S6 E1: Bereavement Leave, Fake Doctor’s Notes, and Workplace Recordings

Podcast May 8, 2025

• Link to AIM HR’s Services
• Secret Recording of Supervisor Admissible in Civil Case
• Ask the Helpline: Is this doctor’s note fake?
• Sample Massachusetts Earned Sick Time Policy: For employers navigating Massachusetts’ Earned Sick Time requirements, this sample policy from the Attorney General’s Office outlines accrual, usage, and documentation rules. Employers should review and tailor it to fit their business needs while ensuring compliance.

Transcript:

Pete Wright
Think about trust. Trust is the invisible currency of the workplace. It’s the unspoken agreement between employer and employee that we’ll act in good faith, that we’re all playing by the same rules. But what happens when that trust is tested? I’m Pete Wright, and this is Human Solutions. Joining me today are our very own Tom Jones and Terry Cook, who spend their days in the maze of workplace policy, helping employers and our members navigate the gray areas of HR. This month, we’re exploring how businesses can balance compliance and fairness and trust in the workplace. From bereavement policies to questionable doctor’s notes to the new realities of workplace surveillance, we’re diving into your tough questions, and we have some practical guidance and best practices as you navigate today’s workplace challenges. Terry, Tom, great to see you again.

Terry Cook
You too.

Tom Jones
Thanks, Pete.

Pete Wright
So these questions are all questions that have come in in some way, shape or form to you guys for help. So these are not staged questions. That’s the thing I want to get out here because I read these questions and I think, are you serious right now? We still have to talk about this. And apparently we still have to talk about this. So question number one, we’re going to take on bereavement leave. Now, the big question is, can employers ask for an obituary? Right. Can we require an obituary as proof of bereavement leave? Where would you like to start? I think probably the legal part first. Right, Tom?

Tom Jones
I definitely think that’s probably the best place to kick it off. And to my knowledge, in general, the answer is no. There’s no law prohibiting you to ask for an obituary. One thing I may be a question, five different states have laws regarding bereavement leave. They may have specific provisions within the state law that would say you can and you can’t, what you can and can’t do. But in general, it’s every other state. If you want to ask for some documentation, obituary, give a statement from the funeral home, something like that, it may be sufficient to do that. So yes, you can definitely do that. But also, you also want to make sure your company policy, if you have it in your handbook, does that as well. To certify to all employers, clarify to all employers, this is the way we’re going to do it.

Pete Wright
My father passed several years ago. And the thing I remember the most is the advice we were given was buy a lot of death certificates. Just buy a lot of them from the funeral home because everybody that you deal with will want a death certificate. And it’s curious to me that death certificate hasn’t come up because death certificate is the presumed currency of cancellation after someone passes. I had a death certificate to cancel his Costco membership. So they wouldn’t take it. They wouldn’t cancel his subscription to Costco without a death certificate. I’m curious if that’s not a standard.

Tom Jones
Well, I think the other thing that comes up is bereavement is going to happen usually much quicker than the death certificate is going to go around and do that. I think in terms of priorities, the funeral and the related activities are likely to be first. The wake, the funeral, the burial. Then you maybe start going around and canceling Costco, canceling other memberships that people have. And so there’s more immediate, I don’t think the death certificate would be wrong, but I think it may take a little while to get that in some places and you want to be able to get some sort of documentation right away. Sure.

Pete Wright
Terry, this happens and we’re dealing with, you know, you’re dealing with the grief and the uncertainty of a loss in your immediate family. You’re requesting bereavement leave. And the first thing your HR person says is, yeah, I need proof. How does that impact trust to our opening thesis?

Terry Cook
Well, I think a few things. I don’t think that’ll be the first thing the HR person asks you, I hope. So hopefully they’re talking to you and empathizing with your loss and so forth. As Tom said, it depends on what the expectations are. So if people realize that’s part of the process and the policy, et cetera, then they tend to, you know, not get blindsided by it. I think in addition to that, it’s how you tell them why you want it. So yes, your company might want it as proof, but a lot of HR people will let the employees know that they’re using that to potentially send flowers or to potentially send other information to the family to let them know that the company is sorry for their loss. So I do think a lot of it is, as Tom mentioned, certainly policy, but secondarily, I think it’s how you’re communicating the need to the employees to make sure that it comes across correctly.

