To think maternity leave should be capped at 6 months to protect small businesses?

I think it’s not enough tbh!!!! Support for mothers’ in general is utter crap and nowhere near enough.

My first was born in 2000, he turned out to be autistic, and no he wasn't sleeping or eating well at 5 months when I had to go back to work. We only got 6 months leave back then you know, he was 2 weeks late and I stopped work at 37 weeks.

No it shouldn't be capped at 6 months. I had some friends back earlier as they were on french contracts where mat leave is less, in all buy 1 case within a few months the women were signed off sick for quite a while as they struggled with full on jobs, little sleep and usually a baby that's teething.
That's not good for a small business either!

I used shared parental leave both times at around 9 months but leave meant I was off for 11 months as my work wouldn't let me carry it over. By that point I was ready to go back, fully engaged and children settled well and quickly into nursery.
The other issue is finding a nursery which accepts enough young babies due to ratios - most women are off before birth which means your talking babies who are 5 months old. Add in the cost and you would probably find more women quitting.

For small businesses well frankly they should review how they conduct business no business (other then 1 person companies) should have a single point failure risk.

Yes but in most cases, a temp that has worked there for 6 months will do a better job for the remaining 6 months of mat leave than a mother who is forced back to work on not enough sleep, needing to pump regularly and not physically healed from the major trauma of child birth. So someone will still need to pick up her slack.

And you idea says the second six months should be shared parental - now you’ve just doubled the number of people who are taking 6 months off to disrupt the business while at the same time making it harder to cover because it’s too short a contract length.

You also said the rest could be unpaid. But that it’s not about cost. Well it’s only 9 months paid now, so does reducing this by 6 months have a material difference?

I think with this sort of two tier system, you make large employers a more attractive offer and you’ll be less able to attract the best talent. And you might find a lot more people not returning after maternity and finding a new job instead which is even more disruptive.

I do think the system should be overhauled with more government funding for SME employers of those on parental leave - but reducing periods of leave is not the answer.

@YourOpalLeader my husband is pretty hands on and a good dad. He can't breastfeed. He's also not the one who had to push a baby out and recover from that. So realistically most men will not be taking leave in the first 12 months.

You sound like someone who has never had kids.

You sound like a journalist.

Or researching a book.

CF.

One of those be careful what you wish for situations. It's not necessarily to an employer's advantage to have someone in work who isn't fit to be there.

Reminds me of reading on here ages ago about some City firms who give full pay for a big chunk of the mat leave. Posters said the subtext was essentially, don't come back until you're fully recovered and ready to give 200% again.

Any business should be able to survive with any member of staff being absent for a period of time or leaving, it really is the very basics and one of the first things I look at when taking over a new team. If you can’t do that you’re not viable and playing a dangerous game.

No. I think that statutory maternity pay should be extended to a full year, making it easier for women to take the full time.

There are other, better ways to help small businesses in this situation.

For example, you could advocate for them to be able to claim more than the 103% of SMP costs they currently recoup. This would also have the advantage of helping those smaller businesses whose staff take extended paternity leave. Or there could be tax breaks for the period.

I work at a small business (30 something staff). We have men and women taking six months or so parental leave, there's quite a lot of leave sharing going on in our industry these days (science and tech). Our company has now approached some agreement on six months sabbaticals, so those of us who have no kids don't feel hard done by picking up extra slack to cover parental leave, training, etc, if we also fancy taking some time off. No one has taken a full year off yet, though, but life would go on if they did. It's difficult recruiting in our specialities but we have been able to pick up the slack internally so far.

Well, I don't live in the UK and I only got 6 months mat leave (I added vacation to make it 7). It's extremely challenging and I'm working at about 50% capacity.

Employer has to give me 4 × 20 minutes breaks to pump milk for my baby by law. realistically I faff a lot longer than that with my pump, sterilising etc. I leave the office at 5.00, never a minute longer, as I want to avoid pumping one more time so i go home to feed baby.

And I'm pretty slow as baby still wakes once a night so I am suuuuuper tired.

And I still have birth injuries I have to do physio for so employer has to let me do those too.

3 women in my team resigned while on mat leave as they couldn't face coming back so soon. So now employer is scrambling last minute for hires.

It really doesn't work very well. At 12 months, babies are not breastfeeding in the day anymore. They mostly sleep through the night and are absolute terrors in the day so you put them in nursery anyway so they can expend energy. Physically most women have recovered.

It's easier to get decent maternity cover if you can offer a 12 month contract. Not many people want a 6 month contract - you limit your pool. Also, do you really want a mum of a small baby to be back at work... I'm a valuable employee with in-demand skills but would have been fairly useless at that stage, with the sleep deprivation. And also very sad to have been forced back prematurely - so frankly I'd be looking for another job, somewhere they can handle the fact that women have babies.

@YourOpalLeader it certainly is no use for my dh's business! there are hundreds of different forms which we have to complete, all different with sometimes only a couple of sentences different. anyone goes off sick for a length of time, I have to go in to cover. it would take at least 9 months to learn all the forms!!

YABVU and even more so that you don't even own a small business so quite frankly come across as talking out of your arse.

My DS didn't sleep for more than 3 hours at a time until he was 11 months old. Even if I'd WANTED to come back after 6 months I'd have been of absolutely no use to anyone. Probably a hinderance, actually, given how affected I was by the sleep deprivation.

HTH.

You’re changing what your issue is- no, maternity leave should be improving, not mandating women go back to work when their baby is 6 months old.

YABU.

The idea of watering down legal protections at smaller businesses gets mooted regularly as something to help them. But what would happen is once staff had got trained up and attractive, they'd take their skills to jobs that offer them more legal protections.

You're also still talking about people potentially taking 12 months off anyway, just with different payment. The lowest income ones would be able to take the full time off, they'd just get top up benefits earlier in proceedings. And anyone with a sufficiently well paid spouse or enough savings could still do it.

Came here to say exactly this. If it can’t meet workers’ rights it’s not actually a business at all, it’s a fancy hobby.

So the small business can figure out creative, flexible models to ensure their business is viable. It's a them-problem.

Did a man write this.

If the remaining 6 months can be taken as unpaid leave then what difference does it make? Companies reclaim SMP anyway.