Several Useful Ideas 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. Up to a year off work could be enjoyed, with nine months of statutory maternity pay. 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. Employers must take into account that pregnancy is possible among the female employees and they must be able to work within the law, by taking on temporary staff as needed to cover for any women that might be 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.
There are many ways that Mum can take advantage of “keeping in touch” days, looking at it from different angles. 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. In this case, keeping in touch days can be used to help her follow-through on this project and to use her valued skills. In an ideal scenario, we would not want the business to suffer in any way and we would not want Mum to be at a disadvantage of any kind when it comes to her career, due to the fact that she was involved in a pivotal project. By using those keeping in touch days, she would just be “behind” in terms of her time spent moving forward.
Keeping in touch also will allow mum to interact with her temporary replacement and that could potentially help to smooth over any issues or problems that may arise without this type of informal supervision.
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.
Make no mistake about it, sometimes an extended period away from work can be very challenging and you may need to seek out professional coaching to help you understand how to handle 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!
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- Are You A Single Mother Looking Into Coaching For Women?