When someone in your team loses a person close to them, you usually have about five minutes and a lump in your throat to reply. That is not the moment to be hunting for the right words or second-guessing what you are allowed to offer. This post gives you wording you can adapt in seconds: a short compassionate leave policy clause for your handbook, and a compassionate leave letter you can send to an employee to confirm their time off. If you want the fuller picture of what compassionate leave is and how to handle it with care, our earlier guide on compassionate leave and how to handle it well covers that ground. This one is about the words.
What your wording needs to account for
There is no general legal right to paid compassionate leave in the UK, so most of what you offer is at your discretion. That is exactly why clear wording matters: it removes doubt at the worst possible moment. Two things are worth building in.
First, the one firm statutory right. A parent who loses a child under 18, or suffers a stillbirth after 24 weeks of pregnancy, is entitled to two weeks of parental bereavement leave from their first day with you. Separately, every employee has a day-one right to reasonable unpaid time off to deal with an emergency involving a dependant, which includes a death and funeral arrangements.
Second, change is coming. The Employment Rights Act 2025 creates a broader day-one right to bereavement leave for a wider group, expected to take effect around 2027. Writing a generous, flexible policy now means you are already ahead of it. Most small employers offer somewhere around three to five days of paid compassionate leave as good practice, with room to extend.
A compassionate leave policy clause you can adapt
Drop this into your staff handbook and change the details in brackets to match what your business offers. Keep it short. A policy that runs to two pages is one nobody reads when they need it.
Compassionate and bereavement leave
We offer paid compassionate leave to support you through the death or serious illness of someone close to you, or a comparable family emergency. As a guide, we offer up to [five] days of paid leave per event, and we will always look at the individual situation and can be flexible where more time is needed.
If you lose a child under 18, or suffer a stillbirth after 24 weeks of pregnancy, you are entitled to two weeks of statutory parental bereavement leave, and we will support you in taking it.
To request compassionate leave, let [your manager] know as soon as you reasonably can. We will not ask for proof, and you do not need to explain more than you are comfortable sharing. Pay, timing and any further support can be sorted once you are ready.
A compassionate leave letter template
This is the message you send once you know roughly what is happening. Lead with sympathy, keep the admin brief and clear, and make it obvious there is nothing for them to worry about at work.
Dear [name],
I was so sorry to hear about [your loss]. Please accept my sincere condolences from all of us here.
I want you to take the time you need. To confirm, you are on paid compassionate leave from [date] to [date], and we can extend that if you need longer, so please do not give work a second thought while you are away.
Your [projects and responsibilities] are covered, and nobody is expecting anything from you. If it helps, [name] will be your single point of contact for anything practical, such as pay or dates, so you only have one person to speak to. There is no need to check in unless you want to.
Take care of yourself and your family. We are thinking of you.
[Your name]
If you are replying in the first hour and do not yet have dates, do not wait to send something perfect. Keep it to two lines: acknowledge the loss, tell them to take whatever time they need, and say you will sort the details later. The confirmation above can follow once they are ready.
Small things that make the wording land
The template does the heavy lifting, but a few habits make the difference between wording that feels warm and wording that feels like a form letter.
Be specific about pay and dates. "Take the time you need" is kind, but an employee who is grieving should not also be wondering whether they will be paid or when they are expected back. Say it plainly. Do not ask for evidence like a death certificate for a few days of leave; it reads as distrust at the worst possible time. Give one point of contact so they are not fielding messages from several people. Tell them their work is covered, because otherwise they will quietly worry about it. And keep what they have shared confidential, passing on only what the team genuinely needs to know.
Keep the record without adding to their plate
Once the message is sent, the last thing a grieving employee should have to do is keep explaining where they are. This is the quiet, practical side of getting compassionate leave right, and it is what Absently is built for. You can set compassionate leave up as its own leave type, record the days once, and the whole team can see the person is off without anyone having to ask. Because it sits separately from annual leave, their holiday balance is untouched, so time to grieve never quietly eats into their summer.
Absently is simple leave management for small UK teams, at 1 pound per person per month with a 30-day free trial and no card needed to start. If your current answer to "who is off and why" is a spreadsheet and a good memory, start your free trial and give yourself one less thing to hold in your head.