When should employers start recruitment for mat cover?

[HettyMeg]

I'm starting to panic a bit as my employer hasn't started recruiting for my mat cover or even mentioned anything to me about it. It's a senior fairly niche role and I'm worried they're leaving it quite late to find someone because I finish up in January and we obviously have Christmas holiday in between.

The last time I had maternity they really struggled to recruit. They had few good applicants and it took some time and effort. I'm conscious that I spent a good couple of weeks handing over last time so would ideally like that again.

Should add that I communicated the pregnancy after 12 week scan so they have known for a while.

Honestly, it’s not your problem to worry about. I felt ill with anxiety about exactly the same thing but honestly the day you log off you won’t care an ounce. I’m not sure what industry you’re in but in mine it takes 3 months+ to find decent calibre senior candidates because the volume of applications (mostly naff) are enormous. It takes forever to sift through CVs and vet. With mat leave roles especially it’s a headache because most people want permanent positions therefore the benchmark tends to be even lower than normal.
But like I said, it’s your leadership team’s job to sort cover not yours. Do you have a team/line reports? If so could you put forward a trusted report to take on some of your responsibilities perhaps and discuss remuneration with your manager? In any case, I would tell your line manager that you are beginning to prepare your handover late October and ask who to send the document to/who to pencil for a one to one to discuss it. Good luck with the rest of your pregnancy and please do pencil time to relax before baby arrives.

This is what my husband has said. In my sector, people at my level tend to be consultants rather than having permanent contracts, but they often don't want to take temp contracts and therefore compromise their long-term client relationships. The mat contracts seem to attract less experienced applicants.

I manage a small team, and one of them could take on some of my duties potentially. I think it's good advice to let my line manager know I'll be proactively starting to hand over soon.

It’s not your problem to worry about. Let them get on with it.

I work in the public sector and recruitment takes forever! I told work I was pregnant in May, due Nov. I started mat leave last week, they are interviewing this week and next. I've had to leave detailed notes but I can't do anything more. It's the employers problem not yours. Although I do feel a bit sorry for my manager and team, it's not their fault it has taken 5 months! And they didn't even have to wrote a job description really because I'm pretty new so they could just use the one for me.

My first mat leave I was stressing and kept asking they finally found someone 3 months post DS1 being born!

My second mat leave I didn't bother asking as I knew the answer would be need clearance etc in the end they didn't bother and spread my work around the team.
I did make sure I had very detailed hand over notes including embedding file locations for key projects and contacts in relation to them.

The team were glad when I came back as workloads had been high.