in January 2024 babies 🇬🇧

Sick leave / maternity

Does anyone know if sick leave affects maternity pay etc? When I’m on the sick at my work we get paid in full. I’m due to go off on maternity in January. I have a feeling my workplace are going to force me to do two full time roles at the same time. As you can imagine I am refusing as I am heavily pregnant and feel this would be too much stress, baring in mind my full time role there is only me, nobody else to take the work if I am not around covering the other role. If I am forced to do the other role too I am hoping to go on sick leave, will this affect my maternity ? It won’t be going down as pregnancy issues it will be down as work stress.

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Thanks everyone. I might ring my HR and see what they say. Even if I have to be off and go back a certain time so it doesn’t affect it I will do that. I have annual leave in to start my maternity early anyway.

I think my maternity policy is that you maternity pay is calculated based on the 15th week before your due date. So any changes post that date for example if your pay did go down should not affect my maternity pay.

If you get full pay whilst on sick leave it shouldn’t affect your maternity pay at all. The only thing I would check is whether or not work can force you to start maternity leave early, but as the others have said, they can usually only do that if you’re off with pregnancy related sickness

According to my HR policy if I go of sick the 5th week before my due date then the start my maternity leave is automatically triggered IF OFF SICK FOR PREGNANCY RELATED SYMPTOMS. Worth checking your policy being being pregnant shouldn’t mean you’re not entitled to sick leave that is non pregnancy related I.e. stress

Depends on HR policy - mine is if you go off sick within 4 weeks of your due date then can make you start mat leave from that point but other than that.. I don't know :)