Applying for internal role - 15 weeks pregnant? Big impact on maternity pay.

[notalwaysalondoner]

I'm in quite a difficult position. I work in a professional services company and am considering switching from client work to internal business development. This has easier hours and much more flexibility, but entails a ~25% pay cut and reduced long-term pay/progression compared to the partner track. I've already spent some time in the past temporarily in a similar role and think it fits our family's needs best - I have a 2 year old, a husband who works long hours and is away a lot, and we live nearly 2 hours from our London offices (where both our companies are based).

I've found an ideal internal role and applied for it, but I have a challenge around when I tell them I'm pregnant. Normally I would take the approach of waiting until I was offered the role considering I'm still fairly early in the pregnancy (process likely to take ~6 weeks and I'm a very strong candidate). I would then likely start the new role in July.

However, our company enhanced maternity pay is calculated from your salary on the date you go on leave, not the statutory pay date at 25 weeks (which would be my current 25% higher salary plus much bigger bonus). So I would likely be looking at only doing this new job for 8-10 weeks then going on leave and potentially losing tens of thousands of pounds of maternity pay due to the new lower salary. So I'm wondering if it's helpful to tell them in advance during the interview process, as we might be able to come to an agreement that I officially start in the new role after my maternity leave ends and I stay in my old role until then, as they'll need to find cover for me anyway. I think this might be harder to negotiate if I only tell them after the offer is made, as they will feel I misled them and be less likely to be supportive of this concession. I think there's a fairly low chance they'll agree to this suggestion either way, so I don't want to do anything to reduce that probability.

What would you do?

I would stay client facing until Mat leave rather than face that much of a drop.

you could then try and move internally when your back?

I would think your employers would be incredibly dumb to agree to what you are suggesting, they would literally be giving money away.

I would just pass on this opportunity and look for another one when you are back.

Another possibility: take Maternity leave early, so you start ML as you move roles, and therefore qualify for the higher OMP.

Maternity pay is calculated based on qualifying weeks. Not sure when they are but if you could swing not starting til after those you'd be ok.

How often do these internal roles come up? Short term pain for long term work/life balance?

So qualifying week is week 25 (15 weeks before due date technically). You say you'd be doing the new role for 8-10 weeks so does this fix it?

That's for statutory maternity pay. OP is saying her company offers enhanced pay, and calculates it from a later date. Generally this is more generous of them, as people are more likely to go up in salary rather than down, but it's working against OP in this specific case