Let me add some more pile-on. I have worked for three megacorps where coworkers have endured a loss of a close family member. One boss of mine suffered the loss of his father on the way back home after his wedding in a car crash, another coworker lost a child shortly after birth, and yet another had a son killed in Iraq.
In all three cases, the coworker was given at least one month at their discretion to take. There was nothing in the rule book about any of those things yet they got it no questions asked. That is what people, even big companies, normally do. We didn’t suffer any financial losses because they were gone.
You would have to be a piss poor organization with a terrible management structure for that to happen. Their jobs were needed in the long-term but we all pitched in to fill in in their absence (it wasn’t hard on anyone) and covered for their their time of need.
I call it tyranny in the name of total equality just like zero tolerance rules in public schools. You don’t need a manager for that.You just need a computer that understands rules perfectly.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. And in this particular case, people are REALLY going to hate you because it’s going to play out like one of those silent movies where the heartless landlord casts a poverty-stricken washer-woman and her malnourished children out into the snow to starve and freeze to death. You deny this woman’s request, and you’re going to be the person who denied a grieving widow a couple of extra days with her children on the first holiday after her husband’s death so you wouldn’t have to pay her for a couple of days when it says right in your own manual she’s entitled to take that many days off with pay so as to be with her family. You might as well get your top hat and cape out of storage and practice twirling your mustache.
You’ve seen how people here have reacted, and to us she’s some random faceless stranger. Think about how much more strongly the people who know and care about her are going to feel about this.
If it really chaps your ass that badly to pay her for those days, or if you really think so poorly of your staff that you think there will be widespread abuse of bereavement leave if you give her those two days, then ffs just rewrite your policy to remove the ambiguity and have it take effect right after this woman gets back. It’ll still look bad, as you’re obviously rewriting the policy in response to this situation, but not nearly so bad as if you try to deny her those two extra days.
1st: Give her the DAMN 2 days! Now with that out of the way, here’s the bereavment policy I’d enact:
5 Days for:
Anyone who was ever part of a nuclear family with you (i.e. parents, siblings, SO, kids and any members of a nuclear family THEY create: (in-laws, nieces/nephews, grandchildren)
3 Days for:
Everyone else related (i.e. cousins, aunts/uncles, grandparents)
How about:
3 consecutive days for Unexpected Death of a Beloved Family Member
2 consecutive days for Unexpected Death of an Estranged Family Member
2 consecutive days for Expected Death of a Beloved Family Member
1 day for Expected Death of an Estranged Family Member
Unless of course the death occurs on a weekend or holiday, in which case the bereavement leave will be reduced by those number of days.
That should keep Foxy40 satisfied.
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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.
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It’s bizarre to me that you imagine that anyone would support you deciding not to give the (already meager) three days your policy promises. You really expected that someone would back you up on trying to finesse your way out of giving your employee guaranteed bereavement leave?
3 days for the loss of a spouse - it’s such a small amount of time for such a huge loss. Why should it all be in the same three days after the death? Is the employee not going to be grieving a month later, and are all the relatives going to be there immediately after the death?
That was my first thought, too. She’s a grieving widow; I don’t think now’s an appropriate time to split hairs. Two days off to be with / grieve with her family is absolutely reasonable; I can’t see why it wouldn’t be.
I was responsible for a rewrite in the company policy for something similar.
I set up the Japan branch office of a US company, and HR decided to allow not only a bereavement time comparable Japanese companies but also a honeymoon vacation comparable to Japanese companies.
When I got married, I didn’t take my honeymoon immediately, and when I asked for it several months later, they were forced to accept it, but immediately changed the rules to disallow this in the future.
It was a dick move, and everyone knew that. I created millions in profits for the company over 10 years, and they wanted to get cheap with five days of “extra” time off. I think it pissed off HR in head office because this wasn’t an option for them.
You set special policies when events are likely to be abused. Really, how many times is someone going to require bereavement leave? Of that, how many times are they doing to ask for this exception?
If you get into someone who is consistently misusing bereavement policy, you may want to let the police know. There may be a reason why all of their relatives are dying, and getting a little extra flexibility in the time off may be the least of the problems. :eek:
Japanese companies also gives the father a couple of days off when a child is born, plus a week when an immediate member (spouse, child, parent dies).
When Ian Pough was born, and then died, I took all of those days. If it happened that I needed to take them non-consecutively, and there were no policy forbidding it, and the HR drones were to refuse, then I would tell them to fuck off.
To the OP, you are absolutely correct to question whether there should be a limit as to how long this bereavement leave can be held for future use. In the specific case, a month or so sounds reasonable.
A policy that sets reasonable limits and also offers for exceptions to be considered gives you the most flexibility if abuse occurs.
We get up to 2 personal days to cover bereavement or other major life events. Additional time would be considered vacation time, and it would be given whether sufficient vacation time had been accumulated or not. We don’t want people working under severe emotional distress. They may make mistakes, and it might ruin the employee/employer relationship in the future.
The company has changed owners in the past year, but several years ago, under a similar policy, I took one day off when my grandpa died and again when my grandma died. They both lived ~2 hours away from me. The unwritten expectation is that leave is for the funeral and being with family. Taking a day off and spending it alone at home is frowned upon, though it’s not like there’s a mechanism for checking that. For both of those events, an admin asked for the name of the deceased and flowers from the company were at the funeral. I’m not sure if they wanted the names to check against obituary notices or not.
More recently, when my grandfather-in-law passed on, I took two days off, the 2nd and 3rd days after he died, to take my wife and daughter to her hometown. I didn’t stay for the funeral, as I felt it was in my best interest to return to work ASAP. No one, locally or at our corporate office, asked any questions.
The policy at my company seems reasonable to me, with an exception for spouses. I agree with other posters that 5 days should be standard for that. But, at my employer (and yours), it’s not. Here, there is the unwritten expectation that more time may be necessary, but that comes out of your PTO bank or is unpaid leave. Over half the people in my office are from overseas, so I can imagine that a parent’s death necessitates at least a weeklong absence. At the old company, I know management had a lot more discretion on how policies were enforced, but more than four days of bereavement leave on your timesheet isn’t acceptable any more.
And OP, I think your question is completely valid, seeing that she requested the time as a substitute for vacation time she had already planned to take. If I were in your shoes, I’d grudgingly allow it, if only to keep office strife to a minimum. Then I’d ask HR to update the policy specifying that bereavement leave must be used within a certain time of death.
Interesting. My wife and I actually did take a honeymoon several months after the wedding, because we had to wait for her son to be out of school for the summer so he could stay with his dad while we were gone. We can’t all do things the traditional way.
At my school it was three days for an immediate family member. If you need more, you can take sick leave or personal leave. In the case of a teacher whose son died in Iraq, there were no questions other than, “How can we help you best?”
I never heard of anyone taking non-consecutive, but I’m sure they talked to the principal or superintendent. If anyone had been denied, I KNOW I would have heard that, so I imagine the employees were accommodated. The district office really tried to work with us at times like that.
Not the first, nor the last, time I’ve been whooshed here.