[Colin Stokes]

Typically when I need advice my HR person is away and the covering person is not available until tomorrow so I wondered if anyone here knew..

One of my employees is pregnant and she covers a geographical area a little remote from everyone else, works on her own and is responsible for a leisure centre within residential block with all the chemicals that entails. The work is quite physical.

The assessment we have completed indicates that she is obviously at risk (and I would agree) and we may have to suspend her on full pay if we can not organise swapping/ alternative/suitable work - this I have no issue with, she has been a great employee and will probably return in some capacity and I do not want to put her at any risk.

My question is (to those with much better HR/legal knowledge) is are we able (as with trad maternity) able to recover any of that as it could be up to 26 weeks in theory.? If not Its something I need to take into consideration for future when thinking re hourly rates/costs etc as I certainly never thought of including it in calculations before but it would happen quite often in our trade.

[darren clarke]

i think you can recover if it is wither sick leave or maternity, as by law you dont have to pay these and can claim it back,  depending on when she is due put her on gardening leave or put some one with her,   be careful how you word it as some people might take offense at being told they cant do something becasue they are pregnant

[Robert Parry]

Hi Colin,

You are quite right to assess your employee regarding the additional risks involved, I assume that you have in place some mechinism to monitor lone workers at various sites. I think that your advisors will be best placed to answer this question as it should be covered by your employment contract, apart from traditional maternity pay, there is no way the government is going to re-inburse you (exception to this is perhaps for her doctor to sign her off due to phsical risk/problems)


Most professionally drawn up contracts will contain the relevant clauses to enable you to switch her role within your business so that your not paying your employee for not working, perhaps light duties, office work etc, or a mutual agreement of a cut in workload/hours or to team them up with another worker to ensure that she no longer has to do the physically hard operations.

A couple of things to be aware of, a baby on the way, the current economic climate, might mean that money may well be tight for your employee, a calm, understanding conversation may well enable you to reach a compromise.

It is obvious from your post that do not wish to play the capability card, good on you for that, if your contracts have not taken this situation into account before now, get your HR people to pop the relevant clause in, so that when this situation arises again, you know your liabilies in the future.

Regards,

Rob

[Colin Stokes]

Thanks Rob,  we do have check in procedures for lone workers (every 2 hours on days when she works on non portered sites) and our contracts allow for moving people around its just because of her geographical area it might not be possible for her to get to our other sites reasonably.

Of course paying her salary and a replacement if we do suspend her on full pay is not something I would want to do (be down £1400 a month!) but she is a very good employee and the sit down and chat option may well be best amicable option if perhaps she takes earlier maternity leave saving me some money.

Thanks again.