Bereavement Time and Employees

In My Humble Opinion
121

At my last job (2200 employees), bereavement leave was negotiated as part of the union contract. Three paid days were given for every relationship down to cousins, but it was specified that the leave was to attend the funeral/memorial service, and documentation was required. The three days had to be consecutive.

Additional unpaid days would be given at the manager’s discretion, and they were generous, especially for spouses, parents, children. I think it would have been more fair to give more paid days for the closest relationships, and just one or two for aunts, uncles, and cousins, and it was brought up in negotiations (by management), but nothing was ever changed.

Hijack: I remember when one employee’s father died, he asked if he could work and get the bereavement pay. He said he hated his father and had no intention of attending the funeral. We told him no, and he ended up working. A few years later, the employee died. His son showed up at the plant the next day to ask about his dad’s life insurance. I gave him the papers to fill out. He then asked about his dad’s locker. I told him his dad’s foreman would clean it out and he could come back the next day to pick up the tools. He said no, he was leaving town. “You won’t be here for the funeral?” “No.” Jeebus.

ETA: I should add that bereaved employees who had vacation days could use them, as many as they had available. This was the only time that vacation days could be scheduled without regard to seniority.

122

And if she’s going to be the one dying, she needs to give two weeks advance warning. In writing.

123

I don’t understand the consecutive days thing.
Funerals don’t happen overnight. I can very easily imagine someone needing a day immediately following a death because they’re greiving/in shock/gathering with family/need to make lots of phone calls/etc., and then have a funeral to attend several days later. It makes no sense not to allow for this.

I’m just glad my company (large international corporation with many thousands of employees) has a generous and flexible policy. My wife and I have lost 3 parents in the last 3 years and both of our employers have been wonderfully accomodating. I don’t think I’d want to work for any company that would give me the stink-eye over a bereavement request.

124

Although the policy I posted above (three days) sounds pretty strict, it’s really only applied that way for our non-exempt employees. After the three paid days, depending on circumstances, they would be taken off the schedule and allowed to either take personal leave or use vacation if it was a close relative like a spouse or child.

My boss’s husband passed away a few months ago, and she was out for over a month, with pay (as far as I know). However she remained connected to the office, checking emails occasionally and checking in with her boss and responding to urgent issues. So the company was pretty accommodating for her and not as draconian as the official policy looks.

125

Re consecutive days:

On the one side, I see everyone’s position that the OPer shouldn’t be niggardly with bereavement days, especially given it was the employee’s husband, and she only took one day off.

On the other side, I can see employer’s need to spell things out clearly, and enforce them, because SOME employees will interpret policies as liberally as possible, to the extent that they will believe that they are “owed” 3 days off work each and every time a relative dies – whether they personally attend a funeral, whether the funeral took place on a work day or a weekend, or even whether they had a close relationship with the deceased.

Real case scenario:

My granny died last week. I wasn’t particularly close to her. My company’s bereavement policy allows me three days off, and it isn’t specified that it’s consecutive days. I ended up only taking one day off because I was able to travel over the weekend.

I leave for vacation on Friday, and this vacation has been scheduled for several months. Since I didn’t use all of my 3 allotted bereavement days, does this mean that I can code 2 of these 6 vacation days as bereavement days instead? After all, I’m sure I’ll be THINKING about Granny some of the time. This is almost the exact scenario as the OP describes, except for the fact that it’s the OPer’s husband instead of her granny. And clearly there’s an argument to be made on both sides.

On a related note, my company recently switched from a prescribed sick policy (up to 5 days) to a “as needed” policy because so many employees looked at sick days as entitlements. They felt perfectly entitled taking 5 sick days off each and every year whether they were sick or not, because that’s what the company said they were allowed. They understood that if they went OVER that number, they could be reprimanded, but they really believed that as long as they didn’t go over that number, they were justified in using these days as “mental health days.”

By switching to “as needed” it allows the company to be more flexible. If an employee, or their spouse/child, suffers from a disease such as MS or cancer, they can take off more days than the former policy allowed, without repercussion. On the other side, managers were freed to reprimand employees whose patterns revealed abuse – they always calling in sick on Opening Day or Fridays before holidays/vacations, for example – even though they took fewer days than the former policy allowed.

126

I think an official policy that’s based on attempting to read an employee’s mind and figure out whether they’re really in grief (or, as mentioned above, grieving in an employer-approved manner) is just going to make everyone crazy. Managers will be required to second-guess their employee every time it happens. Morale will go down because the employees will notice that they will get second-guessed should it happen to them. This doesn’t sound like a good working environment for anyone to me.

Sooner or later, you’re just going to have to 1> accept that you can’t read anyone’s mind and 2> trust your employee. If you don’t trust your employee, you shouldn’t hire them.

127

You can be fair without being a skinflint with the bereavement days.

I’m just glad I don’t work for you.

128

Give her the days–no questions asked!

129

Me too. The OP has serious issues as a manager and it shows like a beacon in a desert in this thread. I doubt our comments will do any good because all the defensive measures she puts up but there is no way in hell I would work for her either. I have worked for those types before and thankfully I don’t have to ever again and I never treat anyone that way in my management responsibilities. The thought process is completely foreign to me. I work in a high level position for a Fortune 100 company with formal procedures but everyone there is treated as person with a life outside of the company and we take care of each other without nitpicking their motivations.

130

I can’t believe* that this would even be a question. Give her the three days off!

My wife’s uncle recently died quite unexpectedly (as in we had seen him, in good health and high spirits, the day before). The news left her in shock and she asked for a day off to deal with that. He’s being cremated and there will be a small family interment soon, followed by a more public memorial a little while later. Certainly, none of these days are consecutive, so which one(s) should she be forced to miss should she have the misfortune of working for the OP?

Our company policy? Well, apparently that’s just changed.

It used to be 5 days for a spouse or your or your spouse’s parents, siblings, or children and 3 days for other relatives. This was when we were a small (40-50 person) company.
We’re now under a bigger management group, putting us in the several thousand employee range, and it’s 3 days, but only for the first group above.

(She took an unpaid day to grieve/work through shock/be with her mother (the sister of the deceased), and luckily both memorial services are on weekends and only a few hours away.)

*Okay, I can believe it…I know the world is full of jerks