I can’t believe I did it again! I finally found a decent employee who has been here for a month and is almost up to speed and now she let me know that she’s 3 months pregnant. It’s a little better than the last time when my employee was hired at 6 months but it’s still going to bankrupt me!
I know I shouldn’t be complaining because:
-I live in the US so there is no mandatory maternity leave/pay
-I live in Virginia so it’s an at will state and the only applicable laws are Federal
-I only have 2 employees and she’s only been here a month so FMLA does not apply
-I only have 2 employees so the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act) does not apply
-I don’t have any formal disability policy so although ADA requires me to treat her the same as somebody with any other disability I have no requirements previously established.
That said, I don’t want to lose a good employee. However, even with all the above, I can’t fire her (and I don’t want to). I still plan to let her use any accrued vacation and sick leave. However, I either have to hire another employee and train them before she goes on leave, which will increase my employee costs by 50% or hire a temp at 1 1/2 times her salary, which will increase my costs even more.
If I hire a temp, I run the risk that she won’t come back. If I hire a new worker, and she wants to come back, I either have to fire the new worker or tell her that I am not holding her job for the 6-8 weeks she wants.
On top of all this, I feel bad because most of her leave will be unpaid and I know that in most countries she would get several months of paid leave. What I don’t understand is how these employers do it. I couldn’t possibly afford to pay a worker on maternity leave salary and benefits for several months and at the same time pay a replacement for several months. Do small business owners in other countries just have tens of thousands of dollars lying around to cover this situation? If I have to kick in that much from what I pay myself, I can’t afford my mortgage.
Meanwhile, my other employee has told me in no uncertain terms that she cannot do double work for 6-8 weeks and I don’t blame her. The only reason this even came to light was because she requested vacation time in July and the new employee told her that she would also be off in July.
I know I hold all the cards here but I still feel like crap. I hate saying to somebody that if they go on maternity leave (which is unpaid) that they won’t have a job to come back to afterwards.
Is the work of a kind wherein there are consulting companies that can put a person in place quickly and then leave in 6-8 mos? (Contract Houses).
If so, now would be a good time to develop a relationship with one or two of these companies.
Eventually, you’ll want the home contact data for a few good people - just don’t trip non-compete. Do that and nobody will touch you again.
Generally in those countries the pay comes from a national or regional fund, that is, from the government which means it’s been paid for with taxes. Often it’s the same fund that pays for unemployment subsidies, retraining of unemployed people and/or UHC. The employer may provide additional funds if the employee is at the subsidy’s cap. And there comes a point where the leave becomes unpaid: if the law pays for a month, and the employer wants two, the company may grant the extra month but will generally do so as unpaid leave.
If there are enough work hours in a week is it feasible to hire a third person and cut the hours for the other two people?
For example if your 2 employees work 30 hours per week for a total of 60 hours, could you hire a third and have each work 20 hours per week? This would increase your payroll time but give you a larger pool of employees which hopefully won’t leave you stretched when an employee needs time off or requests a vacation.
To expand on what Nava said, in Canada, parental leave is run through the federal Employment Insurance programme. Each pay period, the employer deducts a set portion from each employee’s wages, and makes the employer’s matching payment, and sends them to the EI system.
When the employee goes on parental leave, the employee files a claim with EI, and if the employee has made enough contributions to qualify, the EI fund pays parental benefits to the employee, for up to a year. The employer does not have to pay the employee anything while the employee is on leave. Labour standards laws do require the employer to keep the employee’s job available for when the employee comes back.
This isn’t tied in any way to the size of the employer’s work-force, nor is it linked to full-time/part-time, or long-term/contract employees. Everyone who is working pays into the EI fund.
She works for a very small business. You have an obligation to yourself and your other staffer to keep the business going. And she did choose to get pregnant. If she doesn’t see this coming she should.
I had a similar situation in a large company with an intern. The rules said the intern had to be registered for classes and taking classes to keep the job. When she took a semester off to have the baby, I couldn’t keep her on. Felt bad, it was a great job for her, but on the other hand, didn’t, because had she been fantastic at what she did, we would have found a way to transition her somewhere to a “real” employee - but no one would bring her into open headcount as she hadn’t spent her internship cultivating a good impression and creating relationships (she did her job, showed no initiative whatsoever to do anything more than her job).
Let her know that you won’t be able to manage keeping her position open through leave, but you think she’s fantastic, and, if the planets align, would really like to bring her back when you are able.
And yeah, lack of decent U.S. centralized universal health care and maternity leave sucks for small businesses (and quite honestly, large ones). And hiding it in some sort of central government run fund means everyone pays for it in taxes, but everyone pays for it now - in higher prices, efficiency losses, strained families and less than optimal use of talented women.
Yeah, I had an aquaintance who ran a small gay porn film business in Canada. He really complained about all the money he paid into the ‘pregnancy fund’, which none of his employees would ever use.
I told him to look at how much of his property taxes went to provide schools for kids, also something his employees weren’t likely to produce. That didn’t make him any happier.
I have a feeling the “pregnanacy fund” also covers paternity leave including leave time during the adoption of a child.
As for childless people’s taxes paying for schools, it is still in their interest. Where do you think future doctors, accountants, other people whose services he will need will come from?
In Canada there is no “pregnancy fund”, just Employment Insurance. It is used for any eligible loss of job. I have used it three times myself. Once when I moved from Winnipeg to New Brunswick in search of work (kind of going against the flow on that one), once when I was laid off, and once when my daughter was born. There really is no way to accurately portray your EI contributions as paying into a “pregnancy fund”.
