Comment: When things fall apart

Although many employers give time off for employees to get married or form a civil partnership few have in place policies to deal with the often emotionally devastating experience when marriages and partnerships fall apart.

The collapse of relationships can result from the stress arising from long working hours and/or commutes, especially when a couple both work full-time. The warning signs for employers are often detected too late when employees call in sick for weeks on end or emotions fray at work.

It is therefore wise to have in place an early warning system providing counseling when overtime (especially unrecorded overtime) begins to exceed ten hours a week on a regular basis. It is also good practice to have a facility for special discretionary “family crisis” leave so that the neither the standard compassionate leave nor sickpay systems bear the load because employees have to deal with childcare, finding alternative housing, unscrambling joint accounts and other problems resulting from separation or divorce.

An example of such a leave policy can be found here

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