Your work questions answered: If offered another job during maternity leave, what are my rights for taking the rest of it?

I’m currently about eight weeks into my 26 weeks of paid maternity leave. I see on the Citizens’ Information website it states, “As an employee, you have the right to take 26 weeks’ maternity leave if you become pregnant. You also have the right to take up to 16 weeks’ additional maternity leave. You can take this time off work from full-time, casual or part-time employment. It does not matter how long you have been working for your employer.
If I were to be offered another job during my maternity leave, what are my rights for taking the remainder of this leave? For example, if I was 20 weeks into my maternity leave, am I entitled to take the remaining six weeks paid and 16 unpaid before starting my new role? Should I hand in my notice to my current employer once I know about a new job, or would it be okay to leave it until my one-month notice period during the 16 weeks’ unpaid leave? Also, how does this work with probationary periods in a new role?
The short answer is that the reader is fully protected and entitled to continue her maternity leave to the end if she moves jobs, says independent HR consultant and workplace investigator, Michelle Halloran, of Halloran HR Resolutions.
“Customarily, however, most women wait to finish their maternity leave before looking for another job, because they aren’t going to be able to start a new job anyway until their leave is finished,” she says.
Although employers cannot discriminate against women based on pregnancy or parenthood, if the reader indicates at interview that she will not be available to work for up to 16 weeks, Halloran would be concerned there may be some “unspoken bias”.
She says this may be conscious or unconscious on the part of the prospective employer, who is eager to fill a job “usually asap”.
“To be clear, this shouldn’t be the prospective employer’s approach, but if it were me, I’d finish out my maternity leave with my current employer, remembering to tell them whether I’m coming back to them or not four weeks out, as per the Maternity Protection Act,” she says.
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Halloran would typically advise returning to the current job before looking at alternatives.
Regarding probationary terms, a new employer can exclude time on maternity leave from the probationary period, meaning probation might not begin until the worker is physically available to attend work.
“The rationale is that the employer has to be able to actively train, supervise and work with the new employee to assess their suitability for the job, and they can’t do that when she isn’t present in work due to statutory leave,” she says.
A first step might be researching maternity policies at the company the reader is interviewing with or applying to, says Damien McCarthy, founder and chief executive of consultancy firm HR Buddy.
It is important to know and understand eligibility for paid maternity leave and what the reader might be entitled to outside of the State maternity benefit for your 26 weeks, he says.
“They may not have favourable conditions with regards to paid maternity leave, and this is obviously important from a financial point of view,” he says.
On the other hand, if maternity benefits at another company are more favourable, they may not be immediately available to the reader.
“As a new employee, they may not qualify for certain organisation-specific maternity benefits. In some cases, you have to work past your probationary period or even up to a year or two to be entitled to a fully paid maternity leave from your employer,” he says.
From an income point of view, now might not be the best time to change jobs, he says, and it may be a more financially sound decision not to interrupt the paid maternity the reader has earned through their service with the current employer.
“I would appreciate that should the right opportunity come along during your current maternity, that timing is everything, but that is a financial decision that you would have to make as it is, in my experience, highly probable that any new employer will have stipulations with regards to service,” he says.
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