No statutory compassionate leave in Hong Kong, and a transparency gap on company policy

Hong Kong employees facing the death of a close relative find compassionate leave extremely poorly protected: the law sets no statutory bereavement leave, so employers are entirely free to decide whether to grant it and to whom. Even when a grandmother or maternal grandparent dies, an employee may be refused leave on the grounds that they are not an immediate family member — sometimes without even a basic word of condolence.

Respondents widely note that there is no way to learn a company's compassionate-leave policy before applying, and only after joining do they discover how harsh it is, by which point leaving is no longer easy. There is currently no platform that pulls together how major employers actually handle compassionate leave, paternity leave, sick leave and the like, so jobseekers cannot gauge how much a company cares about its staff before joining — a clear gap in workplace transparency.