Contact from work whilst on maternity leave

[PerfectlyPosed]

I am an admin assistant for a small firm but I do a lot of personal stuff for my boss as well such as booking flights, Christmas shopping, etc. so I'm effectively his Personal Assistant. We also have three other people in the company that I do admin support for.

We began the process for employing someone else before I even fell pregnant as I was struggling with the workload. I told my boss as soon as I found out I was pregnant as I knew he was about to employ a lady who could only work three days a week. I worried that it wouldn't work out as I was full time and she wouldn't be able to cope with both of our workloads but he insisted they would manage.

I have been on maternity leave for two months and my baby is less than six weeks old. In that time I have received at least one message every week informing me how much my replacement is struggling. These are mostly from her telling me how stressed she is but also from my boss and from one of the other people that work there. One of them phoned me for a moan when my baby was one week old!

I have a really good relationship with my boss but I do know he can be hard work. I also get on well with the new admin lady and I appreciate that she is doing her best and I'm sure she is under a lot of pressure but it is really getting to me. I don't plan on going back to work for a long time yet and don't want to be receiving these messages every week until that time.

AIBU to tell them all to leave me alone? I find it really unfair that they are dragging me into stuff that frankly is nothing to do with me at the moment. I want to enjoy my new baby and don't want to be worrying about what is going on in the office in my absence. We have our Christmas do next week and at the moment I don't want to go as I feel like people are just going to spend the whole night moaning at me.

I might send an “out of office” style reply saying you’re not available to discuss work until July 2019 or whatever.

Go to the party armed with a selection of non contentious non work chat topics.

They absolutely should not be contacting you. I would say that communication about KIT days should be by email and planned and then refuse to answer the phone.

You're not allowed to work whilst receiving maternity pay, other than the 10 days you do when getting ready to go back. So they are not allowed to contact you.

Send an email to all of them saying that you are on maternity leave and that means you are not available for anything work related so they need to stop contacting you. Inform them that you will no longer respond to work email and their calls will be forwarded to voicemail.

Set the line for what personal contact you want if they are friends but be clear that they do not have any right to your time whilst you are on leave. In small firms, the lines can get blurred so a short, succinct email is needed here.

I may get told I'm being U but a call or and email once a week wouldn't be the end of the world for me. I'd be happy to know I'm being missed and that my job was definitely safe for me to return to. With that being said, you don't have an obligation to reply or take calls if you don't want to and you are well within your rights to ask them not to contact you.

The thing is they are my friends so I don't want to cut them off completely but I don't want to constantly hear about how bad things are without me there. Yes, it's somewhat reassuring to know that I'm missed but at the moment I just don't care.

They have employed someone else who starts in the new year so hopefully that will help but I'm already worrying about how she is going to find the time to train her and feel I might get called upon.

Sounds like pressure to go back asap rather than letting OP know she's missed

I would hate it and would politely but firmly ask them to stop

Bugger, name change fail 🤦🏽‍♀️

There are two levels to this:
Employer contact - your boss should have discussed with you what contact you would like and what method. This should be an agreement between you and should include possibility of KIT days.
Other employees- they do not need to contact you and you are free to tell them this.

Maybe its different cause i initiated the contact, but during my 10months maternity leave i spoke to one of my colleaguea at least once a week, met up for lunch once or twice a month, did my 10 KIT days. It was lovely to still feel involved and made going back so much easier as I didn't feel out of the loop.

Yes, @Lazypuppy it's different because you've initiated it. I have been in to see them a few times because I walk past on the way back from dropping DD at nursery. I don't mind them talking to me about work then but I don't want to be bothered at home.

She sent me a message yesterday asking me a really simple question that she should have been able to work out for herself. I ignored it but then later she asked me something else so I felt like I couldn't not respond. That then initiated a conversation and she started telling me again how bad things are. I try not to engage too much and just advise her to speak to my boss if she's struggling but I don't think she does.