How do employers and employees manage the compassionate leave minefield?

1. Compassionate leave – what is reasonable?
‘Life goes on’ is a phrase with which we are all familiar
but for employers and their recently bereaved
employees, there is an ongoing tension about exactly
when life should continue to go on. Few countries have
statutory compassionate or bereavement leave and,
more significantly, few companies have policies about it
either.
The main difficulty is that bereavement is such a broad
term for a very broad range of experience. No two
bereavements are the same; indeed, two or three
people experiencing the same bereavement will all
react differently. For some, the business of arranging a
funeral, whilst requiring time away from work, is a
distraction from the actual business of grieving and it
may well be months before reality hits. For others, grief
may appear to be disproportionate, especially for the
loss of more ‘distant’ relatives such as cousins or
grandparents, or for friends.
We don’t know how people are going to deal with grief
until it happens. Naturally, it is rare to have advance
warning, although some deaths are easier to anticipate
than others. Sometimes death shocks us because it is
out of the blue and our unpreparedness is almost as
much a part of our grief as the loss. Other times,
people may have spent months or even years caring for
a chronically or terminally ill person, yet the phrase ‘it
must be a relief in many ways’ is not what they need to
hear and the change back to ‘normality’ may well be a
huge shock.
Furthermore we are inclined, consciously or otherwise,
to categorise bereavements. An aged grandparent
would not seem to be as a difficult a loss as that of a
child. A long battle with cancer seems different to
suicide. But whatever the circumstances, for the
person dealing with the aftermath the difficulty of
returning to work and acting as if nothing has happened
after only a few days is profound.
Ultimately, employers need engaged and high-
performing employees. The employees themselves
need time, space and understanding. Managed the
right way, work can give them a vital support strategy
which, in the end, will help them to be productive
members of the team.
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