Should I make a fuss?

[SAMlady]

I'm on maternity leave from a huge global company (with a 20%+ gender pay gap)

My IT account has been disabled as I haven't logged in every 30 days. I can't do so as my login has expired. I emailed about both issues and was advised to login to fix (I know?!?).

To fix I need to travel 1.5 hours each way when it's reactivated within a 2-3 day window with no notice to go into the office (even though there are currently 800+ home based workers?).

Is this reasonable? How much should I kick off/ complain?

Presumably this happens to every woman on mat leave. Have you tried emailing HR and pointing out the inadvertent negative impact to women that this causes, and asking them to address this as an equality issue? Suggesting that they should work with IT to provide a workable workaround for mothers on mat leave?

You're on Mat leave, why would you need to log in? It's obviously not something you need to do as evidenced by the fact you haven't for 30 days.

You need a senior manager to override this. The IT can do it but they WILL need it to be authorised at a senior level.

Why are you logging in when on maternity leave?

I don't know what my firm's policy is on this but (a) you are not currently working and (b) are you at the point where your employer is entitled to ask if you are coming back? If not why do you need access to work data? And why should they give access to someone who doesn't need it now and might not even return to work?

From an IT point I can't see any technical reason why IT cannot reset your password to abc123, tell you they have done it and ask you to change it.

What do you mean by "your IT account"?

Do you mean to get remote access from home to your firm's files? Or the ability to use a firm paid for data account to access the internet/ send e-mail?

Don’t log on. You’re on maternity leave. Relax and enjoy this special time.

I expect the same policy would apply to colleagues on long term sick leave - it does where I work.

I had something similar and thinking about it now (I'm back at work), I'm going to send an email to our HR dept about it. It continued to be a pain in the arse throughout mat leave.

My reasons for logging in were mainly related to benefits. E.g. I needed to log in to my benefits account by a certain deadline if I wanted to buy extra holiday for the following year, or make changes to my pension.

I needed access during my first mat leave in order to occasionally read email and perhaps refer on one or two things to the relevant colleague. It isn't as easy sometimes as ignoring everything work related for your entire mat leave.

Fortunately I wasn't working for a massive company with an inflexible IT tech team. I was able to ring in or email from a home account to ask for my password to be reset by the IT lead technician who I'd known for 10 years.

I would perhaps raise it with someone senior at HR and ask if there is a way around this for those on mat leave. If not, could they sort this out.

Thanks for the replies, I think it's worth flagging so it can be improved going forward as suggested.

I need to login to arrange KIT days - some decisions are being made about my area of responsibility that I want to input into. All our meetings are held online so I can't schedule these or attend without IT access

I also need to input to my appraisal and see if I'm happy with my feedback and rating that affect my pay grade and bonus

And to make changes to my flexible benefits. Already while I've been on leave there have been changes to our T&Cs that I wouldn't have known about, including a deadline to buy/sell leave, without logging in. On this I replied to the very senior HR person to flag and letters were then sent to all on leave.

So I'm already lined up to feedback on the issues faced, this is definitely one to add.

Thanks again.

On the IT stuff - I was logging on on my laptop occasionally but could see a countdown to when my security access needed renewing - which couldn't be done remotely.

I was still getting emails on my phone so could see I was given 15 days notice on 29th December that my user account would be disabled which I and my line manager replied to to say not too. And they still did and did so early.

Very frustrating!!!

This happens in our company and EVERYONE has to attend one of the offices to be able to update on the network every 30 odd days. Ok for me when on maternity leave as I lived 10 mins drive but clearly not ok for others who live further out.