Several Crucial Tips For Using KIT Days To Your Advantage
When the Work and Families Act was introduced in 2007, it was felt that it was particularly advantageous to mums to be. After all, nine months of statutory maternity pay was available, with up to a year off work allowable. Families celebrated that they would be able to allocate more time and attention to the vital task of preparing, accepting and then raising the child during this critical period. Maternity leave is seen as a basic human right in our caring society, although it can put pressures on both employer and employee as part of an ongoing working relationship. While employers must accept that pregnancy is possible and must accept the letters of the law, they must also be prepared to take on temporary staff as necessary to account for the woman on maternity leave. This is bound to cause a certain amount of disruption, but in the majority of situations, this is taken in stride.
For the mum on maternity leave a new clause entitles her to “keep in touch” by taking advantage of 10 legislatively allocated days, allowing her to attend work and receive payment accordingly. Parliament decided that this legislation was appropriate and that it would help to smooth over any element of “disconnection” or normal disruption that might take place in the work place and between the employer and employee over time.
Mum can take advantage of keeping in touch days from several different perspectives. Mum will be able to keep on top of those latest trend changes. It is certainly possible to do a lot of research while remaining at home and to get all kinds of e-mails and other notifications when on leave, but there is nothing to replace that feeling of actually being at your work place, talking and interacting with other staff members and seeing how new policies and procedures are actually working. This is a strategic way of keeping in touch and when time approaches to return to work, the employee should be “up to speed” and ready to be highly productive, once more.
When baby came around, Mum may have been particularly busy with a challenging project. Those keeping in touch days would be particularly advantageous for her in this case, allowing her to continue to follow through and to impart her valued skills. Otherwise, the business may suffer or in certain circumstances, mum may be at somewhat of a career disadvantage when she returns simply due to the fact that she had not been available to work on a pivotal project. By using those keeping in touch days, she would just be “behind” in terms of her time spent moving forward.
Mum will be able to interact with her temporary replacement during the time that she is keeping in touch, able to see any issues or problems as they are arising and predicting situations that may have arisen without formal supervision, otherwise.
Each “keeping in touch” day is also paid by the employer and does not affect the amount of maternity leave pay that she may have. Don’t forget that this can be a nice little boost, financially.
As an extended period away from your work can be challenging indeed, you may well have to seek out professional coaching to give you a good idea how to approach it. Generally, online life coaching helps us to cope with significant issues that arise in our daily lives and coaching for women can really help in this case, to balance personal and business issues.
Amanda Alexander, Director of Coaching Mums, helps pressure-cooked, stressed working mums who long for more hours in the day. Through her coaching programmes and online life coaching courses, Amanda shows mums how to create fulfilling and successful lives. For your simple 5 step guide to balance as a working mum, download our free eBook today!
Tags: (coaching, business, Family, mother), work life balance)