26 Apr Outsourcing to cover Maternity Leave or Long Term Absence
By Christine Brown, April 26th 2016
Maternity leave can be an emotional time, and not just for the mother-to-be. Once the joy and celebration of a pregnancy announcement has calmed, thoughts turn to how those first months or years are going to pan out. Does the mum to be want to take a full year of maternity leave or just a few weeks? Will that change when the baby is born? Will they return to their role or want to leave? Will they consider working reduced hours? And the Mum to be will be puzzling just as hard, but with the added stress of budgeting childcare costs, logistics and a whole lot more! With this in mind, the last thing you want to do is push too hard for a final answer, but where does this leave Companies when looking for maternity cover?
Long term sickness can create many of the same cover issues. Often sickness notes are issued for a set period at a time before the employee is reviewed to see if it needs to be extended, so a company may have little notice that an absence is going to be extended, or that an employee is returning on restricted terms.
While you can go through the recruitment process to employ temporary cover on a set term contract, this can be problematic if there is a change to the planned leave dates that isn’t suited to your new recruit. You’ll also be out of pocket having to double up on salary payments over the weeks or even months of handover time between the person going on maternity leave and their temporary cover.
By outsourcing work to us, you can save not only on recruitment costs, but also only pay for work to be completed as and when assistance is needed. Should the employee wish to return to work part time, our service can be kept on hand for helping with workloads at busier times. There is no contractual commitment or financial cost for having us on standby, and we can offer varying levels of service to suit your individual circumstances and existing team. This will give your Company the confidence and ability to allow flexible working for their bid and tender staff without compromising on the output quality and amount of the bids.
If you have employee cover requirements in your bid team or business, call us on 01908 382414 to discuss how we can assist.