As for the school taxes, even before my daughter was born I have always thought of that as paying for the education I received. This way of thinking also allows the rationalization that if I am paying more taxes then I must be earning more and so the education was ultimately more beneficial to me than to someone making less and paying less taxes.
There is no “pregnancy fund” in Canada. There is the Employment Insurance fund, which as mentioned earlier, is funded by payroll contributions from all employees and employers.
That fund pays benefits to anyone who has lost their job, or is on disability in a workplace that doesn’t have lengthy sick leave benefits.
So far as I know, gay people are just as likely to lose a job or get sick as straights, and therefore benefit from the fund.
And, as Osiris and Cyros mentioned, the EI fund pays for parental leave, not just maternity leave. Gays who become parents (eg surrogacy or adoption) have the same rights to parental leave benefits as straight parents.
I think Psycobunny mentioned using a temp/contract person, however as they said, it is 1 1/2 more expensive.
I currently work in a startup, (40+ people though) and we often use the agency/temp providers to get through peaks in activity, and occasionally to screen for new employees as we grow and hedging against uncertainty, ( and yes screwing up on the non compete is a great way to mess things up) . Temp/contract houses are a great option with flexibility, but you pay for that flexibility.
There’s no good answer to this. Businesses are just in a real bind when it comes to the initial steps of growth because you’re so dependent on a small number of people. If you have 100 employees, then you expect a certain percent to get pregnant and everyone else can pick up 30 minutes of their job and keep it all running smoothly. But at 1 employee, you are either at 100% staffing or 0% staffing depending on their situation.
Generally, I recommend the temp worker, because:
No unemployment responsibility. Most states not only tax you on an employee, but they raise your rate on all employees if you have high turnover. So you wind up paying twice - now on the new employee and later on every employee.
Temp agencies have already done some hiring and screening work for you. This saves you what could easily be 20 hours (or more) of posting job listing, reviewing resumes and doing interviews.
Many temps are used to stepping into a job and learning everything from scratch. Other potential employees… not necessarily. I’m amazed at the number of people who want to argue about how every aspect of their job is done.
There is a chance in that scenario that the temp, who has now received at least some background/training, will work out as the permanent replacement. Your bankruptcy is not yet assured.
Yes, and that risk exists no matter what the OP does. It does seem the temp is the best option. Yeah, it’s 1.5 times the cost, but it’s also only for 6-8 weeks.
I didn’t mean to abandon this. I do realize that I can hire a temp but to be honest, I can’t afford the cost. I don’t think I would feel so bad if she wasn’t such a good employee. The last time this happened, I hired somebody who was 6 months pregnant (I had no clue) but she only took 3 weeks off because she needed the job, and I had a part-timer who was able to fill in.
This is getting to me because the backstory is that I downsized to 2 employees because I really couldn’t affore 2 1/2 FTEs. My other employee (#1) (who has been with me for >10 years) was going on vacation, which she had requested over a year in advance. Employee #2 (who I would probably have fired after #1’s vacation anyway)quit 2 weeks before this vacation with 2 days’ notice. I then had 2 short weeks (over the holidays) to find, hire and train this employee and then throw her into the deep end working alone with just her and me for 2 weeks until Employee#1 came back. Employee #1 did a stellar job of training her enough to keep up and we managed to muddle through and now I am back to 2 employees and she is getting the full training and Employee #1 just asked for vacation time in 6 months for a family event, which is how I actually found out about all of this. It seems that every time I get my employment situation set, something throws a wrench into the works.
Could you hire your own temp? A friend who is a stay at home mom to kids in school who’d spend six weeks filling in part time? Someone you know who is unemployed who’d like six weeks of work and would be willing to help out? If its over the Summer (and it sounds like maternity leave might be) a friend’s college age kid who needs a Summer job?
Yes - at your employee’s on leave at a convenient time of year for hiring temps.
Have you hired temps before and know that they’ll definitely cost more? I ask because in some fields they cost a lot less because you can take a risk on someone unqualified and inexperienced when it’s for such a short time, and they generally cost less.
I just wanted to update this.
My employee went on maternity leave. I hired a friend of hers who had worked with her to fill in. Said friend lasted 2 weeks before her daycare fell through and I had to let her go because bringing her child to work was not an option for me (although she wanted to).
It is now 8 weeks and I have not heard from my employee. We even sent her a card from the office with a small gift for the baby and did not hear back.
I am sending the following message:
*Dear employee:
It has been 8 weeks since you left on maternity leave. Since we have heard nothing from you about your work plans and have not received any indication that you intend to return, I can only assume that you are not planning to come back to work here. Therefore, I have gone ahead and hired a replacement. I do wish you well in whatever your future plans will be and if you want at some time in the future to consider part-time work, we would be glad to be able to use your help as back-up for staff vacations and emergencies. I am also glad to provide a reference should you need it in the future.
Sincerely,
Employer*
I am sort of dreading having her call back and say that she never intended to leave and that she just assumed we would hold her job but frankly I’m a little upset that we have had NO contact despite reaching out to her with a card and sending her messages via her friend (while she worked here). I know I’m a wimp but I just can’t bring myself to call her up and fire her on the telephone.
How sure are you the friend was relaying your messages? How did you leave it when she left- did you tell her you expected her to confirm later she was returning or was there an agreement about a tentative return date? It seems a little rough to fire her without actually speaking to her yourself.
