Extra Leave for Marriage and Bereavement: How Do You Handle These Special Occasions?

Extra Leave for Special Occasions

Is there any practice of providing extra leave for the marriage of an employee? If so, how many days can be provided for such important occasions?

Leave for Bereavement

Additionally, in the case of the death of a family member, can we provide extra leave? Please share your thoughts and the practices you follow.

Thank you.

Providing any facility more than that stated would be deemed as a welfare activity. So, if your management is interested, you can provide the same. However, keep in mind that after some time, it would become a practice, and it is very difficult to withdraw the same. Therefore, be careful before implementing it.

Like Prashant B Ingawale mentioned, it's up to the organization to include such occasions in the Leave Policy. As he also mentioned, such things have a very likely chance of becoming precedents, and it will be tough for you to go back.

Could you please clarify if you don't have any Earned/Privileged Leaves or LWP in your Leave Policy? It could be better if you asked your employees to avail themselves of such leaves for any such occasions. This way, the issue is handled, and you also don't create any long-term HR imbalances.

Regards,
TS

Thank you for your responses. In our organization, we do have CL and EL for all confirmed employees, apart from sick leave. It's not the wish of management to give additional leaves. One of our employees himself raised this suggestion when he took leave for his marriage, as some of his friends' organizations do follow this. That's why I checked this forum to learn about the best practices in other organizations.

Moreover, both of you have said it will be difficult to go back once we implement such a change, so what is the necessity to revert again? Anyway, one employee may avail this only once in his lifetime. Please clarify.

Organizations like Suzlon and Hyundai, where I have worked, have a Marriage Leave policy in place, which entitles an employee to a maximum of 3 days of marriage leave, starting from the date of marriage. Of course, this is restricted to once only during his service time, even though one may divorce and remarry. Some IT companies I know of give one week of marriage leave.

Also, in Hyundai, we used to have a "consolation leave" policy, giving 2 days of leave in case of the demise of a family member (i.e., spouse, child, parent, or in-laws only).

Such practices give a sense of belongingness to the employees and go a long way in building long-term engagement and relationships with the organization.

In my view, there is no need to review such policies if we are looking at building great places to work.

Extra Leave as a Welfare Measure

Extra leave is a welfare measure. In some organizations (though rare!), the policy is to give 5-7 days of leave for an employee's marriage and 3-5 days of leave in case of a bereavement (spouse/parents/child). This leave is extra and not clubbed with AL/CL. It may be termed as Special Leave as mandated in the organization's HR Policy.

The welfare measure is the magnanimity of the organization's management and will boost the motivation of the employees.

Regards,
Rajusiachen