All pregnant employees are legally entitled to take up to 52 weeks’ statutory maternity leave, made up of 26 weeks’ Ordinary Maternity Leave and 26 week’s Additional Maternity Leave, provided it is a single continuous period of leave. Employers can appreciate that this is a significant period of time to be out of work and its employees can feel isolated and disconnected from the workplace during this period. Therefore, there is benefit to keeping employees engaged with the work through keeping in touch (KIT) days.

It can be agreed with employers, prior to an employee going on maternity leave, to work during their statutory maternity leave for up to ten days’ which are known as KIT days, provided this is done on a voluntary basis by the employee. As long as that the employee does not use a KIT day during her compulsory maternity leave (being the first two weeks’ leave after birth of the child), they can be used at any point during the statutory maternity leave.

The employee can work the ten KIT days without losing any statutory maternity pay. However, if the employee takes more than ten KIT days and does any further work for the employer beyond this, then she will lose a week’s statutory maternity pay for the week in which the work was done. This remains the case if the employee works her tenth KIT day the same week she works beyond that limit - the week’s statutory maternity pay will be lost.

Given the consequence of loss of statutory maternity pay for going over the ten KIT days, it is important that employers liaise with their employee on how to utilise the ten KIT days in an efficient way without going beyond this limit. This can be done by spreading the KIT days across the full length of statutory maternity leave the employee plans to take and having reasonable contact with the employee through her leave, particularly in relation to promotion opportunities, organisational change and redundancy situations.

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HR Toolkit | eLearning Course

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