How to be smart with your maternity leave holiday days

Whether you’ve just started your maternity leave or it’s gone past in a whirlwind and is drawing to a close, knowing what your rights are when you return to work will help you feel more in control of your future life as a parent. So cluing yourself up on the best ways to use your accrued holiday is a great place to start.

You may or may not have realised that while you’re on maternity leave you accrue holiday at the same rate you would have had you stayed in your previous working pattern. So if you take the full 52 weeks of maternity leave and you usually have a holiday allowance of 25 days for the year, for example, you’ll be allowed to carry that over and use it when you return to work. Legally you have up to your next holiday year to use up to 28 days of accrued annual leave.

So what’s the smartest use of that juicy month or more off? Nugget has a page dedicated to maternity leave on TikTok to help empower women after the transition from working a paid role to full-time motherhood, and the channel’s latest video helpfully clues you in on how to hack your accrued holiday in the best way. So take new new parents.

Co-founder of Nugget, Kate recommends two ways of hacking your leave. Number one: “You might want to use that time to make your role part-time for the first few months of returning to work,” she suggests. Recommending: “ For example you could go back four days a week and take every Friday off. This would be a good work around if your employer had refused your flexible working request.”

As for the second suggestion that people with babies might not have thought of: “If you have already decided that you’re not going to return to work after your maternity leave, make sure that you do not give in your notice until the last minute,” Kate advises. “Obviously make sure that you comply with notice periods that say that you can accrue all that holiday and then get paid in a lump sum when you leave.”

Handy.