Baby Bathtime

There was a time when a woman who was in a relationship could concentrate completely on the task of running a home and raising children, full-time jobs in themselves. Those times have changed to a degree, though, as society and our economic needs often come together to dictate that most mums have to work. Of course, much attention is paid to the pending arrival, but you do need to focus on your rights, as well.

1. You are entitled to 52 weeks of maternity leave at a maximum. This entitlement is yours regardless of how long you’ve worked for your employer or if you are full or part-time.

2. Your maternity leave is divided into two categories and the amount of money that you receive from your employer is calculated accordingly.

3. Ordinary maternity leave lasts for 26 weeks. You will be entitled to receive all your contractual rights during this period of time and to retain any perks such as a company car and your paid holiday earning ability. In other words, you are treated exactly as if you are still working, except for the payment you receive.

4. After the first 26, the following 13 weeks are known as “additional maternity leave,” but your contractual rights only apply in certain areas. Specifically, the notice remains the same, redundancy pay availability is not changed and the standard grievance and disciplinary issues remain in force.

5. Your statutory rights remain in place throughout the whole of your maternity leave, which could include an additional 13 weeks of unpaid leave. You may not be discriminated against and must not be passed over in favour of another employee in the event of redundancy.

6. You will qualify for Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) if you have 26 weeks of continuous service at the end of the 15th week before the baby is expected. Statutory maternity pay is determined based upon a period of calculation – eight weeks up to and including the 15th week before baby is due. Your before tax earnings doing this period must have been at least £87. If you do not so qualify, you may be entitled to receive Maternity Allowance.

7. While you may work right up until your baby is born – and it’s entirely up to you to decide, fundamentally, as you’re able to begin your maternity leave as soon as 11 weeks before baby is expected. Both the period of your leave and your payment will commence on the day that you actually begin your maternity leave time.

8. You are not legally obliged to tell your employer that you are pregnant until 15 weeks before the baby is expected.

9. As a pregnant mother, you are entitled to free National Health Service, dental treatment and prescriptions as well.

10. It may often be in your best interests to tell your employer you are pregnant as soon as possible, as you will then be entitled to a reasonable amount of time off with pay for doctor’s appointments. In these circumstances, you may not be expected to handle certain substances, or to be involved in some tasks such as heavy lifting, in order to protect the unborn child.

You may well want to consider professional coaching to help you get ready for your new life as a “soon to be” mother, as there are a lot of things to take into account. Everyone knows that coaching for women is widely accepted and beneficial these days and online life coaching is available for every phase of your ever-changing lifestyle!

It’s important to note that this article is only intended as a general guide for women who are getting ready for maternity leave in the UK. You should check your rights as maternity legislation changes frequently. With the available information at the time, the author has written this article accordingly. It is not intended to replace your own research.

Amanda Alexander is the Director of Coaching Mums and a widely renowned ICF-accredited coach who delivers professional coaching programmes to working mums across the globe who long for more time, balance and fulfilment in their busy lives. Download our free eBook especially for working mums with 5 easy ways to achieve balance.

There is little to match the exuberance or ecstatic feelings that you and your whole family share when a new arrival is on the way. This is one of the most momentous times of your family life and for an expectant mother can be simply amazing.

Friends and acquaintances will also be over the moon and will all look forward to the big day with much anticipation.

As your feelings of happiness know no bounds, you would be forgiven for thinking that all the World would be happy for you as well and while this is largely the case, certain elements of negativity may, however, still arise.

While your boss might be a relatively happy person normally, he or she may be particularly concerned about the business operation and may not be as enthusiastic as you might think. You may soon come to realise that the business is classified squarely in first position in the eyes of your boss and if you want to consider flexible working hours as you go forward, you are going to have to be really persuasive.

You may come to find that your boss is really a dinosaur and can be very inflexible, unfortunately, so you will have to call on all your powers of creativity and persuasiveness.

If you have a friend and co-worker who has been in your position before, now is the time to have a down-to-earth chat and to see whether she was able to achieve any two-way communication with the boss and how she handled the situation. While you are at this research stage, talk to other friends in other industries or professions and see what solutions they were able to come up with.

This is the time to be very creative and forward thinking and consider telecommuting or working from home. As companies around the World realise that they need to save on their overheads, this concept is becoming more and more acceptable. If the kind of work you do supports this, all the better.

Don’t forget, that you must work out what would be the ideal situation for you, first and foremost. In other words, be careful what you wish for!

At the top of your list should be an ideal scenario, but you should also have options available in a less-than-perfect situation. Look at your home commitments first before asking for something you might not be able to accommodate.

