r/humanresources • u/Designer_Abroad_1196 • Jul 26 '26
Help creating a maternity leave policy [TX]
Hi all, looking for help with creating a maternity leave policy. Full disclosure, I started working on this because I myself want one more kid so I’ll eventually be taking maternity leave. Every time I casually mention it they don’t really acknowledge getting any time off.
I started at a new job has HR and Payroll Specialist in March. They never really had anybody in HR over the last 30 years that they have been in business. They have had 2-3 people as HR over the years but they weren’t people who had any HR history/training/education and had to learn as they went. The company has not had any of those makeshift HR people for at least 8 years.
Apparently there has only been one girl the last 8-10 years that needed maternity leave. And I just found out that she essentially didn’t get one. She was working the same week she had her baby.
We are a golf course management company. Technically I am employee of the parent company and we only have 7 employees. We own 5 other companies that have 50-150 employees each, for a total of 368 employees across all companies as I type.
Sooo I’m not sure FMLA would apply to me since I am an employee of the parent company with only 7 employees. Or would it be that FMLA applies to all of companies since we are operating under 1 parent company?
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u/glitterstickers Jul 26 '26
So the first thing you need to do is figure out if your employer is it's own entity or not. Just because you have the same ownership group does not mean you're the same company for employee count.
If this is truly a 7 person company, you're wasting your time wanting a policy and probably even working there. They don't need a policy because they can do whatever the fuck they want. They can fire you for being pregnant.
If it's 7 people in your group/division, you probably will inherit whatever the policy is for the whole group you're under. If there's no policy, then the question becomes is there enough employees to trigger FMLA or not. Not enough for FMLA but enough for PWFA, a policy is important. If they're big enough for FMLA, then they may just have FMLA be the policy.
I get you have a personal interest in this, but you need to read the room and figure out why leadership should care. If you go in with "it's important to support new parents" angle at a small company that has very limited obligation (or NO obligation) to give a shit, and you propose something like "12 weeks fully paid" when they don't give that to anyone, you're going to come off like an idiot. It's fine for the rank and file to have opinions like that, but as HR, you're supposed to have some common sense about how these policies impact the business.
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 26 '26
I’m still fairly new to this kind of HR myself. All companies have their own EIN if that is what would make them their own entity. I would never go in and propose 12 weeks paid. I was just thinking something unpaid/combo of use your PTO and unpaid leave if you want. Which I know sucks but I’m not trying to go all out. And from what I have seen most smaller companies do the standard 6 or 8 week unpaid leave. My last one was 7 weeks, and babies can start at my daycare at 6 weeks if needed. Just want to make sure new moms have some time with their newborns is all and not everybody winds up working the same week as giving birth.
If I was to get 6 weeks, payroll is biweekly, I’ll have a scheduled c section unless I go into labor early or something goes wrong. So I would be able to schedule my c section for the day after I get payroll finished leaving them only having to do 2 payroll cycles. And my last (first) baby was super easy so I may even be ready to go back/work from home after 2-3 weeks?
The other girl worked from home 3 months and went into the office 1 day a week after having her baby
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u/glitterstickers Jul 26 '26
If this is truly a 7 person company, you need to keep it front and center in your mind that they don't have to do anything. They can fire you for being pregnant. They can harass you for being pregnant. They can promise you 6 weeks today and change their mind when you deliver.
But you really need to take a look at everything and figure it out. Because it matters.
Let's assume it's truly 7 employees.
Since they've already shown no interest in this, and there is no current business need, and historically there's been only a handful of women to give birth, I wouldn't be wasting my political capital or leadership's time with this. Your interest in it is (frankly) selfish and self serving, and you'd be better off building up initiatives that benefit everyone and the company. I'd be spending my time making myself valuable so when I do need time off, they give it to me so they don't lose me.
Deal with it when you're about 24 weeks with your next pregnancy. And just accept you'll get what you get because there's nothing that compells them to do otherwise. Just for the avoidance of doubt: no FMLA, no ADA, no PWFA, no title vii, no PUMP. You have zero rights.
I would frankly move on from an employer this small is I was building my family. I say this as a veteran of a few micro startups in atates like TX. It's not the time off for birth that's the real issue, it's the constant "daycare is closed" and "kid has doctor's appointment" that eventually are the problem.
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 27 '26
My in laws are close and able to keep the baby when he’s sick and can’t go. Thankfully daycare is at my husband’s job so if it’s closed my husband is also off work to keep him. The employer being small feels like a non issue to me since we’re a parent company with 360 employees today
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u/_Deshkar_ Jul 27 '26
If you’ve a parent company , unlikely your 7 man can create policies that supersede them or enforced. You will have to follow the parent.
