Do employers ever allow this? (Maternity leave related)

[worrier198]

I want to extend my maternity leave to go back in Jan. I’m supposed to go back second week of November. I’d be happy to take it unpaid, obviously. Do employers do this? I realise they’re not obliged to but I don’t really want to ask if it’s totally unheard of.

I can change my mat leave up to 8 weeks before my return date.

Is November the 9 months? Or the year?

@NCcantthinkofanewone its the year, so legally the time is up.

There are other things to consider from what I recall. If you return from mat leave you have certain protection (they must give you your old role back) however if you take a break in this case they wouldn't be obliged to give you your old role, and could assign you something different. I don't know the ins and outs but sure some more knowledgeable posters will.

Mine would, you can take a career break after maternity if you want. I knew someone who didn't go back till her child was 5.

It's a very large employer with good Ts and Cs though.

You can put in a request for parental leave which is four weeks (per child) of unpaid leave to add onto the end of your maternity leave.

It would be unpaid parental leave:

www.gov.uk/parental-leave

You will have accrued annual leave over your mat leave. If you add that to the end where does that take you to?

Pretty sure you can take the year and then your whole years annual leave entitlement which would be 6 weeks ish with bank holidays, maybe even more depending on your policy!

Alternatively, you should be accruing annual leave while on mat leave (including bank holidays). If you took all your accrued annual leave as a lump after returning, that might get you to January, depending when exactly you want to go back (and you'd be paid). Obviously you'd still need your work to be ok with it, but you could ask (it might actually be easier for them if you take it in a lump as they might be able to keep your maternity cover a bit longer).

Can you take your contractual annual leave, accrued during the 12 month mat leave? That would take you until 2nd week in December. It's barely a spit then until January so probably a sensible conversation to be had.

Mine did. I asked and I was granted it. It was unpaid. But this was back when maternity leave was six months. I asked to extend it to eight months. I had a sickly baby e well was in and out of hospital. SSP was only £50 a week then and that was all I received, so it wasn’t a huge amount to go down to zero money for an extra two months off.

These replies are so helpful thank you!!!

so my holiday allowance is 28 days, then 9 days bank holidays which I get back? So 37 days which is 7 weeks, is that right? I guess alternatively I could go back less days a week and spread out these days to take off?

@AdInfinitum12 @110APiccadilly @Coffeaddict do you know if parental leave breaks the protection I get coming back from mat leave?

Yes, mine definitely does.

I did exactly this, mat leave was ending in November and I asked my work if I could use my accrued holiday and return in January and they had no issue with this.

At my work, parental leave does break the protection of coming back from mat leave. Though if someone just took a couple of months, as you're planning to, then they'd probably go back to the same job, it's people who take years extra who don't. But officially you could get moved into another post.

I used my accrued leave to go part time by taking a couple of days off a week when I went back after DD1 was born and it was a really good decision (I then used the next year's leave as well and was part time until DD2 was born, nine months after I went back). You could take two days a week off for 18 weeks, that's about four months.

No idea what your plan is, but I purposefully went back two weeks before Christmas because I didn’t want to spend the whole Christmas period dreading January. Just in case that’s helpful…

If you take all of your 2023 leave, what do you do if your baby is poorly and you need the day off?

I’d agree with this. Went back mid December last year and it was a nice gentle reintroduction to work, things got really busy in January and I was really pleased I wasn’t still acclimatising to being back at that stage, and it means I still have some holiday to use before our end of holiday year in April :)

Given that OP would be going back to work in 2024, I imagine she’d just use a day from next year’s entitlement.

Yes, we've had a few people in work who have taken a 6 or 9 month career break immediately after their mat leave. Alternatively you can use all your accrued annual leave which can add up to quite a lot.

Not everyone has Jan - December holiday years. Ours runs 1 May - 30 April.

See if your employer does parental leave and use this if they do, and allow it to tag into mat leave

Its dad can take a day off.

The same position is only guaranteed for 6 months, after that it has to be the same grade but not necessarily the same position (unless anything has changed in the last few years - that was the requirement then).

OP we’ve done it in our company (small/medium sized quite ‘good’ employer). It’s definitely something you could request. In our company it’s fine to line manager agreement.

If offered make sure that you are still employed and it’s not counted as a break in employment. If you’ve worked for the company for (eg) 5 years already and you go on maternity then work another 2 you want it to be counted as 7 years employment, not ‘re-set’ and counted as 2. (This is in case of future redundancy and I think other things but I’m not sure on all the technicalities- I’ve just been told by a lawyer it’s important that there is no break in employment.)