TOPIC

Maternity Leaves - an
employee’s right, but an
ORGANIZATION Organizational challenge:
BEHAVIOUR PROJECT
Sunilkumar Shingala – 189278034

Danish Kumar -189278041

re
Maternity Leaves - an employee’s right, but an Organizational challenge:

About the topic

Government has increased maternity leaves from 3 months to 6 months. Although Maternity Leaves
is Employee’s right but it’s an Organizational challenge as well, we would like to probe this topic
further based on following criteria.

1. Obligations and responsibility transfer before going to maternity leave

2. Perception of growth opportunity after coming back from maternity leaves

Research Objective:

We researched the differences in the challenges faced by employee at two levels.

a) Large organization (more than 8,000 employees) v/s small organization (400-500 employees)
b) Formal environment v/s Informal environment

Key Performance Indicators to be evaluated upon:

Obligations and responsibility transfer before going to maternity leave

1. Attitude of colleagues
2. Health and safety Issue
3. Productivity Issues
4. Temporary vacancy and work load distribution

Growth opportunity after coming back from maternity leaves

1. Growth Perception of employee

2. Appraisal evaluation
3. Support from colleague and employers before and after maternity leave
4. Requisite infrastructure in form of child care

To evaluate above KPIs, we have designed survey questioner for focused group interview to evaluate
the what challenges employee and employer face during maternity leaves.

We have done two focused group interview to evaluate the same which responses to questioner are
as follow.
(a and b are female employees from Analytics Quotient and Tata Consultancy Services respectively,
who had gone for maternity leaves)

 Focused interview Survey Question: for Employee

1. How supportive was your employer when you told that you were pregnant/planning on
taking maternity leave?
Respondent A: We felt lack of support from colleagues being a small company with 400-
500 employees there is always lack of resources. Thus, a lot of focus was given on
responsibility and knowledge transfer.
 Respondent B: As company has larger resources, It was easy for me to delegate my work
responsibility and employer was supportive for taking full 6 month leaves.

2. What do you think your employer (boss/supervisor) thinks of your decision to take
maternity leave? (Higher no indicates better support and friendliness)
Respondent A: Neutral, work not suffer which cause him uneasy
Respondent B: Supportive and also give added benefit of reduced workload in difficult
days.

3. What do you think your co-workers think of your decision to take maternity leave? (Higher
no indicates better support and friendliness)
Respondent A: they are happy, but somewhat frustrated for extra work load

Respondent B: Supportive and happy, Somewhat frustrated for need of recruitment and
training of new member can cause lag in project

4. Has any co-workers said anything (criticized or passed remarks) to you about your decision
to take maternity leave? (Higher no indicates higher rudeness)
Respondent A: No
Respondent B: No

5. How supportive your co-workers are in responsibility transfer, knowledge transfer and
taking higher work load?

Respondent A: Not much supportive in terms of work load, but they don’t have choice,
so they sometime became rude in behaviour
Respondent B: They are supportive, No problem in transfer and delegation of work, but
found little uneasiness and frustration during additional responsibility transfer

6. How supportive your employer and co-worker are during your maternity leaves?

Respondent A: Little beat supportive, I have to co-ordinating with team and clients
Respondent B: They isolated me from company’s work like I am not joining back.

After maternity leave

7. How supportive your employer and co-worker are after you came back from maternity
leaves?
Respondent A: Quite supportive, they are happy , give support to pace me up to my tasks
Respondent B: They were supportive and gave support to patch with my task

8. How easy do you think to take responsibility after coming back from maternity leaves?
Respondent A: It is very difficult as I lose touch and you have catch up all progress and
changes in short period.
Respondent B: There is a gap between work, it takes time to regain understanding and
co-operations between different stack-holders.
9. Do you think that maternity leaves affect your future growth and responsibility?
Respondent A: It does slightly affect overall growth, for sometime organization think as
me as a liability.
Respondent B: It might deaccelerate for some time, but not for long term.

10. Do your employer provide sufficient infrastructural needs in form of child care for after
maternity support?
Respondent A: not being provided with lactation breaks and adequate facilities at work.
Respondent B: Some additional support in terms of flexible schedule and facilities.

 Focused interview: Employer

How do you ensure positive work environment persists before and after employee goes to
maternity leaves?

In terms of employee motivation there are two issues:

a) For the mother we ensure flexible work hours so that she can timely attend all the health
check-ups so that all employee’s motivation remain intact.
b) We also ensure that before maternity they are not being stressed due to balance
between work and family.
c) And to maintain team spirit and morale of other employee we provide additional
employee allocation so that no one feel overstressed.

 When an employee goes for maternity leaves, what challenges do you-organization face?

a) Manpower crisis, for small team you have to add new team members to reduce over
stressing of the employee or transfer of employee temporary.
For large team employee have to work extra to accommodate workload.
b) To maintain employee motivated and not feel frustrated due to additional despicability
we also provide overtime work benefits.

 Do you feel higher work stress on co-workers due to absence of employee on maternity
leaves?

Yes, responsibility transfer and knowledge transfer require time and extra commitment for
the team members who some time found it frustrating and which cause in dissatisfaction
and reduction in morale.

 Do you see any infrastructure gap in your organization with respect to child care?

Yes, sometime mother requires flexible schedule and some additional care facilities
which can’t promptly provide to them which can cause uneasiness and health issue.
Leave procedure and challenges in smaller and larger organization:
Larger Organization:
Formal leaves- Easy to take 6month maternity leaves and better support from colleagues
Informal Leaves – Due to larger workforce relatively less hassle for additional leaves.

Smaller Organization:
Formal leaves- Difficult due to responsibility and knowledge transfer to take 6month maternity
leaves and less support from colleagues
Informal Leaves – It’s more depend on colleague’s discretion and support

Learnings:
1. In large organization we found that there were minor hiccups for employee to
transferring her responsibility because of relative higher availability of resources than
smaller organizations.
2. Formal infrastructure was laid out in more structured manner with clearly defined policies
and also regular diversity training of employees. Informally in small organizations employees
being part of small teams felt additional pressure in terms of training new resources and
finding the right fit.

Observations:
Based on interview, we synthesize following organizational issues are surrounded to maternity leaves.

1. Negative attitudes from employers and co-workers

Women reported they had experienced negative attitudes in the workplace because they
were pregnant, requested or took parental leave, and upon their return to work.

2. Health and safety issues

employees were sometimes denied requests for extra breaks, leaves for maternity care and
flexible work schedule to accommodate motherhood pressure.
Also lack of child care infra structure cause health and safety issues.

3. Changes to work conditions and duties

pregnant women and mothers returning to work experienced changes to work conditions, as
well as changes to their workload or duties which negatively impacted on them.

4. Hamper the future growth and advancement opportunities

Women reported missing out on promotions and career advancement opportunities, such as
training, further education and leadership development, because they were pregnant, on
parental leave.