Maternity benefits - what do you want?

[lovelymama]

I set up a company last year and I'm getting my maternity policy in place. I'm keen to recruit more women and part of this is creating an attractive maternity policy. Keen to hear from people what they consider to be important.

We are a small IT company. The roles are skilled - coding. Salaries are in line with industry standard/maybe slightly higher, pension, bonus, health care. We don't have offices so WFH is standard. We're looking at offering between 4-6 months full pay then the remaining time (up to 12 months) statutory maternity pay. We are sorting Child Care vouchers for return to work.

So is there anything else you can think of that you would value as a working parent? Doesn't have to be financial, could be other things that make life easier as a working parent.

Any comments welcome!

What do you mean by sorting child care vouchers for return to work? I thought that scheme closed in 2018?

I got 6 months full pay with my current company which was a huge help.

I like this from Vodafone’s package:

“Employees can also phase their return from parental leave by working the equivalent of 80% of their normal working week on full pay for up to six months.”

The biggest hurdle I faced was flexible hours. So even the mention of being able to work your normal hours but in your own time, e.g. if your normal hours are 9-5 (7 hours) the employee could choose to do 6am-8am, 1-3pm, 8-11pm as long as they completed their designated hours.

Childcare vouchers aren't an option any more. You could allow employees to salary sacrifice nursery fees though I think, which also means less Ers NIC for you although an administrative burden for your payroll dept.

Option to work from home when the kids are ill.
If the local school does not offer wrap around care or child care during school holidays put pressure on the school to start offering that. You could offer the school a small donation if they comply and /or get other businesses in on it too.

If homeworking is standard there won't be one local school, in my job which is fully work on site, 15 staff, not a single person uses the local school or even the same school as anyone else.

Part time and flexible hours would have been top of my list.

1. A decent return to work process. My old job I felt really unwelcome and lost.

2. enhanced pay, I would have struggled to live on SMP, luckily I had saved up before hand. Not sure what's good, maybe100% for 3 months then 50% for 3 months then SMP, depends what you can afford to pay

3. make the mat policy well known, it's so hard to find the policy before you get a job somewhere.

I'm sure there's more I could think of but my brain appears to have gone to bed for the night!

Can you really afford this level of enhanced maternity pay as a new business? How would you fare should an employee return from maternity leave pregnant and be off again in three or four months? Presumably you'd need to cover their work with a contractor?

Maternity leave is a very short period of time in the world of parenting. I work for a small business, my maternity pay was statutory and that was fine. I worked all KIT days to boost SMP and returned after six months.

What is invaluable to me is the flexible working approach, I can condense my hours during school holidays, I can work on the weekend if I've had to spend time looking after a sick child during the week. I'm predominantly home based. I've never once missed an event at school. This to me is worth far more than an enhanced maternity leave would ever be.

Also, look at ways you can make a working pregnancy more bearable. I had one pregnancy while working in a high pressure, corporate and it was horrendous. Encourage pregnant women to speak up and let you know if they're tired, just had enough, have brain fog, allow them to rest. Offer flexible working during the pregnancy. Offer men paid leave to attend all antenatal appointments.

@hauntedvagina

Can you really afford this level of enhanced maternity pay as a new business? How would you fare should an employee return from maternity leave pregnant and be off again in three or four months? Presumably you'd need to cover their work with a contractor?

Maternity leave is a very short period of time in the world of parenting. I work for a small business, my maternity pay was statutory and that was fine. I worked all KIT days to boost SMP and returned after six months.

What is invaluable to me is the flexible working approach, I can condense my hours during school holidays, I can work on the weekend if I've had to spend time looking after a sick child during the week. I'm predominantly home based. I've never once missed an event at school. This to me is worth far more than an enhanced maternity leave would ever be.

This is what I was thinking.

How is this new business being funded? Purely organically or with investors? You must have some very forward thinking investors if so. Not that I'm complaining, I just find it's an incredibly generous maternity package for a small/new business to swallow.

I am in tech i get...
0-6 months full, 6-9 SMP 9-12 nothingggg.
But accrue holiday days!
Baby bonus of £2k taxable
Earn bonuses while on mat leave
Expensable childcare subsidy up to 18 years (£2.5k taxable benefit)
20 "emergency childcare sessions" per year.

What i don't get: the option to do anything other than FT hours when i go back. At most you can shift hours slightly eg. 8-5 instead of 9-6
Obviously on paper you can request flex / PT etc in reality it's a no...

I would love the option to have a proper career and do 3-4 days a week

Good maternity package - 6 months paid is really good and I would say top end

Flexible working - so people can flex hours (within reason for the business). I do a mix of wfh and start early, finish early. The finish early was enable me to be able to be home for bath time but everyone will have an equivalent

Lastly - this is an added benefit where I work is support package. My company has signed up for a 3rd party service (don't know who provides it) but there is a portal for advice and articles about family related items and you can have calls with an expert - I used for it for sleep issues with my toddler. We also get back up care through this company - so emergency nannies and holiday clubs for children

My work pay the employee pension contribution for the whole time on maternity leave as well as the employer contribution, I really appreciate that as it means my pension doesn’t suffer whilst I’m off.

Also I would think about what you could do during pregnancy to make life easier, I work in IT and have to do a couple of night shifts each month, they were a killer whilst pregnant and unable to have caffeine!