Maternity Policy and information pack

[EleanorHR]

Hi,

My name is Eleanor and I work in HR. I have just started at a new company and have been asked to review and improve the already extensive maternity policy and information pack that we give to pregnant employees.

As I am not a mother myself, I have never been through the maternity process from the employee side instead of the HR side, so I am looking for some help and thoughts from some mums who have been through this.

My main questions are:

• What information would you have wanted from your HR department before going on maternity leave, that they didn’t give you?

• What was the most important piece of information your HR department did give you?

Any of your thoughts and advice will be very welcome!

Thank you all in advance for your help ☺

I had to push to get someone to find out about the maternity pay, a breakdown of that would have been useful. Also clear dates for notifying them about starting maternity leave / when the matb1 needs to be handed in / when I need to notify them about return. Maybe mention about the right for time off for appointments. Also I had to push to find out how to apply for flexible working, that might be useful to some women.

Thank you so much for your help @ValancyJane. This is all information we give in our maternity chats and documentation packs already, so I'm really pleased to hear we are on the right track!