Work is making me sad

[december2020]

My company used to be a great place, however lately it feels toxic.

Without going into a long ramble, the current environment is not great, from no prospects, toxic people and environment to no support. My gut instinct says things are heading in a bad direction and to get out before it's too late. I've know everyone has good and bad days/weeks at work, but this is more than just a bad day and having a moan.

The logical thing is to get out and find something else. However, I'm due to go on maternity in about 3 months. So I'm not in a strong position to make my move, even if a company hired me, I'd probably go into labour while working my notice period. So I feel 'stuck' to stay.

Then I face the potential risk of being made redundant (due to restructure not performance) before starting maternity.

I don't know what my plan for the next 3 months could be, apart from waiting miserably and hoping the restructure and redundancy doesn't happen until I'm on maternity.

Apologies for the Friday evening ramble, definitely a lot of reflection going on.

Any words of advice would be greatly appreciated or if anyone has been in the same situation, how you've got through it.

Sorry to hear that you're suffering because of this OP, when you should be focused on the joy of a new baby in a few months.

How long have you been with the company? Would you have a decent redundancy payment? Were you planning on going back to work after your mat leave? It may be that you would welcome a redundancy package? If not, there are laws to protect pregnant women from being made redundant. I know - I was made redundant while on maternity leave. My role was replaced by a man. Took the company to court and won.

Hi @december2020 is your maternity pay generous? Could you start your leave early to get the most of it (if you're sure if the risk)?
Hopefully other users can advise on SMP if you are our of work.

For now, I'd advise you get stats, save emails and build evidence (at home) to show your good performance. If you're made redundant while then you can show discrimination against your pregnancy (a protected characteristic in the Equality Act) and as pp said, look to claim. You might actually be in a stronger position than your colleagues right now!

Three months feels like a long time when you're unhappy, but I'm sure you can stick it out. I dislike my job atm, my manager recently left (who I adored) and the owner is awful. I'm off on maternity in Spring which it makes it manageable - I have that escape plan in place.

if I was you and because you're feeling sad as well, the best thing to do is take sick days. Because you're pregnant sick days dont count towards the usual sick days policy. So it means they can't sack you because you've been off sick for so long. I didn't take many sick days when I was pregnant but if I needed to I could and wouldn't have affected my record. I say to take the sick because I feel that you need a break and feeling stressed when pregnant is not good for the baby. best wishes

Thank you everyone and sorry for the late reply! I needed a bit of time to recalibrate my emotions and brain!

I would have been at the company just shy of 5 years (which is a longer time for my industry, people tend to job hop every 2 years).

Maternity pay is good! So really hoping I don't lose that and they keep me on with no intention of letting me go. It seems the rest of my team have been written into a new team (starting next year when I'm on mat leave, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed they'll all be covered and in a good place).

I'll definitely start saving any evidence I can as at the moment it seems it would just be me affected and equally make sure I speak to someone to understand my legal rights (just in case the worst happens and they put me on the spot to make a snap decision in a short time frame).

@Namaste6 that's amazing for winning! I'm so happy for you! Hope it's made them think to we about their actions!!

@Thack yes! An escape plan is where it is at! And congrats on your mat leave date in spring!

@Carolhh I haven't taken a single sick day yet, so a very good point! I'll look into this and see if I could take a few just to get a bit of down time!

@@Namaste6 good story, congrats on winning.

OP hope you are okay and all is going well. :-)

@Carolhh it's been mixed for sure! I've been doing 12 hour work days most weeks on projects mostly in isolation from the rest of the team, which has been so exhausting! I think and dream work. But only 6 weeks to go till maternity! Almost there!

My gut was right, the redundancy would have only affected me and even when I asked my line manager directly about it, she gave me a fluff answer. The good news is I think HR had got in touch with her to chat about my maternity leave anyways and found all this out (I didn't speak to them) and have stepped in to intervene and safe guard me. I guess they could smell pregnancy discrimination a mile away and wanted to stop it going any further.

So I am indeed 'safe' from redundancy and will be redeployed within the wider company after mat leave and now just need to wait out the last 6 weeks. So not all bad news.

aww im sure you can't wait, you need to prepare for babies arrival, that sounds so exciting and you wont even remember all this then once the little one is here. its nappies and milk in the beginning :-)