Out of sight, out of mind?
Sometimes, employers don't know how often to communicate with their colleagues on maternity leave.
Understandably you might not want to disturb their quality time with their baby. But employers should never take the “out of sight and out of mind” approach with these employees. An employee should never feel forgotten or out of the loop just because they’re taking maternity leave.
To make sure this doesn’t happen, before they go you should discuss how much contact they would like and how they’d like you to contact them. Employees should be informed of work developments, vacancies and promotions, and offered the opportunity to be involved in any work events e.g. the Christmas Party or training, in a timely way. Keeping in Touch Days (KIT days) can also be used to maintain contact and help get your employee back into ‘work mode’.
Employees can work up to 10 ‘Keeping in Touch’ or KIT days. These can be worked at any point, except for the two weeks of Compulsory Maternity Leave.
Like general contact above, you (or more often their line manager) will need to arrange KIT days with them to agree when they’ll do it, the type of work they’ll do and their pay.
Over the page, we answer some of the most important questions when it comes to KIT days.
Maternity leave or pay isn’t affected by KIT days. As for how much you pay on top of that, this is something you’ll have to agree with your employee. Many businesses will pay a pro rata day rate based on their normal salary.
An employee can do any form of work on their KIT day, from conferences to some light admin. Many employers take it as an opportunity for a day of training, introducing them to any new workplace or team members, or re-familiarising them with software and processes.
An employee can work up to ten days during maternity leave.
In short, no. Any work completed in a day during an employee’s maternity leave counts as a whole KIT day, even if your employee only works for one hour.
If someone does 11 or more KIT days, their SML and SMP may be affected, so it’s not advisable.
Looking for expert advice on how to implement flexible working? See how we can help.
This is an area that many organisations struggle with – and that’s without the added complexity of flexibly working employees.
Setting objectives, measuring performance, conducting one to ones, providing feedback – it’s the same stuff, you may just need to adapt some of it to suit employees who aren’t in the workplace full-time.
