While you're on maternity leave
Your employer has the right to a reasonable amount of contact with you during your maternity leave.
Keeping in touch with work
Before you go on maternity leave, your employer or manager should have a meeting with you to talk about how you'd like to stay in touch.
By law, while you're on maternity leave your employer must tell you:
- if jobs are being advertised
- of any promotion opportunities
- if they're planning redundancies or reorganisation
You can also agree with them:
- what else you'd like to hear about, for example staff bulletins or social events
- how you'd like to communicate, for example by email, phone or keeping in touch (KIT) days
- how often you'd like to be in touch
Keeping in touch days
You can agree with your employer to work for up to 10 days during your maternity leave to help you stay in touch with your organisation. These are called keeping in touch (KIT) days.
It's up to you to agree with your employer:
- if you want to work keeping in touch days
- how many days you want
- what type of work you'll do on the days
- how much you'll be paid for the work
It still counts as a full keeping in touch day even if you only work part of it, for example a half day.
If you work more than 10 keeping in touch days, your maternity leave and pay automatically end by law.
Pay and keeping in touch days
You should agree the pay for your keeping in touch days with your employer in advance. The easiest option is for your employer to pay you your normal pay for the day.
Your employer can sometimes pay less than normal pay depending on what you're doing on your keeping in touch days. But paying someone less than they normally would get for doing the same thing could be discrimination.
You must not be paid less than National Minimum Wage.
Redundancy
Your employer must not use your pregnancy or maternity as a reason to make you redundant. This would be discrimination.