Should Workers be Allowed time off to Mourn Dead Pets?
Published on September 6, 2006 by Ryan O'Meara · 1 CommentToday we learn that a man has won an appeal against his employers for unfairly dismissing him for taking time off work whilst mourning the death of his dog.
We ask, is it right and proper that employers should be more sympathetic to the feelings of pet owners caring for sick and injured animals or indeed mourning them when they die?
There tends to be two schools of thought on the issue.
One side, usually non pet owners, tend to take the view that time off related to anything to do with pets is generally unacceptable and is not something to be addressed in employment policy documents.
Other employers can take a more pet friendly view and will work to ensure their employees are happy regardless of what the reasons may be for them needing to take time away from work.
What’s your view? Should more employers introduce employment policy guidance to cater for their pet owning workforce or is this an area best left alone by businesses?
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Why do employers give time off for family deaths? Its not really because employers are such empathetic souls that they need to show their concern for the families. No. Let’s get real here. it’s because they realize that the employee who has experienced the loss is just not very useful and could be actually harmful to the efforts of the rest of the company. Guess what? So are those of us who lose pets!
One of the worst few hours of my life was sitting in (what seemed to be at the time) an amazingly misdirected planning meeting. Right before walking in, I had received a call from the vet that one of my dogs had died of a massive stroke. Not only was I really not interested in listening to the inane drivel in the meeting, I suspect I was not my usually controlled self in letting it be known that I thought it was drivel. My bad!
So what’s the point here? If instead of feeling that I had to “soldier on,” I simply was able to say to my boss at the time what had happened and why I needed to leave for the day, a great deal of trouble could probably have been averted.
So to make a short story long, YES! Smart employers will tell their employees suffering the loss of a pet to take a day or so off and grieve.