Reduction of hours and Maternity Pay

[Up2nogood]

Before going on maternity leave I had a flexible working request agreed to come back to work 3 days a week rather than 4. While I was off there was a big restructure. I moved departments and managers. In a return to work meeting it transpired that they were expecting me back full time (?!). Anyway, although they are willing to honor it, for various reason (for my benefit and theirs) I’ve agreed to go back initially 4 days a week, using a mix of annual leave and compressed hours to work some weeks as 3 days.

My dilemma is this. I plan to have another child and am currently ‘trying’. Therefore its my hope to stay 4 days a week for as long as possible so I’ll get a 4 day week salary on mat leave.

I’ve been proposed with 2 options.

Option 1 - Have a fixed timeframe for my current arrangement i.e. 12 months and an agreed date when I will drop to 3 days properly. The benefit of this option is that they are committing to honoring my request to be 3 days a week; which is what I want to work in the long term. I really do not want to be working 4 days a week permanently.

Option 2: Just return 4 days and relinquish my request to work 3 days. Downside to this option is that I run the risk of them not approving a request in the future which is likely as the new team I am in is much leaner and capacity is stretched. I had a good solid application previously.

That’s a bit of a long winded explanation. I’m not really canvassing opinions on what to do (although kind opinions welcome). I am more looking for advice re PAY on maternity leave under option 1 – if hypothetically I went on maternity leave on August 1st 2015 and the agreed date for my working days to reduce from 4 to 3 was September 1st 2015, would this take effect and would my maternity pay reduce or would any changes go on hold? I’m not talking about company policy as I don’t think we have one on this situation and for obvious reasons don’t want to ask – so its more, what would the legal position be – what are they obliged to do?

[thatsnotmyrealname]

Hi,
your statutory maternity pay is determined by your average weekly earnings in the 8 weeks before the "qualifying week" i.e. the 15th week before the week your baby is due. So any pay reduction after you start your maternity leave will not affect your maternity pay. Remember that your SMP is 90% of the average weekly pay for 6 weeks and then a flat amount of £138 per week.

[Up2nogood]

That's helpful I didn't know that. My company mat pay goes beyond the statutory. So, would you expect it to be calculated on the 15th week before the baby is due too? I'll have to re-read the policy.

[flowery]

Your company policy should state how it is defined. So if it is, say, full pay for 6 weeks, half pay for 6 weeks, it should (if they are sensible) state full pay at what date. Many employers use the same calculation dates as statutory but not all. If it doesn't say anything at all about how full pay (or whatever it is) is calculated, I would expect it to be what pay you are on at the time you go on maternity leave.