Pet bereavement leave is one of the most overlooked gaps in workforce wellbeing and retention. Adam Greenbaum knows that firsthand. After losing his dog Baxter in 2024 and finding no support, he founded Love Baxter, the world's largest pet loss and end-of-life platform. In this episode he gives HR leaders the data, the business case, and the practical framework to finally close that gap.
This episode is for HR leaders who know their bereavement policy is probably incomplete but haven't had the data or the internal argument to do anything about it. If you have ever watched a good employee come back to work visibly not okay and felt like your hands were tied, or if you have tried to make the case for more inclusive leave policies and hit a wall with leadership, Adam Greenbaum gives you a framework that starts with turnover cost and ends with one sentence in a handbook.
This is not a cost problem. Greenbaum surveyed 20 veterinary practice owners, people whose staff administers euthanasia five to seven times a day and absorbs the grief of pet-owning families as part of the job, and found that zero of them offered pet bereavement leave to their own employees. The barrier is not money or legal exposure. Nobody has felt enough urgency to add the sentence.
The conversation that moves executives is not about pet ownership rates. It is about the cost of replacing the person sitting across from you. Greenbaum's argument is grounded in 14 years of running companies: the knowledge transfer cost of losing one experienced employee outweighs the cost of ten weeks of paid leave. Start there, then layer in the numbers.
The reason pet loss hits harder than people expect is structural, not sentimental. A pet is present 24 hours a day. It is woven into work schedules, early mornings, late nights, and the physical layout of a home office. Greenbaum describes turning his desk to face a wall after Baxter died because he could not bear to look at the spot where the dog used to sleep. When that animal is gone, the employee loses the grief and the routine and the daily anchor all at once.
Greenbaum is clear that the people who helped him most after Baxter died were not the ones who sent the biggest gesture. They were the ones who sent a second message a few days later asking how he was doing. For managers, the bar is lower than it feels. The only real failure is silence.
Pet loss bereavement leave is paid or unpaid time off given specifically when an employee loses a pet. Right now, only about 11% of companies offer it. The reason isn't cost or legal complexity. Greenbaum makes this point directly: adding a three-day pet bereavement clause to an employee handbook requires no vendor, no legal review, and no budget line. It requires someone to open the document. His take is that the gap exists because no one inside most organizations has felt enough urgency to close it, despite the fact that 82% of HR professionals already believe pets play a positive role in employee mental health.
Start with turnover cost, not pet ownership sentiment. Calculate what it actually costs your organization to replace an experienced employee when you factor in recruiting time, onboarding, and knowledge transfer. Then apply the 70% pet ownership estimate to your headcount and compare the expected cost of the policy against the cost of even one preventable departure. Greenbaum's point, drawn from 14 years of running companies, is that the math is never close. The cost of replacing good people always outweighs the cost of keeping them. Pet bereavement leave is one of the cheapest retention tools available, and most organizations haven't touched it.
Because the grief is not just emotional. It is structural. A pet is present around the clock, woven into work schedules, morning routines, and the physical environment of a home office. Greenbaum describes turning his desk to face a wall after Baxter died because he couldn't bear to look at the empty spot. What employees lose when a pet dies is not just the animal. They lose the routine built around it, the anchor to their day, and often the emotional support that made hard stretches of work manageable. For remote employees especially, that disruption goes directly into the work environment itself.
Saying nothing. Greenbaum is blunt about this: the absence of acknowledgment is not experienced as oversight. It is experienced as a verdict about whose losses matter. He describes how the people who made the biggest difference after Baxter died were not the ones who sent flowers or elaborate messages. They were the ones who used his name, and who checked in a second time a few days later. For managers, that is the real takeaway. One message at the moment of news is expected. A follow-up a few days later is what an employee actually remembers.
Employees leave, and the decision often happens faster than the employer realizes. Greenbaum walked away from a company he spent 14 years building, staying three years after a successful exit because the work meant that much to him, because losing Baxter made it impossible to stay. He is not describing a rare reaction. The data reflects the same pattern: 56% of employees say they would consider leaving an employer that doesn't provide proper bereavement support. An employee who loses a pet and finds silence from their company doesn't file it away and move on. The employment relationship changes in that moment, and for many employees it does not recover.
Adam Greenbaum is the Founder of Love Baxter, the world's largest pet loss and end-of-life platform. He spent over a decade building a veterinary software company that scaled to more than 10,000 clinic customers before a successful exit in 2022, then founded Love Baxter after losing his Boston Terrier Baxter in 2024 and finding that neither the professional support systems nor workplace policies existed to meet that moment. Find Adam at lovebaxter.com and on LinkedIn at Adam Greenbaum.