If you tell your manager you’re pregnant, do they have to tell HR?

[Beetawix]

Just that. I work an office job. I want to put off formally alerting my employer to my pregnancy until the start of April when I know I’m safe from redundancy, as I have also heard new laws come in then which give pregnant women and women who have a child aged between 0-18 months enhanced protection against redundancy. I’ll be 14 weeks by then. Problem is I’m not sure I’ll be able to hide it that long.

I get on well with my manager and it’s a small team. If I told them, would they be duty bound to tell HR, does anyone know?

I'm a people manager and I've had a lot of pregnancies on my teams over the years. often they tell me very early on and I don't pass it on to anyone including HR. We do prefer to do a pregnancy risk assessment but that's also confidential.
There's no requirement for me to alert HR early on, it's helpful for me to know so I can accommodate appointments, help them work around some of the sickness, general welfare if they are comfortable and trust me to keep it confidential. I've never divulged it to anyone before the employee.

No. My last company didn't have a HR. Just told my line manager last time, the legal obligation is then on them.

Thank you. When did you pass to HR, when the employee asked?

Yes, usually there isn't much for HR to do until it's time for the MatB1 form apart from pay queries. My HR department will go over likely maternity pay etc.
I would say though that if there is pregnancy related sickness, it's helpful at my company as uncertified sick pay isn't great but if the sickness is pregnancy related, there is enhanced sick pay. But that only kicks in if I log the absence as "pregnancy related ", so i make them aware HR/Payroll will see that.

I wouldn’t tell your manager if you don’t want it to go further - their loyalty is probably to the company not to you and they may want to get the wheels in motion to find your maternity cover sooner rather than later. If your work is solely office based then there’s not much to do regarding risk assessments etc. if you need any pregnancy related appointments time off your manager may have to tell HR -as where I work for example, that leave needs to be entered differently, but if you are adamant you don’t want HR to know you could take annual leave to go to appointments.

I dunno we work for a very large employer and we are a very small team within that. I’m not sure she’d say something I’m more wondering if she is duty bound to tell them once she knows

if you won’t be 14 weeks until the start of April, it’s very early days. I’d wait a bit and see if you manage to keep it under wraps. Easier not to tell, if you are worried about redundancy.

I've never told HR about anyone's pregnancy. It's down to the employee to complete the relevant form on our website to ensure they get maternity pay etc. HR were informed by me about my pregnancies.

If someone in my team hadn't completed the form at it was coming up to the 25 week notification point I'd chivvy them along at that point.

Okay, cool. Supposing your employee came up to you to tell you about it then but asked that you kept it to yourself (and didn’t tell the rest of the team) would you be happy to do that too?

Of course. That's a totally standard request. Not telling anyone else is the default position. I wouldn't ever tell anyone else unless I had been expressly asked to. Unless you'd missed the window with HR notification. Then we'd have a tricky situation. But that's weeks away for you.

I suppose it makes sense everyone for themselves if your were up for redundancy

and pregnancy is a get out of jail card free to avoid it you just throw someone the next person under the bus

How do you mean sorry?

There’s always a criteria to select who will be made redundant
if it was you and who would be made redundant but were protected from being made redundant the next person will be selected who’s job would of otherwise be safe

It doesn't actually matter if your manager is duty bound or not - assuming she doesn't have encyclopaedic knowledge of employment law you can't be sure what she thinks her duty as a manager is and also how she'll react.

Even if everyone suspects you can brazen it out. If you want it to stay secret, don't tell anyone.

I would still be wary if you're concerned about redundancy. Your manager may be involved in the process of selecting candidates, and if there's any kind of subjective scoring involved, you never know how that will go.

Is there a reason you want/need your manager to know so early? If you can, I'd keep it to yourself.

I'm probably missing something, but surely you want to make them aware that you are pregnant if you are concerned about redundancy?

I don’t think pregnant employees have any extra protection, though, do they? So it might be easier for them to let me go and use another reason until the new law comes into place in April. Or do you think different? X

But if they're making redundancies now and you think there is a real chance that you could be at risk, the extra protection in April is no good as it'll be too late.

They cannot make you redundant just because you are pregnant. Some employers would actively avoid making a pregnant employee redundant because they won't want to invite a discrimination claim.

If it were me and I genuinely thought I could be at risk then I'd want it to be known before any redundancy process started.