Pete Wright
Well, to this point, Terry, I mean, this question doesn’t come out of nowhere. My assumption is that it comes because of some misuse of a bereavement policy. How are employees misusing bereavement?

Terry Cook
I think, you know, I don’t think it always has to come across in a negative way of misuse. Certainly there are employees that might abuse bereavement policy because they have an attendance issue and they know that they’re on their last time that, you know, last warning and they don’t want to get terminated. So they might have the bereavement in their mind for that. But I do think there’s other circumstances that are more natural in the sense that there might be somebody that has to travel for a funeral out of state, out of country even. And that bereavement leave is not enough. That might be one example. Another example is some people might be closer to a member of a family than the bereavement leave allows. And by that, I mean, somebody might be raised by an aunt or uncle instead of a mom or dad. And a lot of bereavement policies may only allow one day, three days for an aunt or uncle and longer for a parent. And these people see that aunt and uncle as a parent. So they’re needing extra time or they’re close to their cousin, like a sibling, and a cousin might not even be recognized on the bereavement leave. Or again, it’s a one day. So I don’t think it’s always a negative reason that people might misuse bereavement leave. It just might be a different need. And I don’t know, Tom, if you have anything to add to that.

Tom Jones
And Terry raises a very good point, which is that most companies’ bereavement policy is defined by them. You might have various levels of circles of closeness or proximity to the person who works for you. There might be five days for nuclear family, three days for extended family, one day for somebody who’s a cousin or a meaningful person in your life. But again, to Terry’s point, that may not be sufficient for travel, for arrangements, because the relationship is one you don’t fully know until the person passes away. You may not know the reality of it.

Pete Wright
You guys bring up, I think, a provocative point, which is, you know, at some point we got to PTO, right, for handling life. And that could be vacation. It could be doctor’s appointments, dentist, whatever. Bereavement policies, the way you both are describing them, seem potentially unnecessarily restrictive when it comes to the company deciding the status of your relationship, right? To your point, Terry, you’re raised by an aunt. What business is it of the company to decide, hey, you’re, you know, ants, you’re not supposed to be that close to your aunt. So you only get one day or, you know, two days. My question for you guys is how do you have a best practice for a bereavement policy that is more adaptable to the different kinds of family relationships that that we have? So you don’t have to be so prescriptive in, you know, the family tree.

Terry Cook
Sure. I mean, I think any policy, what you’re really outlining in the policy is the amount of paid time off they get. So what I’m describing is paid time off. That doesn’t mean that somebody can’t use extra time, whether that be unpaid or they’re using PTO, to your point, Pete. So I think it’s wide open for that. And I think with any policy, we always say, you know, something may change on a case by case basis or please see your supervisor or human resources to discuss extenuating circumstances. So I think we always leave it open for that purpose.

Pete Wright
Tom, I think you dropped a couple of nuggets that I want to come back to. And I look for both of your insights on this. besides the obituary, since that was in the open question, and me perseverating on death certificates, are there any other alternative ways to verify without being insensitive that the death has occurred, that it is a legitimate passing in the family and things that, you know, in your experience, HR organizations should accept?

Tom Jones
I mean, one option might be a more generalized online search. some statement is out there or somebody. And it could be anything from a Facebook posting to some other meaningful way that people communicate within their family or within their social media that helps you determine whether that’s true or not without being too invasive to the person. I mean, Terry’s point’s a really strong one, which is that it’s hard to know when the right moment is to dig that deeply. Sometimes there’s a history and you think, gee, I would never do that because the person’s been sort of advising you this person’s sick there in the hospital or whatever. But then there’s also a history of people who have chronic absenteeism who then all of a sudden come out of nowhere and say, well, someone’s passed away. May well be true. And maybe you’re trying to, maybe they’ve already gone to there, which is the other thing. Someone might’ve just said, I’m going to pick up. I have to go because I’m the only relative left to deal with this or whatever. And you might want to be able to verify it. So you have to dig around a little bit more.

