My uncle is alive and well, and he’ll probably read this, and we’ll talk about it, amongst other things, next time I see him.
I’ve read the bereavement policy everywhere I’ve worked, my entire career, with him in mind. The way you find the fire exits in a building you hope you never have to leave in a hurry. Most of them go the same way. Spouse, child, parent: three to five days. Grandparent, sibling, a bit less. Aunt or uncle sits further down, if there at all, sometimes with “at the manager’s discretion” beside the relation, which is a polite way of saying: it depends on who you get.
On paper, he’s my uncle. The policy or form will say uncle too. And then it will have nothing else to say.
In real life, he’s more like my father. He’s the one who has shown up, consistently, my entire life. The hospital rooms, the school things, the phone call at the worst possible time, the countless tears, vents, and beach walks. When I was a young single mom, he showed me how to buy my first house while everyone else in my world thought it was too risky. He taught me that where there’s a will, there’s a way. He also taught me how to do dishes properly, though I don’t draw on that skill often.
But he doesn’t always make the list.
Who makes the list
Employers have lists. They were probably put together carefully, with HR professionals and maybe legal teams. No one was trying to be cruel when they were created. A workplace needs a framework so people are treated consistently, and that’s understandable. But I’ve never met anyone who found out their person wasn’t on that list and felt totally okay about it.
The law has lists too, and in Canada they change at the provincial border. In Ontario, an uncle isn’t on the list at all, and the minimum is two unpaid days a year no matter how many people die. On PEI, where I live, he makes the second tier: three days, none of them paid. Federally regulated workers get up to ten days, with three paid. Same uncle, same grief; it just depends on where you live and who you work for.
It’s much the same across North America. Most workplaces offer a few days, and most limit which relationships “count”. Other countries are starting to rethink it. In the UK, from April 2027, people who lose a partner, parent, adult child or sibling will get two weeks of unpaid bereavement leave, along with pregnancy loss, and can take it in pieces over a year. That’s real progress. But read the list again. Still no uncle. No grandmother. No grandchild. Come on. If something happened to one of my precious, perfect, sweet grandbabies, I can’t imagine getting out of bed, ever, never mind showing up for work the next day. And not everyone has sick time to fall back on. Some people are choosing between showing up in deep grief and keeping a roof over their heads.
Julia Samuel, the psychotherapist who wrote Grief Works, calls this the hierarchy of grief, and she says it’s a myth. She points out, for example, that siblings have long been called “invisible mourners,” while parents are treated as the real ones, even when a sibling was the most important person in someone’s life. The same is true of a pet, a pregnancy lost at twelve weeks, a best friend of thirty years, and anyone else the form forgets. There’s a name for it: disenfranchised grief, the kind that’s real but doesn’t get recognized. Who died is only part of the equation. What matters is how much the person meant to the one left behind, and even the best attempt at fixing the list is… still a list.
Here’s what the list looks like from the other side of the desk. Someone’s uncle dies on a Thursday, and they sit down to email their manager. They type “my uncle” and delete it. They try “a close family member.” Then they add a sentence about how he raised them, because they can feel the policy waiting, and they’ve realized they’re about to argue, justify, or rationalize the size of their grief to someone with a policy to follow and a form to fill out. Nobody should have to make that case the same day they’ve lost someone.
What grief is already costing workplaces
When an employee has experienced a death in their family, employers and colleagues sometimes freeze. They don’t know what to say. Or they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. So they say nothing, or they send an “I’m sorry” email with some flowers and a link to the policy. They might tell a story about how they totally understand - even though they don’t. Because they can’t. Every loss is different. Every situation is different. And almost everyone means well, but not as many know how to do better.
Often the grieving employee is back at their desk on day four, and sometimes they’re deep in what can be referred to as sadmin, the sad administration that follows a death. The seemingly endless calls, forms, and accounts that need closing. If they’re the executor, it’s far more (I wrote about that in To The One Who Handles Everything), equating to almost 500 hours of work. While grieving. And grief is physical. It can feel a lot like fear, and it wears down the immune system. Picture someone run down, carrying a part-time job’s worth of paperwork, trying to look normal in the morning meeting. To look at them, people around the meeting table might be thinking, or worse, saying, how well they are holding up or how strong they are being, as if that is a badge of honour. Like there was a choice. That bereaved person is likely to break down in tears the minute they find the safety of their car on the way home to crawl into bed, only to emerge when they have to pretend “okay” again tomorrow.
The numbers I have found to support what I have witnessed anecdotally come from multiple sources (mostly from the US) that say one in nine employees has a close loss every year, and 51% leave their employer within twelve months of it. In a workplace of ninety people, that’s ten grieving this year. A MetLife survey in the UK found over half of bereaved workers took up to eight weeks to feel like themselves at work. They come back to the desk, and they aren’t really there, and some of them are quietly deciding whether this is a place worth staying. The difference? Not the list or even the days. How they were treated around the days.
Employers are already paying for grief. The only choice is whether it buys loyalty or a resignation letter.
What I remember
I’m not an HR professional or an employment lawyer, so I won’t say how a bereavement policy should be worded. I can say what I remember from an employee perspective, because I’ve worked for one employer that handled my grief well and one that handled it terribly. Both had policies. I couldn’t tell you what either of them were.
At the good one, in a position that was fairly junior and new to me, my manager said, “Go. We’ve got your work. Call me when you’re ready, and you’ll be paid for the next two weeks regardless.” I remember that sentence and the sheer relief better than most of that entire year. Thank you, Adam. I haven’t worked for you in over twenty years, and I’d still drop what I was doing if you needed me.
Later in my career, I had a less positive experience. Deep in my disenfranchised grief, people avoided me because it made them uncomfortable, and they didn’t know what to say. I was expected to perform as if nothing was wrong, with zero support or accommodation. Which I did, by the way, at a cost to myself and ultimately my health. Everyone was doing their best, but the way I was treated was in such stark contrast to my first experience that it caused damage that went well beyond the loss itself.
Nobody in my first story needed a law degree or a new benefits plan. It took some emotional intelligence and about thirty seconds of decency, said out loud by someone who had the authority to mean it. Then it was followed by care. With clear answers about time off and compensation and reassurance about my work being covered. And then a thoughtful check-in around week six, when everyone else had gone back to normal, except me, of course.
Which brings me back to the list. Every form has a box for relationship to the deceased. I’ve thought about what I’d write in it for my uncle, and I don’t have a word that is accurate or adequately fits. The dishes, the first house, the beach walks. If I lose him, the form will get “uncle,” but what I’ll remember is the response. What everyone remembers is the response.
The list says who counts. The response says how much the bereaved employee counts to the people around them. The policy will be complicated and expensive to change. The response is not.
For workplaces. Most organizations have a bereavement policy. Far fewer know what to say when a loss happens or when the leave ends. When someone loses a person, their manager is usually the first to hear, and each manager is left to decide what to say, what to offer and when to follow up. Two people in the same building can have completely different experiences depending on who they report to. Fare-Well Co.’s free Beyond the Policy review shows what’s actually in place past the written policy. It takes about four minutes, and the results are sent to you along with easy, practical steps you can take to better support your employees through grief. Take the Beyond the Policy review →
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