Comment by andsoitis
6 hours ago
> being denied a bereavement day because the official policy was to only allow one
I think when setting up policy like this you have two choices:
a) have a fixed number of days --> fair, objective
b) allow it to the manager to use their judgement --> variance across company
The former has the tradeoff that you experienced.
You could also give people an additional unpaid day off if they ask for it. The good thing about bereavement days is that people don’t tend to abuse the policy much given they would have to kill someone first. Dead grannies are only allowed to make you sad for 72 hours sharp, is a bit of a harsh rule if executed without leeway
Or I mean, just treat people as human beings and let them deal with family emergencies? I'm in the Netherlands and I don't think I've ever had a manager that would say anything other than "Take all the time you need" (and genuinely meant it) for a family member who either died or is in hospital/got injured etc. I'm sure there's a minuscule chance of someone abusing this by lying, but I find that if you don't treat people like shit in the first place, they're not gonna lie about stuff like this.