Terry Cook
And I do think, Pete, that not every company requires that. I mean, this question came up as kind of a unique question that we get. We happen to be asked in a few different ways. So that’s why we brought it up. But it’s not to say that all companies require obituaries to take bereavement leave. A lot of companies will just say, you know, fill out the form, let us know, you know, that you need bereavement leave or what have you. So just want to make sure that I make it clear that not every company is requiring that. Of course,

Pete Wright
of course. This takes us to, well, the realm of the living here. We’re taking on questions about suspicious doctor’s notes and employer options. An employee provided a doctor’s note, but it seems fake. What can we do? Fake doctor’s notes. So again, let’s start with the law. Tom, when can employers legally request a note?

Tom Jones
Well, there’s a variety of different situations, return to work post-injury, post-leave of absence. Someone wants to come back to work. The company wants to be assured they’re clear for fitness, for duty. They can now do what they used to do or they can do, you know, they can gradually work their way back to be able to do even what they used to do. It could be if the state has an earned sick time law, in certain circumstances, you can ask for a note if it goes out a certain amount of time. If the post-workers comp, workplace injury, you know, someone’s coming back. Could be the Americans with Disabilities Act. There’s a variety of reasons which you can permissively ask for a note.

Pete Wright
Okay. So, Terry, the note seems fake. You’ve seen a lot of notes. I have. Give me some red flags. What are you looking for, for notes that seem fake? Because I tried to pass a doctor’s note off to my teacher once so I could go across the street from my school and eat lunch at the drugstore. And that didn’t play. So what should I have learned?

Terry Cook
What should you learn? So I think there’s a few things we’ve noticed. I mean, sometimes it’s not even sent to you on any type of medical, you know, stationary, any type of medical information on it’s like a blank paper. And it says, Terry Cook can be excused from work for as long as she wants. Signed, Dr. Lime. Signed, Terry Cook.

Pete Wright
Signed, Terry Cook. Dr. Terry Cook.

Terry Cook
Yeah, Dr. Terry Cook says I can. So, I mean, that’s sometimes a red flag. No signature, you know, no doctor signature or anything, just kind of like a typed up piece of paper. You know, different handwriting. So you see the note is in a certain handwriting, a signature is in a different handwriting. I’ve seen people white out pieces. So like where the date is that the person can come back to work is white it out and they put in their own date. So white out obviously should be something or when somebody crosses out or it’s smudged. So I think it’s, I think there’s a lot of pieces that can be red flags, but I think a lot of people will see something more generic and almost looks like, you know, I had somebody call once and it said, it looked like somebody took a page off of a script book from their doctor’s office. And then they just kind of typed in what they wanted to. Well, that’s not what the script was meant for. It’s the script was meant to write out a prescription. A prescription. Yeah. So they just happened to probably had the doctor leave and they somehow got a piece of it. So I think there’s a lot of pieces that, you know, could be red flags, have been red flags from my experience or things we’ve heard on our helpline.

Tom Jones
I mean, you certainly want to make sure you can do it on online. If you’re skeptical about the medical practice, you can do a quick online search. Does this office exist? And then you could subsequently call them and say, gee, so-and-so, we’ve got a note here from your practice that says this person can return to work. or excused for time off? And do they know that person? Do they treated that person recently? I mean, sometimes you’ll see cases where someone was treated a year or two ago by that office, but nothing to do with the current ailment or current situation. So it’s back to being sort of tampered with document. But, you know, there was a patient, but there’s no patient relationship now. So those could be different ways you might want to try and address it.

Pete Wright
And those are all things that are legitimate, Like you’ll get answers from a doctor’s office that doesn’t, you know, there aren’t any protected lines of communication there?

Tom Jones
Well, you’re confirming the employee getting the note as opposed to, gee, what’s this diagnosis? Yeah. Right. I mean, there are HIPAA issues. Certainly a company could fall afoul pretty quickly if they ask the wrong questions or something. So a better way to do it might be to say, look, this is our policy in doctor’s notes. We have the flexibility to review and verify the content of a doctor’s note when we’re following up on when we have received one. So that we make sure it’s about the note. It’s not about the content of the medical diagnosis sense.

