Why Bereavement Leave Policies Are Stuck in the 1950s with Alex Seiler

In this week's episode, Nick sits down with Alex Seiler, Chief People Officer and HR expert with 20 years of experience across companies from Blue Shield of California to WeWork. The conversation focuses on two of the most under addressed topics in HR: bereavement leave and caregiving. Alex shares why the standard three-day policy for bereavement leave is a relic of decades-old union contracts, why employees almost never raise caregiving needs with HR, how to build a business case for better policies, and two bold predictions about where workplace grief policies and human-centered culture are heading.

 Key Takeaways

• The standard three-day bereavement policy traces back to union contracts from the 1950s (one day for travel, one day for the funeral, one day to drive back) with no input from grief experts or consideration of the actual mourning process
• The average US company today offers approximately 5.6 days of bereavement leave, while grief experts now recommend a minimum of 20 days for the loss of someone close—a gap that most employers have not meaningfully addressed in decades
• Only 8% of employees feel comfortable raising caregiving needs with HR, creating a self-sealing cycle: employees don't disclose, data shows no demand, policies don't change, and that outcome confirms to employees that did speak up that it was pointless to do so
• Alex's prediction: three-day bereavement policies will come to sound as dated as no maternity leave within five to ten years, driven by accumulating state mandates that will force multi-state employers to standardize well above the current floor
• In an AI world where technology equalizes output, the remaining differentiator between employers will be how they behave when something goes wrong in someone's life—what you do when someone's mother actually passes away is the test of whether human-centered culture is real or just a recruitment talking point