Small business Maternity dilema

wnb

wnb

wnb

Soldato
Joined
27 Feb 2004
Posts
3,984
I find myself in a difficult position, I currently employ 48 people and I have 6 people on maternity, I have just been informed that another member of staff is pregnant and I also have somoene going on maternity in 5 month.

In theory I could easily have upto 8 members of staff on Maternity. The cost that I am having to pay out as an example is £1800 per person for accumilated holidays whilst on maternity. Then you have the cost of recruitment, advertising and training of the replacment staff.

To top it off I have to keep the job open untill the employee decided weather or not they want to come back to work. And they dont have to give any notice on returning to work! Then I will have to get rid of the temporary staff that I have employed and trained.

As you can see it is hard for any small business who empoyes mainly women as you can run the risk of losing those women to maternity. It is illegal to discriminate against women of child bearing age or to employe a man because he will not go on maternity for a year. Yet to comply with the law I open myself and the future of my business to increased costs.
 
It is a crap system but its law, so no choice. Got to be honest I agree with equal treatment etc but not having to state intentions of returning when going on maternity leave is ridiculous and bias! Small business has always had this hanging over them, as does large business but I know your pain!
 
I had this with my small business. I only had 5 employee's and 2 where off at the same time. The law is the law but when things are tough it does put a huge strain on you.

I do think there should be something that should force them to at least give a bit of notice of their intentions. Neither of mine returned and it did cause me great financial difficulties at a hard time.

Not sure what can be done without discrimination though.
 
Heh, I didn't realise that they still accrued the annual leave during the maternity period.
Thats a bit of a slap in the face, well anyway, make sure all you pay them is stat, and claim all the stat back, you won't be out of pocket.
By only paying them stat and nothing higher it'll encourage them back either sooner, or make them look elsewhere sooner.

Else do it by the book, and watch who you employ in the first place :P
 
I know plenty of people who run small businesses who will say behind closed doors that they would never ever employ a young woman because of this, the trick is never getting caught saying it and it being your reason for selecting who you select for who you want to work for you.

Women have really shot themselves in the foot in some ways when it comes to this kind of thing.
 
I thought there were new laws coming in to give the same to Fathers, or at least, you are able to split the leave between both parents however they please?

So, the idea that this is a female only problem could well be removed soon, although how much of an affect it will actually have on the time taken by each parent will remain to be seen.

Also, I thought the Gov't pays you back some of the costs when staff are on maternity, or am I plucking that out of nowhere?
 
Your companies staffing costs should have been costed before you hired them, within this you should have included potential costs such as maternity and parental leave.

While I sympathise with your dilemma (having almost 20% of your workforce out on maternity is excessive) you only have yourself to blame.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom