Running out of work before maternity starts

[AliceinSlumberland]

In my job, I am allocated a certain amount of work to complete from April to April. I am due to go on maternity leave at the start of April and for various reasons (mostly because I worked absolutely loads April-December to meet the needs of the business at that time) I have worked out that I will run out of work a good 3-4 weeks before I can afford to start my maternity leave.

I can work from home and complete the last bit of my work really really slowly, and no one will notice. Im
not really tracked in any way so it would be easy to do very very little and just sit at home in those last few weeks. But is this morally wrong?

My job means that I can’t just offer to do more work - if I do this, they pay me overtime to take on the additional work. I’ve offered to do this and have been given a little extra to do but not much, and I’ll be paid extra to do this. I’m worried that if they know I’ve run out of work, they’ll make me take maternity early which I can’t afford to do. I’ve got a few days leave left but not enough.

What would you do in my position? Own up or just quietly keep your head down?

Enjoy your last few weeks at work at a relaxed pace!

But what would normally happen if you ran out of work before April? It seems a really bizarre way of doing things but the maternity part seems irrelevant really when this is presumably something that would have happened whether you were going on maternity or not. What's to stop you working your arse off for 9 months a year then having a long break without doing anything? Surely it's impossible to accurately plan your whole year's work perfectly and ending up with too much or not enough work in March/April must be a fairly common thing.

Also they can't force you to take your maternity early.

Haha it is a bit of a mad system! It would
make more sense if I went into more detail about what my work is but basically the amount of hours I deliver directly to clients is regulated by my contract. It used to be that you could plan it out quite well across the year but recently we get a lot more unpredictable work, which is what happened this year, and means you can end up ‘front-loading’.

In terms of what people would normally do, sometimes they would put themselves forward for wider ‘projects’, so not seeing clients, but it’s seen as a big favour if you do this. The other thing that people do is make a head start on their new ‘allocation’, by doing some bits of work early. I won’t be getting a new allocation though so that’s not an option for me.

I guess I feel a bit guilty taking it easy but then they definitely have had their moneys worth out of me at other times 😂

I’m sooo intrigued by what you do OP!

Hahaha I’ve probably made it sound a lot more exciting than it actually is!

Assuming you do something smlar to DH, who gets 97 "days of work" and the rest of the time is dealing with the prep and issues raised by those days, I'd suggest double checking everything is fimished up properly, filed properly so anyone who needs to can find it, and take it slightly slower.

Not your fault the way the work is assigned. You are up to date with your work to April. You've done the work prior to maternity starting.

Definitely keep your head down and say nothing - I’d consider it TOIL for working so hard April - December. Could you also write some “how to” guides that might help other people or do some e-learning just so you’re not too bored?

Honestly just keep your head down and slow down the pace. When I was pregnant with my twins I was allocated a certain role....there was hardly anything to do so I treated it like an "on call" role - I was never really called 😂 so I slept most of the time and caught up on Netflix - enjoy the afternoon naps!

I'm another one really intrigued by what your job might be, having a set amount of work for the year sounds amazing, I've never even had a set amount for the day!

In answer to your question I guess just take it easy, watch a bit of Netflix in the day.
If it's the kind of work you can 'prep' and then deliver later maybe get it all done and then drip through the deliveries over your last couple of weeks in case of sickness / early labour etc.