You should always be careful when you are discussing options with colleagues and you might have to exercise some strategy. In a situation where you collectively share the workload in your office, see how you could come up with a more flexible schedule by dividing up the work creatively. You must be willing to pull your weight in other areas and above all else make sure that you are confident it would be a win/win/win situation for the colleagues, the employer and yourself.

If your job essentially allows you to complete certain tasks regardless of time, or what used to be known as a “job and finish” situation, determine whether you would be able to do this during your personal time as part of a newly revised schedule.

The more you can show your boss that you would be equally as productive, if not more productive by working a flexible schedule, the more the dinosaur is likely to stop chewing the vegetation and listen to you!

In most situations, online life coaching can be another excellent source of research for you. Luckily, coaching for women can generally help by suggesting various options for a variety of situations. This is far from being the private domain of executives or sports players and you should turn to professional coaching, as well!

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!

Have you ever wondered how you keep going, working on pure adrenaline to survive, yet still function well at work and cope with all the other requirements of being a busy mum?

You know that if you could only work to a schedule, things would be more manageable, but the little one at home knows nothing of schedules! These are crucial formative times for the newborn, who is entirely dependent on mum and all these requirements can sometimes make you feel as if you are working a 9-to-5 shift overnight, as well.

You are loving your new life as a devoted mother, but often feel as if you are at your wits’ end as you struggle to find that extra bit of energy to conquer seemingly mundane tasks. How are you going to get through the new work week which is rapidly approaching?

It can be extraordinarily difficult to maintain a schedule and you may have heard the phrase “time management” many times from well-being people, but it is nevertheless essential that you maintain a routine of some kind as closely as possible.

Unless we have a routine, we will just bounce from one problem to another and build up an increasing level of stress, compounding and affecting other areas as we go. Although you might not like to think that you have to do so, it’s important for you to get into a routine as soon as possible.

In the mornings, keep your procedures as simple as possible. It can be very difficult to get going in the morning if your night’s rest has been disrupted by the needs of the baby. However, you have things to do and you should do them in the same order every day.

Your top priority must be your exercise regime. This is most important and you should not be tempted to lay for 15 minutes extra in bed. While you’re on the treadmill, the coffee can be brewing and the early morning headlines, traffic and weather ahead of you on the TV. When you are done, it’s time to get the children up and make sure they have their own chores to do to lighten your load.

You will need to get this down to a fine art, or even a science, every day. This is probably the most stressful time of the day, as you are trying to focus while still trying to wake up! By insisting on a clockwork routine and making sure that all your family are “on board” with this concept and that they help you, you’ll be ready to get out of the door running, on time.

From time to time, you might think that you have nothing available when it comes to keeping up with your “me time” and enjoying your social life, having to concentrate so hard on work and the baby. You will hopefully have a great understanding with a caregiver and understand just how important this person is within your whole picture.

You will hopefully have an understanding boss at work. No matter how understanding the boss is, never take advantage of any situation and only call in favours or use delay allowances whenever necessary, including personal days. The more that you play fair with your boss, the easier it will be to deal with emergencies, should they come along.

Try not to schedule anything that is too demanding, technically for you at work in the morning and at all times, do not overload your schedule unrealistically.

During your 9-to-5 routine at work, time management is very important, as you don’t want your work requirements to spill over into your personal time.

Use professional coaching to help you focus on key areas. Many in your position have used dedicated coaching for women and have often been able to get past “the wall” by turning to online life coaching solutions.

Amanda Alexander is Director of Coaching Mums and a highly acclaimed ICF-accredited coach who delivers professional coaching programmes to working mums who yearn for success, balance and fulfilment. Are you a juggling mom? Download our free eBook for working moms that will give you 5 simple and instant ways to balance your life right now!

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. Within the caring society that we live, maternity leave is seen as a human right, even though certain pressures can arise between the employee and the employer as part of the ongoing working arrangement. 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. Of course a certain amount of disruption can be expected, but the majority take this 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. She can certainly keep up with the latest trends at work. 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.

Mum may have been involved with a particularly challenging project when baby called. 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. In this case, she may simply be “behind” in terms of time spent progressing.

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. This can be a little boost, financially, when it is much needed.

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. These days, online life coaching, specifically online life coaching for women, is a service dedicated to helping us understand how to cope with every distinct phase of our personal lives and business careers.

Amanda Alexander is Director of Coaching Mums and a highly acclaimed ICF-accredited coach who delivers professional coaching programmes to working mums who yearn for success, balance and fulfilment. Are you a juggling mom? Download our free eBook for working moms that will give you 5 simple and instant ways to balance your life right now!