Terry Cook
And I think to add to that, you know, a lot of times you’re given this note for your use as a company. So you’re using that note for its purpose to get back to this doctor’s note. And sometimes when you call the doctor’s office, you say, you know, I’m just looking for some clarification. We received this note from Terry Cook. And she said she’s, you know, that you provided this note to us. You know, I want to make sure you’re clear on her job description. I don’t know if you need me to send it over. We just want to know what she can safely do and not do. And, you know, in the workplace. And so we have this note, but it doesn’t seem clear enough where we, you know, pride ourselves on the safety of our employees. And then, you know, sometimes you’ll get the comment of, oh, my gosh, I didn’t know that. Send, you know, send your job description over. Other times you get the comment of, I don’t know who Terry Cook is. So I am not sure if she can come back to work. You know, so again, I think sometimes you’re asking for clarification. As Tom said, never diagnosis. It’s all HIPAA protected. But you can just verify the purposes of the note alone as it’s given to you as a company to utilize.

Pete Wright
Catch me up on consistent approach to enforcement. what sort of standard would you have in place for the kinds of doctor’s notes that you’ll accept? Is there a boilerplate we should be telling people?

Tom Jones
I think that’s going to be more case by case, Pete, to be honest with you. Most times the doctors may be known by the company because they’ve seen them previously, so it’s not a big deal. But they may well know the medical condition that put the person out of work for limited because there was evidence with the leave of absence request, evidence with some of the workplace modification. So it’s really more when there’s a question in the HR person’s mind that says, hmm, you know, this. But again, we were talking about this before, Terry and I, and there are questions like if you go to a doctor and that doctor happens to speak a language that only a few employees go. And so all those employees go to that doctor. There may be a flag, but once you’ve confirmed that it’s not a problem, once you know going forward that doctor is more successful treating that community of people because he or she speaks that language.

Terry Cook
I think your question about the boilerplate, Pete, I do think there are companies that have a return to work note that they utilize. So they will itemize specifically weight restrictions or any type of physical restrictions the person might have or limitation in hours. So they may have something more standard as a template. I don’t think there’s one that everybody in the world uses per se. But I have seen companies utilize that. Initially, it may have been created around workers’ compensation. So they want to make sure that the workers’ comp carry has a standard form. So they want to make sure the doctors get back to them with the exact reasons that somebody can return when and how. And they will kind of translate that over to any return to work notes. So it’s just a consistent, to Tom’s point, keeping it consistent, and it also is always asking the same questions. So to your point, do you want to make sure that you’re only checking one person or a second person? No, this company is utilizing the same form for everybody that comes back.

Tom Jones
One other point that does come up is that more and more states are passing sick leave laws, and sometimes buried within that law as a provision says, you may not ask for a doctor’s note until more than two days, three days, four days. So you want to make sure that the company, Because a lot of times people say, one day I’ll bring you a doctor’s note. And you want to make sure that you’re not taking the doctor’s note when you don’t need it as well. So that you don’t want to accidentally violate the law by having a file full of doctor’s notes that shouldn’t be there.

Pete Wright
But provided you have a consistent policy so that employees know, at some point I’ll need to provide a doctor’s note. It should have the following information on it. You should be squared away. I mean, these questions, I wish we had a graph of frequency to go with these questions. It’s on here as if it was asked once. What is your sense of the prevalence of this kind of doctor’s note abuse? Is this a question you get often?

Tom Jones
I don’t think often you might get two or three times a month. Yeah. Two or three times a month.

Terry Cook
Some people think that’s often, Tom. It’s true, though. It does come up about that time.

Tom Jones
Hundreds of calls in a month on help line.

Terry Cook
Yeah. Okay.

Tom Jones
And of that, a relatively small percent would be a call like this. A relatively small percent would be a call on bereavement, but they come up. Yeah, they come up. These little events that you think, oh, gee, what do I do? And it’s the best approach would be to say, this is what you do.

