Appeal of Zero Maternity Contribution: How to persuade Employer to pay my maternity leave

[LizaJ16]

Hello all,

I have been told by my employer (high street retailer [where i have worked permanently for 6 years in a Managerial role) that their policy is to offer zero contribution to my maternity leave. I understand that I qualify for 52 weeks' maternity leave, and for the first 39 weeks I am entitled to Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) for the remaining 13 weeks no pay.

My proposal to the employer: After the first 6 weeks of my SMP, during week 7 until week 33, I would like for XX to consider a further contribution towards my SMP, week 7 – 18, which is full pay (12 weeks) and from week 19 – 33, 50% pay (15 weeks).

I am now reaching out to you ask whether you have experienced a similar issue with your employer? if so, please could you advise what possible solutions are available to appeal their decision of Zero Maternity Contribution.

Thank you for your help.
L

If you work in a field where there is a high demand for employees like you, you could suggest that offering a better maternity package will help your employer to recruit and keep high-quality employees. In this case it would be useful if you could find information on the maternity pay policies of similar employers, to show that potential recruits could get a better deal elsewhere.

Or if you work for a company that has a reputation for fairness and treating its employees well, and they care about maintaining that reputation.

Or if you work for a company that has a reputation for treating its employees badly (and/or for sexism), and they want to get rid of that reputation.

If they have plenty of potential employees and are not particularly bothered about their reputation in this area, then there's not a lot that you could say that would persuade them.

Putting it quite honestly, you have no chance. Policy is set and why would they change it with the only change being an additional cost to the business?

SMP is the statutory minimum and most companies just use this. I don't fancy your chances of getting anything on top of this and your expectations are very unrealistic