Sorry Business Workplace Guide: How Employers and HR Managers Can Support Indigenous Staff

When an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander employee tells you they need time off for Sorry Business, the response in the first five minutes sets the tone for the entire relationship going forward. Get it right, and you demonstrate that your workplace genuinely understands cultural safety. Get it wrong — even with good intentions — and you risk losing a valued employee and damaging your organisation's reputation within the community.

Most workplace policies and HR managers are not prepared for Sorry Business because it does not fit the shape of bereavement that Western employment law was designed around.

Why Sorry Business Is Different from Standard Bereavement

Under the National Employment Standards, full-time and part-time employees covered by the national workplace relations system are entitled to two days of paid compassionate leave per occasion of death of an immediate family member or household member. Casual employees covered by the NES get two days unpaid. That framework assumes a nuclear family structure and a funeral that happens within a week.

Sorry Business operates on fundamentally different terms:

• Duration: funerals may not take place for weeks or months after a death, and the mourning period extends well beyond the funeral itself. Two days of compassionate leave covers almost nothing
• Kinship obligations: an employee may need to attend Sorry Business for someone who Western law would classify as a distant relative but who, under the classificatory kinship system, is a mother, father, or sibling with binding cultural duties
• Travel: attending Sorry Business often requires travelling hundreds of kilometres to a remote community, sometimes with limited transport options and no certainty about return dates
• Ongoing obligations: cultural duties do not end with the funeral. Employees may need to remain in community to care for the deceased's dependents, participate in secondary ceremonies months later, or observe mourning protocols that affect their presentation and behaviour at work

What the Law Actually Provides

The NES baseline of two days compassionate leave applies as paid leave for full-time and part-time employees and as unpaid leave for casual employees, where the NES applies and the death involves an immediate family or household member. Several mechanisms exist beyond it:

Modern Awards and Enterprise Agreements: many Awards include provisions for ceremonial or cultural leave, either paid or unpaid. Check whether your workplace's applicable Award or EA includes these clauses — they often provide additional days specifically for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural obligations.

Annual leave: employees may request to use accrued annual leave for extended Sorry Business. This should be agreed, not imposed.

Unpaid leave: where paid leave is exhausted, the employee and employer can discuss an unpaid-leave arrangement. This can provide time beyond the NES minimum when the workplace agrees.

Flexible work arrangements: where the employee can work remotely during part of the Sorry Business period, offering this flexibility demonstrates genuine support while keeping them connected to the workplace.

Practical Steps for Managers

When an employee approaches you about Sorry Business:

1. Treat the request respectfully. Ask only for information reasonably needed to administer the applicable leave, and do not require detailed explanations about the relationship to the deceased, the cause of death, or why more than two days is needed. Under kinship systems, the connection may be difficult to explain in Western terms
2. Ask how you can help, not how long they will be away. The employee may not know the timeline yet — Sorry Business timelines are elastic and depend on community decisions that have not been made yet
3. Appoint a single point of contact within the organisation. The employee should not have to explain their situation to multiple managers, HR staff, and colleagues
4. Respect name avoidance: if the employee's community observes name avoidance for the deceased, do not use the deceased's name in any workplace communications. Ask the employee which substitute term to use
5. Document the arrangement in writing after the conversation, confirming the leave type, expected duration (or that it is open-ended), and any flexible arrangements — this protects both the employee and the organisation
6. Check in appropriately after the employee returns. A simple "welcome back, take whatever time you need to settle in" is sufficient. Do not ask about the funeral details or make assumptions about how they should be feeling

What Not to Do

Three consistent mistakes that employers make:

Questioning kinship connections: asking "but was it a close relative?" or "how exactly were you related?" applies a Western family definition to a system that does not work that way. Under classificatory kinship, the employee may have dozens of mothers, fathers, and siblings, each carrying genuine cultural obligations.

Pressuring for a return date: Sorry Business does not run on a fixed schedule. Pressing for a specific return date during the first conversation adds stress during a period of intense grief and may push the employee to return before they are culturally or emotionally ready.

Treating it as a one-off: Sorry Business may occur multiple times per year for employees with extensive kinship networks across multiple communities. Each occurrence carries the same cultural obligations. A manager who was supportive the first time but resentful the second sends a clear message about the limits of their cultural understanding.

Building Long-Term Policy

Organisations that want to genuinely support First Nations employees should move beyond ad hoc responses:

• Include Sorry Business provisions explicitly in workplace policies, separate from general bereavement leave
• Provide cultural awareness training for all managers — not just HR — that covers kinship obligations, name avoidance, and the elastic timeline of Sorry Business
• Build relationships with local Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations that can provide guidance when specific cultural questions arise
• Review your Enterprise Agreement or Award to ensure ceremonial and cultural leave provisions are adequate

The Aboriginal Sorry Business Guide includes a workplace leave request template that employees can adapt for their situation, along with a framework that helps both the employee and their manager understand what Sorry Business requires — reducing friction at a time when the employee's focus needs to be on their family and community.