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inamra
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
BR: Maternity Leave
This is a question for working moms & moms-to-be: When did you ladies have the discussion with HR and/or boss about your maternity leave? And when did you start the leave--a week before your due date or a month or earlier or later? And did you talk to your boss first or HR first? I tend to plan things early but I don't wanna seem too eager to talk about my maternity leave already when I just got back from my disability leave recently...
Sept 2008 Wedding | May 2010 & Mar 2012 Babies
Re: BR: Maternity Leave
I think it would really depend on your work dynamics and the type of job you do.
At my job I work independently and I have a boss that is here 2 days a week but he is a contract employee and I am a direct employee of the company so my "supervisor" (signatory for leave time, etc) is someone different - the overall manager of the entire "co."
Clearly my boss will be picking up my work while I'm gone, but he has no direct say over my leave time so I brought it up to HR and the manager first. We began discussing my leave in general - how long I planned to take off - right away because they needed to figure out if they needed a temp since it's basically only me in the office.
If it were up to my boss I could stay out/work from home as long as I wanted, but to keep things uniform with other employees I have to follow the "co." guidelines. The actual logistics (paperwork sign off) had to go through the manager/my supervisor. She did take the work from home suggestion from my boss so I don't start mat. leave/FMLA until I have the baby, but my last day in the office will be at around 38.5 weeks (if I don't have a baby by then). My boss already plans to take over the Feb. Court calendar just in case I go out early.
From there was I was told to go to HR to pick up paperwork and ask any questions about my benefits and pay while I'm out. The paperwork was minimal and I didn't have many questions (have sat through enough fed. employment law trainings). The baby has to be born before I can sign it up for health insurance and I can't turn in a disability claim until I have used up my sick/vacation leave and I don't know how much of that I will end up with because co-workers can (and usually do) donate hours, so I will probably end up using less than the 6 weeks disability provided for a vaginal birth - which works to my advantage b/c disability is only at 60% pay where as my leave and donated leave will be at my full salary.
Things to think about - are you going to have a replacement? Do you plan to propose various leave scenarios (like Lori did with her ramping back up to full time in office)? Do you know what your benefits are/do you have specific questions you want answered immediately (such as pay while you are out)? If so I would bring it up asap, regardless of you just having come back. You don't have to act like you can't wait to take time off again, but you could set it up like you are just hoping to get some questions answered so you can start to plan.
I agree with this - it really does depend on where you work.
I know my situation is different because I'm in another country and I work for a government organization, but I'll explain how I approached it with my bosses anyway.
My supervisors/bosses don't actually have any say about the amount of leave I take - that's between me and HR. I'm entitled to a certain amount of paid maternity leave, but the duration is flexible: we are granted 14 weeks of fully paid leave, which is distributed over up to a year...so you can have 14 weeks fully paid, 28 weeks half paid (this is what I did) or an entire year where you get half pay for 28 weeks and no pay for the rest of the time (not affordable for us). So I worked out with HR what I wanted to do, and then simply informed my bosses of what the dates would be.
Since my bosses knew I was pregnant and therefore knew I would be taking leave, so there wasn't a great deal I had to discuss with them since my negotiations took place with HR, not with the library. I know this wouldn't work at some places, but it's the way it's set up here. (My bosses are also very kind and encouraging women who have both had kids, so that also probably helps!)
As to when it starts...well, that's a little different. My actual maternity leave is starting April 4 - this is pretty close to when I estimate the twins will likely be born (twins usually show 4 weeks early, and this is about 4.5 weeks before my due date). However, because I'll be under the same physical stress at 28 weeks that most women are under at 40 weeks, I've hoarded all of my sick leave and vacation days, and I'm taking all of March off as well so I can rest as much as possible and try to avoid premature labor.
So although technically I'm starting my leave within a week of my EDD, I'm actually stopping work much earlier than that. If I was having a singleton I would probably aim for a week or two prior to my EDD (barring any unforseen health complications), just because I would want to use most of my leave *after* the birth and as little as possible before.
ETA: Oh! I forgot the "when." Well as I said, I didn't really discuss it with my bosses - it was just taken for granted that I'd be taking leave, and I told them that I'd let them know ASAP after finalizing things with HR so that they could arrange for someone to fill my position while I was away.
