this and the employee will never forget it. This is how Jobsworths are born. This employee will never, ever, go one extra inch to please a customer, or make the company more money. She will most likely quit at the first opportunity, and then you will have to spend money recruiting, hiring, and training a new employee. All that is going to cost a helluva lot more than two days pay to keep an employee that is productive because they know their boss has their back.
You not only should grant the additional days without hesitation and without question, you should immediately begin lobbying your management to increase the allotment to five days. Besides family support and grieving, there is a huge amount of practical work and paperwork that needs to be attended to when a spouse or parent dies–moving belongings, canceling Social Security and pensions, and so forth.
Seriously, one day for a spouse? Seriously? Where do you work, so I can make sure never to apply?
This pretty much sums up my reaction as well. Good thing this isn’t in some other forum. Yeah I understand the whole slippery slope thing and next thing you know Bob with a hundred relatives who die on a regular basis ain’t showing up to work half the time but dayum in this case we haven’t even reached the crest of the hill, much less the slope on the other side.
If your policy allows it, I would approve the 2 non-consecutive days. It’s the kind thing to do. Where I work, we get 5 days, but they must be used consecutively and they cannot be interrupted with a weekend. If one of my staff were asking to do what your staff person was requesting, I would need to fudge it but I would let them do it.
And? Like I said, a minimum 5 days paid leave is what I would consider appropriate.
Three days is not generous - it’s the very minimum to prevent your employees from seeing you as the biggest Scrooge McDuck in town, and if you start nickeling and dimeing people as to when they can take their three days, you will actually win the crown.
While I agree with this, employees abusing a policy may end up costing more down the line should others do it. Which is why I want to make sure I make the right decision here.
It would have been a cut and dry issue had she not been so vocal about not having a wake or a funeral or if the family she will be with is his family or had anything to do with the death but it doesn’t. She is going to see her kids around the 4th and rather than take her vacation time is electing to use these days that she has “coming”.
So do I count bereavement in the future for everyone as an extra three days off that can be taken anytime for any reason or should there be a time limit? Does the policy need to be clarified?
I honestly think you’re overthinking this. Three days is already less time than most companies offer for death of a spouse, and taking off time to see family instead of a funeral isn’t abusing the policy. At the point where someone wants something truly ridiculous – I’m thinking taking the time a year later to extend a trip to Hawaii or something equally brazen – you can take a stand, but please don’t make an example of this woman. It will only seem petty and cheap.
If I limit it to consecutively, than I guess I am making it difficult for a person who has a loss on a Monday and his family is flying in the end of the week for the wake or funeral.
Maybe others who work for companies that have a policy can chime in. I already heard from the. “Oh my god you’re so mean and cruel” folks.
If there is a policy in place that pays for days off, some people will take advantage of it. Do I add three days pay to every person that has a loss in their family regardless of a funeral taking place or the employee even attends it?
I’m picking this post to agree with, though there are others I could have quoted just as easily. *Of course you should give her the days, whenever she *feels it is appropriate to do so.
When an employee tries to abuse a policy, you sack up and put your foot down and tell them no.
It is painfully obvious that in this situation, she’s NOT abusing anything, so your whole “waaah other people might try to abuse the policy” thing doesn’t hold water.
Not tryin’ to hate or anything but you seem to want to find a way to say no and feel good about it. “I’m not being a dick, it’s poooolllliiiicy.”
I just looked up our bereavement policy. Five days paid, like I said, and the time frame is “subject to the manager’s approval”. It doesn’t ask for proof there is a funeral or that you are attending it. It also says:
Abuse of this policy is considered a serious matter and will be dealt with as a serious performance issue.
So why don’t you deal with the problem children directly, instead of penalizing everyone? I can’t imagine only three days to deal with the death of my SO, whom I’ve been with for fifteen years. And are you really going to mess around with funerals? Mom didn’t have a funeral, she had a cremation? Do I need to bring in the funeral director’s note?
Also, yes you should add two days to everyone but stipulate a “close family member” - again, taken directly from my own company’s policy.
Are you in a position to set policy, or just to enforce/interpret it? If the former, I would start working on clarifications to the bereavement policy. I don’t see anything wrong with non-consecutive use of the bereavement days, but I suspect you’ll want to set a limit on how long someone can “bank” bereavement days. 30 days? 60 days? Whatever both seems kind to the employee and doesn’t create a record-keeping burden.
I agree with others, though, that this change/clarification shouldn’t be put into effect for this staff person for this instance. The best time to change/clarify the policy is at the beginning of the next benefit period (usually Jan 1).
ETA - If you do decide to let people “bank” bereavement, you’ll probably want to specify that if the bereavement days are not used immediately after the loss they need to be scheduled. No spontaneous bereavement days for Uncle Phil who died 5 weeks ago.
You’re overanalyzing. Even in the crappiest and shadiest of workplaces, I saw very very little abuse of bereavement (the only case I can recall involved someone lying about the death of a grandparent completely, not taking days when people felt it inappropriate) and even less hassle from management about it.
Even from a purely business sense without any human consideration, it is still a good idea to not pressure and aggravate grieving employees during an extremely difficult time to quash abuse that you don’t even know exists. This kind of hassling won’t just affect that employee adversely, but when it gets around, it systemically destroys morale and mutual goodwill.
I don’t know where you work, but do you have enough people with deaths in their immediate family happening so often that you think giving this lady her two days is going to cause an avalanche of “I want one day now, one after Labour Day, and another at Halloween.”
(* This is sick leave so the expectation is that the person is actually broken up about the loss of their spouse or child - obviously if the person is delighted that the old bag finally kicked off, it would be quite hard to prove that they had sufficient emotional distress to warrant sick leave.)
