Just offered someone a job and now she's told me she's pregnant! Disaster!

[Calendar]

Have spent months recruiting for someone, thought I'd found the perfect person. We've sent out the contract, agreed a start date, she has handed in her notice but before she sent the contract back she rang and told me she had just found out she is pregnant!
Obviously I want to do right by her, but it makes life very difficult for me. It will take 6 months to train her up, then we will have to get in a temp to cover her. Also, this is a trainee position and she is supposed to be taking exams for the next 3 years in order to qualify (finance) but that doesn't seem very likely any more.
According to our company handbook, she is not entitled to company maternity pay or even SMP, but she may get maternity allowance.
What a disaster! Any advice? I have got our HR dept looking into this, but they don't seem to know much about it. I want to make sure I do the right thing by this girl but it's really not an ideal situation.

pregnancy is just ONE thing that can take you away from working - illness, death in the family etc etc

a decent company will work round these things

yes, it is a PITA, but we are not robots

you say you have spent months recruiting so she is obviously the best person for the job

my sister is in HR for a huge company and it does take a lot of juggling to sort out staff and their 'problems, but that is life I am afraid

Every time I was pregnant it was massively inconvenient for my employers but they were still supportive and in return I worked bloody hard for them, way beyond the call of duty. it's worth being supportive if you've found someone right for the job.

That's true as well Fennel!

I've recruited pregnant women and they've worked really hard for the short period they were employed.

I've also recruited a 72 year old who has been the most reliable and efficient of anyone else!

Just a quickie regarding Bessie123's post about recovering training costs. There is nothing wrong with doing this, and it is common for companies who sponsor employees through professional qualifications to require a certain length of service afterwards, otherwise demanding part or full repayment. But don't add something like this in now you've found out she's pregnant...

MI are you saying "Go on ladies, take the fuckers for all they are worth"?

I agree it can cause a small company problems though

where I work there are around 50+

if there were only 5, then time off etc would be noticed a lot more

I've just realised I can't add up. If you have to have 26 weeks' service by 29 weeks' pg then of course you can be pg when you start work, but only just.

Morningpaper - and there you have it - when people object to giving money to charity because 'it goes on salaries, not goats' it is making those chgarities places where women with children cannot work. aka exploitative of it's workforce.

I run an organisation which has charitable status, the charity commission is now making it official good practice to have reserves to cover maternity cover etc etc and everything else that makes a company able to honour it's legal requirements without jeopardising the organisation.
Perhaps the NHS would be able tpo afford to do more operations if they never had to pay maternity cover for all those pseky nurses and doctors who ever have babies, perhaps the CEOs of huge corporations would be able to earn another ocupl of million if they didn't waste so much money on employees who have babies etc etc.

Calendar - i hope you are able to come to a well managed arrangement that works well for all parties.

Am amazed that there is such a 'double standard' view of women's rights in the workplace - no wonder the pay gap is still such a chasm.

We hired a woman who was pregnant as our office manager. She was great for six months then she left for a year then she came back and announced that she was pregnant again.

She is really nice and very good at her job but it is such a strain for a small company. I seriously doubt she will come back full time even after her second mat leave as the childcare costs are going to be vast. She will probably not tell us one way or another until the end of her leave. It is a nightmare from our point of view and I can see why small companies discriminate. I would be tempted to hire an older woman or a man instead, I suppose that is why anti discriminatory laws are needed.

Some sympathy, Calendar, but make sure you do all the right things such as thinking of it positively yourself. Like, for example, OK she is likely to qualify up to a year later than she otherwise would have done due to maternity leave, but that means (presumably) she is cheaper for a year longer than she otherwise would have been. And you may be able to have a fully qualified person during her maternity leave - what a bonus.

And possibly your company should consider maternity insurance, although I know the issue for a lot of employers is the sheer effort of finding someone.

agree re: small businesses. our nursery appointed a worker who concealed her pregnancy. this too was a trainee post and she was unable to start her college course. in the end she resigned when her child was a few months old because she found it hard to cope. that wasn't because of her employer though, she was given as much support as possible.

MP, if I thought an employer was going to fuss at the prospect of paying maternity cover, yes I am.

And I agree with Blu: reserves are a serious issue in the voluntary sector, specifically for this kind of eventuality. (I write a bit about this kind of thing.)

Incidentally I don't, as a freelancer, get anything more than SMP. Both my maternity leaves - of a mere four months - cost me six grand each.

For your information Calendar it is possible to study and sit exams whilst pregnant. I completed the AAT (finance) course during my pregnancy.

Infact I sat my final exam when I was 3 days overdue and actually ended up giving birth just a few hours after leaving the exam - and I passed!

Morningpaper:
"I worked for a small company several years ago who now don't employ women for this reason (yes that's illegal and it is not EXPLICIT but I know that is what they do)."

My dh used to work in an HR team for a hospital and overheard them ruling people with foreign names out because they didn't want the hassle of language/cultural difficulties causing extra cost or training etc. I assume you wouldn't be so quick to be tolerant of that sort of discriminatory attitude???

If a company cannot cope with women having maternity leave then it shouldn't be operating imo. Ditto for charities.

How will women ever get equality if being pregnant (or even the possibility of getting pregnant!) is still seen as such a problem by employers?

Oh and to the OP - how to do the right thing by this woman - treat her like any other employee and accept that if your company wants to operate this is the sort of issue it has to deal with. ITS NO BIG DEAL.

(Sorry for rant - this is an issue close to my heart!)

I applied for a job 3 yrs ago, was offered it and 2 weeks before my start date and 1 week before relocating 300 miles (for which the NHS gave me some money) I found out I was pregnant with dd. I had to go in on my first day and tell my new manager I was pg. They (through gritted teeth I'm sure) were brilliant about it and I'm still in the job now. I took 8 months off and it was hard coming back and feeling I was starting the job for a second time.

I feel far more loyalty to them even now because of how I was treated. My previous manager would not have been sympathetic in the same situation.

Flowerybeanbag and Morning Paper are both making some valid points, I will not reharsh and say the same thing.

I would like to point out that not only pregnant women are potential liabilities to small companies, all employees are can potentially cause a difficulty, as employees are just people (male or female), and as such can have accidents, long term illness, alcohol problems, financial difficulties, all of which can be troublesome. The point is, as employers we need to be able to deal with all these different scenarios in a professional and sympathetic manner while also keeping in mind what is the best for our company too. It would be far worse if one such problem should become so big that it threatens the workplace and employment for everybody in the company.

In YOUR case, you know about it before the contract was signed, and your hiree was honest in telling you before signing, and I commend your attitude. I see nothing discriminatory in it.

Sorry KM, may be missing something but the OP says that she has just found out so presumably didn't know at interview time, as it was in my case.

I suspect if she was being underhand and sly she would have waited until the contract was signed. Anyway nothing underhand and sly about it, or at least I'm failing to see it. Pregnant women are allowed to work. Even mothers with babies are

Calendar - I'd just set out for her in writing the company policies and standard benefits re maternity for your employees. It's then up to her whether she takes the job or not. If she's currently in employment she may be better off financially staying where she is and changing jobs after she's had her baby.

kerrymum - I agree with you. I think it depends on the type of company, though. If it is a big company or a government owned organisation, it is probably easier to cover maternity leave.

The training is also a problem because presumably, Calendar wanted a qualified employee at the end of 3 years. I think it is one thing if there is a risk an employee might get pregnant or be in an accident and another if the employee knows she is pregnant before accepting the job. However, I suppose it is still possible that she genuinely didn't know until after she gave notice at her current job and now she really needs this new position.

Kerrymum telling a potential employer in the interview that you are pregnant would be a very brave thing to do. Most employers are not discriminatory and would not let it affect their recruitment decision, but some are. As it has no bearing on whether the person is right for the job, there's no need to mention it at interview.
The applicant here is being open and honest telling Calendar this early, which she has no obligation to do.
Her best option financially would have been not to resign from her previous job - she will lose money this way, so I think describing her as 'sly' isn't really fair.

She's being pretty good telling her potential employer before mid pregnancy anyway.

She may be trying to weigh up her options. In her situation I probably woudn't want to switch and lose maternity pay unless it was my dream job.

oh missed that she's handed in her notice. Presumably she's now in a bit of a mess- poor woman. She's hardly been sly (talking herself out of maternity pay )

I was offered a job with a small company at 9 weeks pg with ds2 (had just had scan that day revealing pg and showing viability). The situation is slightly different because I had worked for them some years previously and my skill combination is a bit rare, but the consequences of my pg for the company are the same. I spilled the beans straight away and simply got a 'Congratulations'. Then I had to have a fair bit of time off in the pg and will now be on mat leave until next July and then on 15 hours (pre-birth 26 hours) until next Nov. They have been (to come over all Blytonesque) absolute bricks. I will be doing a bit of project work from home for them on mat leave, on a project I know well and they really need me for - I don't gain financially from it (get state mat pay for in effect not working) so I would never have bothered if they'd been crap about things. Fair treatment inspires performance and loyalty.

Really, I think it's quite a leap to assume underhandedness and slyness. She sounds like she's being very fair to me.

Re charities, here's a bit I wrote a while ago about the way the big grant-giving bodies think about the reserves charities should have in hand:

As a generally rule, bigger funders ? including Lloyds TSB and Comic Relief ? are usually happy with reserves of up to 12 months? running costs. Northern Rock is actively enthusiastic about reserves of this amount, as assistant director Rob Williamson explains. ?If something went wrong, it can realistically take six to 12 months to wind the whole organisation up. If they?re faced with a period of sickness or maternity leave, they need reserves to cover that. It doesn?t benefit the sector to be working with starved organisations; in fact, if they have a bit of money left over at the end of a grant, we tend to tell them to put them in their reserves.?

Allen Lane is a smaller funder, and tends to question reserves over six months ? but in practice it can be even more flexible than some bigger donors. ?If you?re running an old people?s home it could take you at least two years to wind up in an orderly fashion ? on the other hand, if you have no employees and no premises, you could shut up shop in a month,? says Heather Swailes, the executive director.

When did she tell you she was pregnant? How long after the interview? She may genuinely not have known, but if she did then I agree it was underhand of her to wait until the contract was sent out before telling you.
Personally if I knew I was pregnant and was withholding it from a possible employer I doubt I would hand my notice in incase they rethought the job offer.