HR at my work can take a while to get back to you, so I started talking to them about my options back in November. I finalized the plan in December and submitted the formal application just before Christmas. The deadline here is 8 weeks prior to when you want to start your leave, so my firm deadline that I HAD to have the paperwork submitted was the beginning of February - I wanted to present it a little early so I had a month to change it if I decided it might be necessary.
Jaime & Brent
Oahu, Hawaii | Sept. 9, 2005
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I've already told my boss (principal), but not HR yet. I'll probably call them later this month and set up a meeting.
I'm due in the middle/near the end of summer, so I'll be off work already, but if I wasn't, I would probably plan to start my leave one week before my due date. That seems to be pretty standard in my school district. I'm actually a little bit worried about being off for over a month beforehand....I think I might go a little bit crazy! Plus, I'd rather have more time afterwards.
I found out I was pregnant the first week I started a new job. I told my boss (who is wonderful and understanding) when I was 10 weeks pregnant because I couldn't hide the morning sickness anymore and I wanted to give her enough time to find a replacement.
As for leave: I saved all my vacation and took off 6 weeks prior to my due date. I started my maternity leave once Elyse was born. I'm actually just working through it with payroll and Employment Insurance right now.
Married Bio
From the HR point of view (I've been in HR for the past 16 years) - everyone is different. Some people come tell me as soon as they know, others wait until much later in their pregnancy. It really depends on your work situation and how much time is needed to plan for picking up your work load, that's the most important thing to me and to my managers.
Being in California, the leave information can be very confusing to a lot of employees and I try my hardest to help them understand the leave options available to them. The biggest thing is that everyone goes on line and looks for "maternity leave" information, when really it's Pregnancy Disability Leave and Paid Family Leave (which, depending on the size of your company can also run concurrently with FMLA and CFRA). Since you are in California and leave laws vary from state to state, I'm happy to help you if you have any questions since all of my HR work has been in California and I've processed a TON of pregnancy disability leaves.
I work from home about 2000 miles from the main office so it was pretty easy for me to keep things a secret until the 2nd trimester.
Once I was a week into my 2nd tri, I talked to my boss first then I talked to the office manager.
I worked up to the day that I gave birth. I didn't want to waste any of my maternity leave BEFORE the baby was born, I wanted all my time off to be with DS.
Good luck!
I am one of the "big bosses" at my company, so I only had to propose my leave plan to the other big bosses for approval. Kinda sweet, actually.
I did sit down with HR just to be sure I was taking advantage of all that is available to me and also to go over the "rules" of using our long term medical reserve.
My plan is to work until delivery (now that I am 36 weeks, I wish I had planned on leaving at 38 weeks, but since we didn't plan for that financially, I am sucking it up). Next time will be different! That said, because I have to use my accrued time, I want it to be used once Libby is here and not waiting around for labor. But I fear as I near the 40 week mark I might need to work from home a couple days/week because I am starting to feel very exhausted and uncomfortable after being at the office 8 hours/day.
I wrote everything up, including the projects that I plan to do from home (I am taking an extended leave of 17 weeks which includes some work from home after 8 weeks completely off), created a calendar (with leave starting the first week of Feb. since that's my EDD and the latest my OB will let me go before she induces) and noted that it could be adjusted if I go into labor before 40 weeks.
Since we don't have FMLA (less than 50 employees) all leave is accrued time, comp time, holiday pay, and long term medical reserve (the company gives 120 hours to which employees can roll unused annual leave into for use...up to 360 hours total. I managed to roll 80 hours into it). I am planning on using a combination of 480 hours of leave time for my maternity leave. So I broke it down by week...which "pot" of time it will come from (we have to use 80 hours of our own before LTMR kicks in) and also detailed the part-time schedule I plan to use (basically working from home 4 hours/day a few days a week starting at week 9 and increasing it from there...eventually coming back to the office twice a week for 6 hours/day and adding on until I am back to a 40 hour work week at 18 weeks post-partum).
I sent the proposal, via email, to the executive management team (there are 5 of us, so I sent it to my 4 team members) for them to review before our regular weekly meeting. I am grateful...they had no questions or concerns...other than the fact I want to come in for a Board meeting in mid-March (which could be like the end of my 5th week post-partum) and they said not to worry about it. I still might try to make it. We only have 3 Board meetings a year and they really influence much of what my department ends up doing.
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