Bonus while on maternity leave

[takingthestairs]

I was hoping that someone could answer my question about bonus while on maternity leave. This is only a theory question as I'm not pregnant but hoping to be in the next 6 months and I'm trying to get my head around finances while on maternity leave.

I have been given a "discretionary" annual bonus since I started here and everyone else in the office receives a bonus too. There has never been a year where someone has not received a bonus. The discretionary idea of it seems to be the monetary amount, rather than the bonus IYKWIM.

I'm just wondering, if everyone else received their bonus while I was on maternity leave, would I still be entitled to receive mine too? On one hand I can see that it is discretionary, but on the other hand I can see that point of view that not giving it to me would be penalising me because of my maternity leave.

My contract says

"Eligibility for a Discretionary Bonus is dependent on your being continuously employed by the Employer or any of its affiliates or associated companies up to and including the date such award is actually made. You will forfeit any entitlement to a Discretionary Bonus if, on or before the payment date, you resign or your employment with the Employer has been terminated with or without notice or payment in lieu of notice."

Sorry for the long post!

You're still employed while on MATL, so you should surely still be eligible for the bonus based on your last appraisal pre-leave.

thanks jkklpu

I accrued bonus at my company while on maternity leave with both my children ( i was out for 9 months and 6 months)
This is considered to be continous employment and all your usual benefits accrue I believe

thank you wfh, appreciate it

It's complicated. If it's genuinely discretionary, you may be entitled to it all, like a set amount paid to all staff as a Christmas bonus or similar. Denying you that because of mat leave would be discriminatory.

If it's contractual either explicitly or by custom and practice, it would probably be considered to be part of your normal remuneration and therefore not the same. Have a read here to see what kind of bonus it is.

Contractual bonuses that are performance-related and/or part of your normal remuneration should be calculated on the basis of during how much of the relevant bonus year you were at work (plus 2 or 4 weeks compulsory mat leave).

It is an area that is greyer than grey. Flowery is right in her advice.

IME companies tend to pro-rate bonuses, so if you are there for 8 months of the year, you get 8/12 of a bonus. I think there is a case for arguing that you ought to get a full year's bonus (Can't recall it at mo but think it was claimant vs Soc Gen. Name Stephanie rings a bell, will try to find it.), but this is not a definitive case and it might be a tough one to argue.

FWIW All the MD's in one of the companies I worked at used to have to have a legal debrief before we finalised the bonuses we decided for our staff, and the lawyers always told us just to pay an annual bonus and be done with it because it was far far safer than any other option. BUT I know that's not standard.

Found it. here

The key bit is... "The tribunal observed: "It is apparent that each of the comparators is male and received a bonus, whereas the applicant did not. "Further they, of course, had not been on maternity leave. We could therefore come to the conclusion that the applicant had been treated less favourably by reason of her sex."

This is (if I recall correctly) before the hoyland case, but I think it's still applicable because Hayland was all about contractual bonuses, whereas this one was all about discretionary ones.

As I said before though, it is all quite grey and I have seen pro-rating of discretionary bonuses done.

Thank you all so much for your advice and thoughts. I work in the finance industry and I am treated very well within my company. The company is very small and unfortunately there is no set maternity policy which I can refer to as they have never had need of one before (all men except for me and one other woman).

Based on flowery's post, it is a discretionary bonus and like the case that stillsquiffy posted I will have had a least three consecutive years of bonuses along with (thankfully) good feedback and excellent appraisals, so that looks positive.

I think the best thing to do is not depend upon it for my finances during maternity leave, but I would fight for it if it was denied to me.