Negotiating Maternity Pay

[SundaysMondays]

Has anyone got any advice for trying to negotiate maternity pay?

The company I work for has some quite archaic staff "benefits" one of which is that they only lay SMP. We have been thinking about having another child but wouldn't be able to afford for me to take a 9 month mat leave on SMP.

Ultimately if I don't get enhanced pay and we want another child I need to leave the business and find a job somewhere that does offer it.

I enjoy my job, I'm in a senior role and I'm classed as a high performer and don't really want to leave, I want to ask about having an addendum made to my contract to include paid maternity leave but I don't know what strategy to use.

Any tips?

My experience says it’s not really going to happen, they can’t do it for you and not for every other woman they employ really and that would be a big cost potentially for them.

You can ask though but I’d be prepared for a no.

You be asking them to change their company policy - so unlikely.
What benefit is there to them in enhancing your SMP - will your return after the minimum 12 weeks leave or something?

@Gingernessy I guess that I'd stay in the business, although I understand anyone is replaceable.

How big is the company? I don't think legally they'd be able to do it just for you, so it would depend a bit on how much it could cost them to make it a company wide policy. It would also become immediately obvious to them that you could be thinking about going on mat leave soon, unless you do it alongside lots of other people at the company. Do you know how much you'd need them to add on? Could you get the same result by asking for a pay rise instead and saving the extra income the next year so you have a buffer during mat leave?

The other thing to think about is most companies require you to stay in post after mat leave for a certain length of time or else repay your enhanced mat pay. Assuming that's six months, you're looking at two and a half years being tied to that company even if you got pregnant today. Would you still want to be there that far ahead? Or would it be better now to go somewhere that has better and more supportive policies in place for parents?

You’d me more likely to have success asking for a pay rise, then use the extra as padding for maternity leave.

they’re opening themselves to a world of legal pain if they pay you enhanced maternity pay and not others, plus would you then be contracted to have to stay with them x number of years afterwards? I doubt any employers would incentivise an employee to start trying for a baby by saying they’ll up the maternity pay!

negotiate a pay rise if you want to stay there.

It would need to be an organisational wide policy, it couldn't just be built into your contract and no one else, otherwise the employer opens themselves up to equal pay claim risks. If you want to raise it then you'll need to explore the right channels for raising it...whether that's a business case to your senior leadership or CEO. If you're serious about it then you may want to do a cost benefit analysis. Look at the number of mat leaves per year on average, how much it would have cost the organisation, had those had some sort of enhanced pay arrangement. I mean, there's a strong case for employers to have solid family friendly policies, there is a lot of content out there...it's probably a question of affordability - if not enhancing pay costs them good quality employees then that should be a concern for them. They are of course under no obligation to introduce it.

Maybe it's worth a conversation to see if there's any suggestion from them as to whether its achievable in return for a concession from you.
You don't know until you ask 🙂

No, legally they can offer it to just one employee. As long as they’re not being discriminatory, they can negotiate benefits on a case by case basis, just like they might negotiate pay.

OP, I think you’d maybe need to approach it like you would a conversation about pay. Are there comparable companies where you can find out the maternity pay, for example?
Plus consider what you’ll offer in return eg if you don’t stay X amount of time after maternity leave, you’ll pay the enhanced pay back.

We're a mid sized company, we have around 200 employed staff and probably the same amount of freelancers. We don't have enhanced sick pay but I know that under certain circumstances (serious illness) colleagues have been paid full pay whilst off so I wasn't sure if this would be a similar situation.

It's tricky for me to approach, because as mentioned once I bring it up my employer will also be aware I'm considering extending our family in the future.

@ShesTheAlbatross thank you, I wasn't sure from the comments above whether it would be possible. I dod understand the thoughts around it being discrimination but hoped there might be a way to approach it.

Our competitiors do have much better family policies, our sister company also offers enhanced maternity leave