Bereavement is the one life event that no employee will avoid, but it remains among the most underdeveloped categories in US group benefits.
New research from Empathy, a New York-based bereavement and family care platform, puts the gap in stark relief - and points directly to where benefits brokers should be focusing their next client conversation.
Empathy's 2026 Workplace Benefits Report, titled The Grief Tax and developed in partnership with Censuswide, surveyed 4,001 employees and 1,502 employers across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom between December 8 and 18, 2025.
The findings reveal a category at a clear inflection point with 95 percent of employees saying that bereavement-related benefits are valuable, and 84 percent of employers stating that they plan to expand them in 2026. Among C-suite leaders specifically, that figure rises to 91 percent.
The challenge, according to Ron Gura, co-founder and chief executive officer of Empathy, is execution.
Speaking to Insurance Business Benefits US, Gura drew a direct comparison to the trajectory of maternity leave as a life transition that left the catch-all employee assistance program (EAP) framework roughly a decade ago and became its own dedicated support category. He believes bereavement is at that same inflection point now.
"Once in a while, pretty much once a decade, a family event, a family moment is leaving the 500 EAP list," Gura said. "Ten years ago, that was maternity that left the EAP and said, 'We're too important for this list.'"
The operational reality underlying that argument is significant. Empathy's research quantifies what being named an executor or next of kin actually means in practice: an average of 500 hours of administrative work, out-of-pocket costs, and approximately 18 months to wind down a loved one's affairs, all while an employee is simultaneously grieving and managing their regular workload. The Empathy report describes this burden as "The Grief Tax."
Today, the platform covers more than 45 million people across North America, working with eight of the top 10 US life insurance carriers and hundreds of employers nationwide. The company raised $162 million in Series C funding, backed by Index Ventures, General Catalyst, and Adams Street Partners, to scale the category and expand into adjacent life moments including caregiving and estate planning.
The report identifies a persistent disconnect between what employers invest in benefits and whether those benefits actually meet employee needs.
Sixty percent of employers believe their benefits are only somewhat or not at all aligned with employee needs and 52 percent of employees agree. The misalignment is sharpest at the management level with C-suite executives 1.5 times more likely than middle managers to report full alignment, while more than 64 percent of senior and middle managers say benefits are only somewhat aligned.
That gap has direct implications for bereavement specifically. One in five employers identifies bereavement and grief support as among the biggest unmet needs in their current benefits offering. Most organizations, the report concludes, lack the knowledge, infrastructure, or strategy to act on what is an increasingly clear employee demand.
The activation mechanics of bereavement benefits make this a particularly tractable problem for brokers to solve. Unlike many voluntary benefits, bereavement leave creates a built-in trigger.
"The employee is not coming to work - that's the first call you do before the funeral director, before the aunt," Gura said. "Now you have that ledger. This is when a digital resource is sending you a text message: sorry for your loss, we're not going anywhere."
That notification moment, he says, drives activation rates that most voluntary benefits cannot match because the employee has already self-identified their need.
The report's ROI data gives brokers a concrete business case to bring to employer clients.
Among employees whose organizations provide strong life-event support, 82 percent say they would feel their employer truly cares, 81 percent say they would be more likely to stay, 79 percent would recommend their employer, and 78 percent report it would boost their motivation and engagement.
Gura frames bereavement benefits as fundamentally a retention play, distinct from the high-frequency perks that drive recruitment.
"The infrequent is about retaining top talent that will never forget how this company treated them truly as they would treat their own family during these big moments," he said.
Jay Kaduson, chief executive officer of Workplace Solutions at Voya Financial, New York, reinforced that positioning in the report.
"Life insurance has long played a critical role at moments of loss, but the future of benefits lies in extending care beyond a single point in time," Kaduson said. "By including funeral and estate planning and bereavement support in their benefits package, employers are able to demonstrate a deep, tangible commitment to caring for their people before, during and after life's hardest moments."
For brokers and consultants advising employer clients on 2026 plan design, the Empathy data offers a clear entry point. Eighty percent of employers expect their overall benefits budget to increase from 2025 to 2026 but more than half anticipate only slight growth, and employers are increasingly demanding proof of measurable impact before committing spend. Forty-four percent say a cost-benefit analysis is the primary way they justify life-event benefits investment, followed by competitive benchmarks at 33 percent and peer case studies at 28 percent.
The broker conversation, Gura suggests, needs to reframe bereavement away from a compliance checkbox and toward a strategic retention and resilience tool that, unlike a gym membership or commuter benefit, employees will remember for the rest of their careers.
