Maternity leave- what does your employer offer?

[puthyjip43]

Just wondering what kind of parental leave package people get from their employer? Where I work, as long as you have been employed for over 12 months it is 6 months at full pay (can take this pro-rata over maximum 24 months off) and still be guaranteed your job when you return. For example I've taken 12 months off at 1/2 pay.
You can return to any part time hours you want with the option to revert to full time within one year of returning.

Mine was 6 months full pay, 13 weeks SMP and 13 weeks unpaid. If you decided not to go back to work you didn't have to pay anything back. We decided I'd stay at home in the end, but a lot of women I knew went back with a view to having another child quickly.

16 weeks full, the next 10 at half then smp from 6 months on (well, up to 9 months then £nil of course).

There's a min amount to have worked prior but no clawback.

I know it's generous...I've had similar before elsewhere, but my first job was smp so I left before having children!

Statutory minimum. very envious of people who get more.

I have a reasonably well paid job (£27K pro rata), but work for a small charity. They also have a large proportion of young female staff where 10 out of 20 female staff have been on mat leave in the last two years. This would make an enhanced package too expensive for them.

Surviving on smp is difficult when I know the other mums around me are on full pay whilst off. But we're saving hard to maximise my time off.

SMP only , public sector, they don't cover you either.
I put myself down as a budget saving last time as I was off a year.

Smp only. But I think I will have to fight to get that, very uncaring boss who I feel would rather push me out then have me on maternity pay

Really Nosleep? That's rubbish. My friends who are public sector have all had enhanced terms. Probably rarer and rarer these days though.....:-(

Not all public sector has the same terms. Civil service in General has better terms than councils do.

16 weeks full pay, then the statutory minimum.

I used to work somewhere where it was 6 months full pay, 6 months half pay but couldn't persuade mr euro he was ready for babies back then!

Another one in the public sector same terms as ruby. All the people I know in the private sector got better. Pisses me right off that everybody assumes generous terms for public sector, even the men I worked with assumed it was more generous than it was.

Also teachers do not get annual leave paid unless they can tag it onto either end of mat leave.

My uncle is an employer and says the worst/ most disruptive bit of paying for mat leave is women then not coming back afterwards.

I also know someone who got paid their bonus in the month mat pay was calculated so got paid twice as much as their normal wage for their 6 months full pay followed by 6 months half(!) pay!

That bonus thing can happen to us too. If your 25th week of pregnancy falls during March your maternity pay would be based on that. There are quite a few July babies around!

I work for a charity. After 2 years' service, it's four months full pay, three months half pay and the remainder of the year at SMP/nil after 9 months. At my salary level, I think this is pretty generous TBH - less so for junior staff. We also accrue leave during mat leave - so can spin out the time off for another 3 weeks (given the leave situation for my grade, slightly less for more junior staff). We also pay an annual bonus if the company can afford it (in lieu of increments - our pay scales have been frozen for four years which is common in my sector) to all staff including those on mat leave. The bonus situation has been in place for four years.

This sort of makes up for the fact no-one has had a pay rise in those four years if staying within their role (we will increase pay on a case-by-case basis for people in certain roles, but there's neither an incremental pay system nor PRP). No cost of living either.

6 months full pay, then 3 months at SMP. Public sector.

Hah! I really didn't think there would be any public sector so generous (unless you count rbs!), what is left that still is so generous? Not teaching or nhs, civil service? London underground?

6 months full pay, then statutory. You have to have been there a year and return for 6 months.
Good flexible working policy and non contributory childcare vouchers.
I work for a large quango. It's pretty generous at my salary level. I had been there for 18 months when I went off and they didn't bat an eyelid.

11 weeks on 90% then statutory mat pay for 6 months then nothing for 3 months max. Better than some work places and less generous than others.

I'm going to assume it's statutory minimum as in the company's history no-one has ever been on maternity leave; indeed, I'm the only member of staff biologically capable of childbirth and I had DD before I came to this job.

I should ask them...

SMP. I've never understood why the public sector get more - if they deem that more pay should be in the package then why not increase SMP?

The vast majority of places only offer the statutory minimum don't they? I've certainly never worked anywhere that offered more.

As flowery says, maybe employers who offer more generous packages should be shouting about it a bit more!

14 weeks full pay, rest at SMP. Holidays and bonus accrued whilst on mat leave, and you're still entitled to any contractual benefits whilst on leave - I take a cash allowance in lieu of a company car which came in very handy when I dropped down to SMP. I thought this was a generous package as have worked in many places that only offer the statutory minimum (private sector). Interestingly, all the teachers I know claimed that their maternity packages were rubbish, even though they were significantly better than SMP...

14 weeks then SMP.