Anyone successfully negotiated better maternity deal?

[rafa]

I work for a financial services firm that offers statutory maternity pay only. I have been with them 6+ years and I am in a reasonably senior position so am thinking of putting forward a case for them to increase this and offer me a better deal. I had DD 2 years ago and returned after 6 months on a full time basis. So my question is has anyone succesfully neogtiated a better deal and if so what arguments/pointers did you put forward to get it?
BTW firm is multinational and regularly posts record breaking profits.

Hi rafa I am in a simliar position myself so can't offer much help although your company sounds much larger than the one I work for. Does your company have the Investors in People Standard? If so it may strengthen your case.

My colleague did at her previous employer - but it was as she would be contactable throughout, and working from home for a few hours a day after a few weeks.

Our current one refused to entertain the idea - and they have investors in people

upturnj, its frustrating isnt it? No, they have not got the Investors in People standard, one thing I have thought about doing is trying to find out what our competitors offer to use as a benchmark but not always easy to get the information.

CMOTdibbler thanks for the reply, maybe someone else will have some ideas.

Very tricky one. Obviously what you are looking for are some reasons why increasing maternity pay would be good for the business, however coming up with business reasons to spend more money in the present economic climate is going to be challenging to say the least!

Attracting and keeping good people is one of the best incentives for employers to increase maternity package, but presumably neither of those is a major problem at the moment?

Just wanting to be generous and a nice employer is another reason, but in the absence of needing to pay out more, most employers are not increasing benefits unnecessarily at the moment.

Really your best bet is to try to find out as many packages as you can that competitors offer and make a case that your employer is not in line with the competition, if that is indeed the case. Difficult to find out I agree. I did an exercise for a client a few months ago and from memory I think with some detailed googling, the maternity package of one of the very large financial services groups, with lots of subsidiaries, was available, buried quite deep in website, but accessible with a bit of digging.

hi flowerybeanbag, thanks for that, I think you are right given the current economic climate it is best to go down the comparitive route.

It is actually an Insurance Company I work for, anyone else work for one and prepared to disclose details of their maternity package so I can get an idea?

Hi rafa My DP works for RBS and they offer 3 months at 90% then 6 months at SSP. Fathers also get 2 weeks paternity leave at full pay.
RBS are the underwriters for some of the biggest insurance companies in the UK including Directline and Tesco.
Not sure if this is much help and Good luck!