Rethinking Policy and Bracing for Loss
Jill Santercier · Co-Founder · Simply Human, fractional HR support and crisis management with a human-centered design approach
Summary
- Most bereavement policies are transactional: days off, pay amounts, eligibility. They are designed for administrators, not for grieving employees who need warmth and care.
- When a company claims to value compassion but its bereavement policy sounds robotic, that gap is visible to every employee who uses it. Values misalignment kills trust.
- If your leaders are regularly making exceptions to a policy, the policy is broken. Change it instead of managing around it case by case.
- Grief extends beyond death. Job loss, health diagnoses, relationship endings, and unexpected life events all trigger grief. Policies designed only for bereavement miss most of the picture.
- Phased return to work and manager training transform a policy on paper into actual support that employees experience.
Who This Episode Is For
HR leaders and people managers who want to move beyond transactional bereavement policies toward human-centered design. Covers how to audit existing policies, make the case for change, and train managers to deliver support with genuine compassion.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
- Why most bereavement policies are designed for administrators and how to redesign them around employees.
- How to audit your policy against stated company values and identify where misalignment damages trust.
- The exception framework: when to break policy in service of doing the right thing, and how to use that to drive permanent change.
- Why grief extends far beyond death and what a broader loss and transition framework looks like.
- How phased return strategies and manager training turn compassion from a stated value into a lived experience.
Key Takeaways
Most Bereavement Policies Are Built for Administrators, Not People
Early bereavement policy work often looked like a call center script: someone passed away, here is the policy, here is the number of days. No compassion training, no empathy framework. Just data transfer. That approach fails employees in the moments they need support most.
- Traditional bereavement policies are transactional: eligibility, days off, and pay. The conversation ends there.
- Employees remember how their company treated them during loss for years. The policy payout is not what they carry with them.
- If your policy language sounds robotic when you read it, it will sound robotic to a grieving person hearing it for the first time.
- The first conversation after a loss sets the tone. Warmth in that moment matters more than most HR teams recognize.
- Training managers to deliver difficult news is often overlooked but absolutely essential. There is no playbook for death, so managers need frameworks for responding with humanity.
Values Misalignment Is Where Employee Trust Breaks Down
Companies state values like compassion and integrity. But values only mean something when they show up in the moments that test them. A bereavement policy that contradicts your stated values is visible to every employee who uses it.
- Ask: how are senior leaders actually living the values the company states? If that question makes leaders uncomfortable, you have found the misalignment.
- Audit your performance systems and policy language against stated values. Look for places where they contradict each other.
- Who is empowered to make exceptions to policy in service of those values? If the answer is unclear, the values are aspirational, not operational.
- The gap between legal minimum and real support is where employees form their most lasting opinions about whether a company's values are real.
- If your bereavement policy does not reflect compassion, the fix is to redesign the policy, not to train managers to deliver it more warmly.
If a Policy Is Not Serving People, Change It
Policies should be built around what employees need, not around fear of being taken advantage of. Fear-based design produces restrictive rules that hurt the majority to manage the rare exception. That is the wrong tradeoff.
- Start policy design by asking: is this supporting the people it is meant to support? If the answer is no, make an exception and do the right thing.
- If leaders are regularly making exceptions to the same policy, the policy is broken. Fixing it is better than managing around it indefinitely.
- Yes, some people will take advantage. That is human nature. But it is not what you are optimizing for when you design bereavement support.
- HR innovation is underrated. Policies written twenty years ago do not fit the workforce or the expectations that exist today.
- Frame policy change conversations around what the current policy is failing to do, not around how restrictive it feels. Data, values alignment, and real scenarios make the case.
Grief Extends Beyond Death: Policies Must Reflect the Full Spectrum
People grieve job losses, health diagnoses, relationship endings, failed life plans, and unexpected disruptions. A policy that only covers death is covering a fraction of the situations where employees need flexibility and support to function.
- Anticipated losses, like leaving a long-held role or an empty nest, create real grief that affects performance and engagement.
- Unexpected losses, like a natural disaster, a serious diagnosis, or the loss of a pet, can derail an employee's capacity just as sharply.
- A bereavement-only framework misses employees dealing with divorce, infertility, layoffs, and identity shifts that also require time and flexibility.
- Consider a loss and transition framework that gives managers permission to support employees through a wider range of difficult life events.
- The standard three-to-five-day bereavement policy was never designed to address the full spectrum of loss. Most companies know this and have not acted on it.
Phased Return and Manager Training Turn Compassion Into Practice
Bereavement leave is one part of the support equation. What happens when the employee returns matters just as much. A phased return acknowledges that grief is a process, not an event, and that full productivity on day one is not a realistic expectation.
- In the first two weeks back, reduced hours, lighter duties, and no critical meetings signal that the organization understands the employee is still processing.
- A 90-day check-in is a more realistic marker than expecting full function after a few days of leave.
- Easing the return means asking in advance what the employee wants colleagues told and what flexibility they need in week one.
- Managers need guidance on modified expectations, clear escalation paths to HR, and permission to make accommodations without waiting to be asked.
- Compassion training is as important as benefits training. Knowing the policy is not the same as knowing how to deliver it with warmth and presence.
About Jill Santercier
- Co-Founder of Simply Human, providing fractional HR support and crisis management focused on human-centered design.
- More than twenty years of HR leadership experience at Levy Restaurants, Paylocity, Huron Consulting, and Headspace.
- Founding member of the Hacking HR Experts Council and member of Harvard's Flourishing at Work Network.
- Partners with Bereave to help companies navigate loss with real compassion rather than policy theater.
Connect with Jill on LinkedIn →
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do most bereavement policies fail grieving employees?
Most policies are designed for administrators. They cover logistics: days off, pay, and eligibility. There is no empathy in the delivery and no acknowledgment that the employee is in crisis. Policies that sound robotic in your head will sound robotic to someone who just lost a loved one. Employees remember how the company showed up in that moment.
How can HR leaders close the gap between stated values and actual bereavement policy?
Audit your policy against stated values directly. If your company claims compassion but the policy is transactional, the gap is visible to everyone who uses it. Ask who is empowered to make exceptions in service of values. Look for where policy language contradicts what leadership says. Misalignment is where trust breaks down.
When is it appropriate to make an exception to bereavement policy?
When the policy is not supporting the person it was designed to support. If leaders are regularly making exceptions to the same policy, the policy is broken and needs to change. Fear-based policies designed to prevent abuse end up punishing grieving employees. The goal is support in hard moments, not prevention of edge cases.
What types of loss should a bereavement policy address beyond death?
Grief extends beyond death to include job loss, health diagnoses, relationship endings, and failed life plans. Employees also grieve anticipated and unexpected losses that affect their capacity to function. A policy that only addresses death misses the full range of situations where people need flexibility and support.
What does a phased return to work after bereavement look like?
Reduced hours, lighter duties, and no critical meetings in the first two weeks back. A 90-day check-in is more realistic than assuming full productivity after a few days off. Managers need guidance on modified expectations. Flexibility should be built into the return plan from the start, not offered only when employees ask.
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