Several Valuable Ideas For Using KIT Days To Your Advantage

The Work and Families Act was lauded as being advantageous to mums-to-be when it was introduced in 2007. After all, nine months of statutory maternity pay was available, with up to a year off work allowable. For the family, much more time and attention could be devoted to the task of getting ready, receiving and raising the child during these critical periods. 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. While employers must accept that pregnancy is possible and must accept the letters of the law, they must also be prepared to take on temporary staff as necessary to account for the woman on maternity leave. This is bound to cause a certain amount of disruption, but in the majority of situations, this is taken in stride.

There is a new clause available for the mum on maternity, allowing her to "keep in touch" through the allocation of 10 legislatively permitted days, during which she can attend work and receive a certain number of payments. 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. In an ideal scenario, we would not want the business to suffer in any way and we would not want Mum to be at a disadvantage of any kind when it comes to her career, due to the fact that she was involved in a pivotal project. In this case, she may simply be "behind" in terms of time spent progressing.

Keeping in touch also will allow mum to interact with her temporary replacement and that could potentially help to smooth over any issues or problems that may arise without this type of informal supervision.

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. Don't forget that this can be a nice little boost, financially.

As an extended period away from your work can be challenging indeed, you may well have to seek out professional coaching to give you a good idea how to approach it. Generally, online life coaching helps us to cope with significant issues that arise in our daily lives and coaching for women can really help in this case, to balance personal and business issues.

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!