Pete Wright
Well, that lets us transition to our third topic today, which is around employee surveillance. The question is, an employee secretly recorded a conversation. Can it be used in court? The employee recorded a conversation. Can it be used in court? Tom, the law, how does this work out for you in Massachusetts? We in

Tom Jones
Massachusetts, and there’s about a dozen states like this, what are called two-party states, which means I have to say, I consent, and then I have to say, Pete, do you consent to this conversation being recorded? So usually, there’s a pretty clear cut. Someone could say, no, I don’t consent. Management could say, I don’t consent. And that’s it. You shouldn’t be. However, there was a recent case in Massachusetts in which you would think typically something like this would be associated with criminal activity. But this employee recorded her boss going off on a tirade and then sent that recording up to. So Pete is my boss. He’s going on a tirade. I send it up to Terry, who’s Pete’s boss, say, listen to this. Look, this is what I deal with at work. And the peak got fired. And so the question arose, should that recording be used in the workplace, in a workplace of civil matter? And the court so far said, yes, it can be used. So because it’s a civil matter, we’re not the criminal matter. So I’m sure that will be appealed, but at the moment, that’s allowed. So any other state in the country, you want to be very careful as to what the local state of the law is.

Pete Wright
And the question is for companies that are based in Massachusetts, having what if you’re an employee who’s in Connecticut and talking to somebody in Massachusetts? How does the law apply across state lines?

Tom Jones
I think it’s going to be the law where the employee would bring the case, which would be Connecticut in that case. So Terry’s in Connecticut and she’s within Sue there. You know, she lives there. She works there. She doesn’t come into the problem. I just call her up and act wild on the phone as her boss. But I think jurisdiction would be, I guess she could bring the case where she thinks is most favorable jurisdiction to herself. But typically, I think the employer would say, nope, that should be brought in Connecticut, which is a two-party state or one-party state or whatever. And that would influence the final outcome.

Pete Wright
The question, Terry, for you is, you know, do you recommend employers attempt to ban recordings at work? I asked the question a little bit out of the side of my mouth because we live in an era where Facebook happens and everything Mark Zuckerberg says is leaked and recorded so fast. That’s right. Yeah. So, so I’m, and this is in spite of having a policy that cracks down on those kinds of leaks. What is your recommendation on this sort of behavior?

Terry Cook
You know, I think there are employee employers that have a ban of recording, whether it be audio or video, and sometimes it’s to protect their, their company patents or their company’s private information. So I think those do exist. So I think it is one of those situations where you’ll see that that policy in place anyways, and it may not refer to what Tom was talking about, because it’s not about recording your boss. And to your point, whether you say somebody can do something or not, once they can get in trouble at work, but it’s going to live on social media forever. So, I mean, I think it exists like that. And Tom and I were also recently talking about, you know, on the Apple, on the iPhone, there was a recent update. And in that update, you know, there’s a little symbol on the top left that anytime you call somebody, you can record it. And it’s as simple as pressing that button. Now, if somebody had an Apple phone, they would get notified that Tom is trying to record the conversation with Terry. But it’s not clear if that would ever be notified if they didn’t have an iPhone, like if they had an Android or something else. We don’t know if that would be or a landline that nobody would be able to get a message about it. So I think those things have like left things really wide open on the recording side. And it’s up to the company to have the policy. But to your point, Pete, you know, I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg has a lot of policies. And, you know, somebody can still do it. I mean, people, people will do things without that. And I also think Tom’s talking about the two consent states, two way consent state. I don’t think an average employee really knows those laws. I mean, I think they walk into a situation, they assume that they have the right to have a recording of something. They don’t think about the law to say, oh, well, I should check and see if the state allows me to record it. No, they’re just trying to do things in there for their best interest. Understandably, I mean, years and years ago, I had employees walk into my office, and they would have they would have it out and say, I’m recording this conversation. I was like, No, I’m not consenting to you can recording our conversation. However, we can write this, this conversation up later. That’s the whole point of this, you know, so you have conversations to explain ways to make sure that their side or their documentation exists. I don’t know that you’ll ever be able to completely stop recordings unless people are not allowed to have a phone with them in the workplace.

