Bereavement leave: A guide for HR

Planning out your company’s leave policies? If so, it’s worth taking some time to consider how you’ll handle bereavement leave. 

Because of the sensitivity surrounding death, especially when it’s a close family member or loved one, your bereavement policy should be about more than simply allocating a certain number of days off. It should account for both the emotional experience your employee is going through as well as the ways the company and team members can best respond and support them.  

While your bereavement leave policy will generally be designed for employees who experience a death in their families (which can also include miscarriage), you might also spend some time considering how your company will handle bereavement processes and leave in the case of the death of an employee. For more on this topic in particular, see How to navigate the death of a team member. Especially in the event of an employee’s death, you’ll find it helpful to have a plan for: external communication (with the employee’s family and your benefits provider), company-wide communications, team meeting talking points, immediate support for grieving, and longer term support for grieving. 

What is bereavement leave?

According to the Employment Law Handbook, bereavement leave is time off “taken by an employee due to the death of a family member or loved one. The time is usually taken by an employee to grieve the loss of a close family member, prepare for and attend a funeral, and/or attend to any other immediate post-death matters.” 

Is bereavement leave required?  

In the US, Oregon is the only state that requires bereavement leave. In the remaining US states and the District of Columbia, it’s not required for employers to provide bereavement leave, though 89% of employers do. Some companies create specific bereavement leave policies while others allow employees to use other types of time off like personal days, sick days, or vacation days to attend a funeral or cope with the loss of a loved one.

Throughout the rest of the world, bereavement leave policies vary. For example, Australia grants two days of paid leave, Canada grants two days of unpaid leave, in Singapore it’s determined by the specific contract between the employer and employee, but three to five days is the norm, and in the UK employees have a right to take “a reasonable amount of time” to deal with emergencies.  

Considerations for your bereavement leave policy

Taking the time to create a bereavement leave policy makes it easier to provide support when your employees need it most and it also ensures equitable treatment of all employees. Here are some of the main points to consider when creating your bereavement leave policy.

Will you offer paid or unpaid leave? 

One of your biggest decisions is whether bereavement leave will be paid or unpaid. While in the US there’s no requirement to offer any type of bereavement leave, 94% of U.S. employers offer paid bereavement leave. Of those, approximately 83% offer a separate plan for paid leave (i.e., bereavement leave isn’t part of employees’ paid vacation or sick time). Because the loss of a loved one is one of the toughest moments in our lifetimes, as a company, we want to acknowledge this and provide enough time to our employees to grieve. This is why we recommend offering paid leave as well, to avoid causing financial strain in an already difficult time for employees.

What length of time will you allow?  

Traditionally, many company policies offered different lengths of time for leave depending on the relationship the employee had to the deceased. For example, if an employee lost a parent or sibling, their leave would be longer than if they lost an aunt or uncle. But, as BetterUp notes, this policy doesn’t accurately reflect the world we live in today: "While relationship to the decedent is often used to determine how much leave an employee is entitled to, that practice is becoming dated. As the family structure moves away from the “nuclear” stereotype, people form relationships that are different and more complex.” We recommend being flexible to let your employee determine the amount of time they need, given their unique circumstances.

Whenever possible, be flexible about when and how employees take their leave. “Remember, too, that bereavement, or grief, comes in several stages. So people might want to take time off intermittently as they need it, maybe 10 days now and 10 days later for a belated memorial service or trip, or to celebrate a date important to the person lost,” writes Mita Mallick, Head of Inclusion, Equity, and Impact at Carta in Harvard Business Review. 

What sort of proof of loss (if any) will you require? 

Some companies require employees to provide some type of proof of loss, which can be a death certificate, funeral program, or obituary, though this is not a practice that we recommend. Generally, the best policy is to trust your employees and look for ways to support them in their time of need, and requiring proof of loss runs counter to those goals.

Is there additional support you can offer to your employee? 

Beyond offering time off for your employees to grieve and potentially deal with the estate of their loved one, what else can you do? We also recommend employees use our Counselling Program to process their grief and help throughout this time. If your company offers an employee assistance program (EAP), make sure to remind anyone who’s taking bereavement leave that it’s available to them. You might also consider offering flexible scheduling and have direct managers work with their team members to reassign duties or responsibilities if your grieving employee needs to lighten their workload temporarily.

How will you communicate your policy with employees? 

Most companies inform their employees about leave policies during their new hire onboarding process, which is a good practice to put in place if you haven’t already. But even if you already do this, don’t assume that your employees will remember the ins and outs of your policy, especially if they’ve been with you for quite some time. Periodically remind employees how and where to access your company leave policy. You may find it useful to offer regular reminders or training for managers so they know how to best support their team members during a difficult time. 

To explore more about various aspects of bereavement, see our communications related to bereavement: