When is maternity pay calculated
This is the last date by which the employee must inform the employer of the fact that they are pregnant, their expected week of childbirth almost always submitted on a form MAT B1 and their intended maternity leave start date. Maternity leave cannot ordinarily commence until this date which is 11 weeks before the expected week of childbirth.
However, if the baby is born before this date, maternity leave automatically starts on the day after childbirth. Maternity leave will start automatically if the employee is absent from work for a pregnancy related reason on or after this date which is 4 weeks before the expected week of childbirth. Your employees are entitled to SML no matter how long they have worked for you, how many hours they work or how much you pay them.
You want to support your employee at this exciting time, but losing a key employee for so long puts pressure on any business. You also need to be mindful of issues relating to unfair dismissal, redundancy and discrimination. We can help you manage all aspects of the process from maternity leave to arranging cover and return to work processes.
About Us. Free Resources. Terms and Conditions. Citation Limited Privacy Information. Home Maternity Calculator. For babies born before or during the qualifying week, the 8 week relevant period is the period between the last normal payday on or before the Saturday of the week before the baby is born, and the day after the last normal payday falling at least 8 weeks before. The start of the relevant period is the day after the last normal payday falling at least 8 weeks before the end of the relevant period.
Add up all the earnings paid between 17 October to 11 December and divide by 8 the number of weeks in the relevant period.
Divide the earnings by the number of weeks wages actually paid, not the number of weeks in the relevant period. This may happen if you pay your employee fortnightly or 4 weekly. Divide the earnings by the number of whole weeks in the relevant period.
This only applies to regular payments of earnings paid other than on their normal date, such as due to a bank holiday. If your employee was on furlough and you paid them with help from the scheme during any part of the relevant 8 week period, there are different rules about how you work out their AWE. The earnings used to work out their AWE for the part of the 8 week period that they were on furlough will be the higher of either what they:.
You should also consider payments the employee was due to receive in the relevant period that would have been classed as earnings. This could include:. No changes to how you work out their AWE will be needed where:. Always calculate AWE based on all earnings actually paid to the employee within the relevant period, regardless of any over or underpaid wages in that period.
Where over or under payments of wages occur within the relevant period, you must include the overpaid or underpaid amount in the AWE calculation for deciding if SMP is due. When you have worked out the AWE , work out how much SMP is due and pay it on the same day that you would normally pay wages and for the same period.
You can pay SMP in part weeks if it helps to align the payments to your employees normal pay period. Divide the weekly rate by 7 and multiply by the number of days for which SMP is due in the week or month. For example, if the pay period covers the end of one month and the beginning of the next 2 days in April and 5 days at the beginning of May then pay two-sevenths in one month and five-sevenths at the beginning of the next month. The worker is an employee. Results are as follows:. Main Modal Search.
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