Pete Wright
Well, this is, I think, the leading question, right? Like, as soon as you put a policy in place that says you’re not allowed to record at our company, I think there is a natural assumption that you should have your hackles up and probably make you want to record more because clearly there’s something they don’t want us to record, right? It, it breeds that sort of suspicion and skepticism about intentions. I, I almost, I wonder if not having that kind of policy makes people think about it even less.

Terry Cook
Or if they point the policy to the, the patents or the private company information, people might not assume something bad, but, you know, of course, people’s minds can go there anyways.

Tom Jones
One of the things we do hear about often, a little bit off topic here, is that photos in the workplace. So I take a picture of Carrie, who’s my coworker, but behind her, there’s a chart or graphic of some sort of corporate secret that ends up being passed around on social media, not intentionally, but ends up out there. That’s often what companies of goals become. We want to make sure no information leaks out we don’t control.

Pete Wright
We have a couple of comments. We don’t have questions yet. If you have questions or thoughts, we’ve reached the end of our primary conversation. If you have questions, drop them into YouTube, we will answer them. We have a couple of comments from Sherry, and this is back on the doctor’s notes conversation. Two comments. Fake doctor’s notes happen. Employees cut and pasted to create their own note. I’ve called the doctor’s office to confirm legitimacy of the note. The note provided was not asked for or needed. And I want to follow up on that last sentence, but as Sherry follows up, FYI, doctor’s notes can be purchased online for $300. And so, you know, you now have, you’re armed with that information. You can buy anything you want. This is the question, and maybe we need some more clarification from Sherry. This note provided was not asked for or needed. That seems like the ultimate employee own goal. They didn’t need to create a note, but they created a fake one.

Terry Cook
Yeah, I think I’m guessing what she means by this is that the doctor’s office is saying that the note was never sent, was never given by the doctor’s office and not needed by the employee to be excused. I’m guessing, Sherry, that’s what she’s saying, but that’s what I would make an assumption

Tom Jones
of. It’s like in Massachusetts, the three-day rule says if you’re out more than three days, you need a doctor’s note. If you’re out less, you don’t. But people say, I’ll get a doctor’s note after day one.

Pete Wright
Thank you for the clarification, Sherry. I don’t know why he brought the note because it was not required.

Terry Cook
Well, you know, it’s funny. People do, though, Pete. You know, I think some people have this notion that if I bring a doctor’s note in, the company can never hold any absence against me. It can’t be a violation of attendance policy. And I don’t know if that’s why this person did this to Sherry, but we’ve had calls, Tom, right, on Healthline, where people will say, but I don’t know if I can discipline them under our attendance policy because they brought me a note.

Tom Jones
They’ve worked there three months. How many days? Oh, 20.

Terry Cook
Yeah, 20 days.

Tom Jones
Wait a minute.

Terry Cook
But they had a doctor’s note, Tom. That’s right.

Pete Wright
I mean, the people who need this message are probably not listening to this live stream, but I think the aphorism applies. You should always keep your mouth closed and let people think you’re a dummy, then open your mouth and prove it. Well, this has been illuminating, as always. My time with you two is fantastic. Thank you both for sitting down with me today and educating me. I will say for all of our listeners, AIM members can reach the HR helpline. I’ll give it to you right here, 800-470-6277. That’s for our AIM members. Or email helpline at aimnet.org for inquiries Monday through Friday, 830 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. I’ve got some other links in the show notes. So make sure you check those out in this as it goes out on our website. And we will keep you posted as things change. Thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate your time and your attention. And we’ll see you next month. I don’t even know what bounty we’ll have from the helpline next month. I’m very, very much looking forward to it. So, Terry, Tom, thank you. On behalf of both of my esteemed guests, I’m Pete Wright. We’ll see you next month right here on Human Solutions. The HR experts you heard today, they’re the same team providing expert guidance, workforce training, and HR support to organizations just like yours. From compliance to leadership development, we offer a wide variety of HR services to help your business thrive. Learn more at aimhrsolutions.com. That’s aimhrsolutions.com.