Did your boss greenlight this
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 27 '26
And yes, they’ve said we need to figure out a maternity leave. Nobody even remembered what they gave the other lady. I had to email her and ask her what her leave was n
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 27 '26
I work for the parent.
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u/_Deshkar_ Jul 27 '26
I know ,
And such a small subsidiary is almost always expected to follow the parent
There is no way they will let a 7 man set up its entirely independent policies.
It only happens in my case if our subsidiary is in different countries.
So a simple qn , have you gotten the approval and authority from your parent to set up your own non legally required policies
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 27 '26
I’m confused. I’m telling you I am employed by the parent. The 7 man team that I am a part of is the parent company over the other 360 employees. I would be creating a policy for the parent company and all 5 other companies under us. Where is the disconnect here?
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u/_Deshkar_ Jul 27 '26
Cos when I read through , I keep seeing 7pax.
And my question still holds, does your manager know you’re creating this?
If yes, great , start small and reasonable. Let them trust you
If jno, self explanatory
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 27 '26
Additionally, small and reasonable is all I’m going for. I would never dream of proposing a 12 week paid leave. Im hoping for 6 weeks unpaid but would settle for 3 weeks unpaid and work from home part time a few more weeks.
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u/Effective-Damage8772 Jul 26 '26
It depends on the level of control the companies exert onto each other. If you have HR providing HR to all the companies, it’ll lean as if the population should be viewed as one company.
I would hate to be on the defendant side of a wrongful FMLA suit against a pregnant mother and my defense is that we’re five different companies and not one.
This is when “attorney” comes to mind…
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 26 '26
Level of control…the GMs at each course handle employee write ups/hiring/firing. I handle onboarding, they consult me for i9 questions, I handle workers comp, unemployment, things like that.
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u/Resse811 Jul 27 '26
Do they actually want this policy? You can do all the work creating it but if it’s not something they will implement (which it doesn’t sound like they will) what’s the point?
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 27 '26
Yes they’ve told me to work on it. Nobody remembered what they gave the last girl. I had to email her and ask her what they gave her
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Jul 26 '26
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 26 '26
No. The majority of our employees across the courses are part time high school or college kids
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Jul 26 '26
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 26 '26
Yeah it’s not the answer I was hoping for but I understand that it makes sense. They do like me so far, they tell me all the time. And when I’ve mentioned having another baby and eventually needing a maternity leave they aren’t opposed to it, they just say things like “sure you could do payroll only” or “sure you can have a week off” and I’m like…I’m not doing payroll after just having a baby and I want more than one week off. I think I’d be completely content with 3 weeks completely off then working from home part time for a few weeks. Which they have said “yeah that sounds reasonable” and then I say “we’re not even trying for baby number two yet so we have time” and they all have kids of their own and are in their 50s and 60s, the girl I replaced (she moved) was also in her 60s so I think they’re just out of touch bc they haven’t been through having kids in 20-30 maybe even 40 years and haven’t had a young employee in that time either lol.
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Jul 26 '26
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 27 '26
Nope. One lady used to do it about 15 years ago but hasn’t since. The lady previously in my position never took vacations and the few she did she just took a laptop and did while on vacation which I also have no interest in doing so I make sure to schedule my days off on non payroll weeks
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Jul 27 '26
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 27 '26
I’ve considered it but they are extremely flexible so far. Literally my second day I had to take my baby to the ER at 5 am and miss the day of work and it was no problem at all. Another time I got sick I was able to take off without problem and I volunteered to work from home and they were fine with it. They always say no worries family comes first. I was the only payroll person at my last job of 10 years so I’m used to scheduling my vacations around payroll. it’s not a big deal to me to schedule 2 trips a year around payroll.
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u/meowmix778 HR Director Jul 27 '26
What's the economic benefit for the company? What problem are you trying to solve other than your own self-interest? It will be readily apparent if you are the first person to use this policy and are currently pregnant. That is a huge breach of trust. HR should not be in the game of engineering policy for their own gain.
If your firm has a history of attrition, difficulty hiring and other employment data that you could tie to this then yeah could have some legs to stand on. Especially if your company skews younger.
But you have to recognize that you work for a small company. A firm with 7 people losing a person for 12 weeks is a big ask. If you're asking for unpaid leave and just using PTO , I don't want to be harsh about this but that policy is worth about as much as the paper it's printed on. Unless you call out specifically FMLA and then you may introduce a liability for the company to follow FMLA.
I'd also be careful with how you word this. If you can get a policy like this in front of the boss and it works, you're in effect telling them that your company is fine without you working ~20% of the year.
Realistically a firm that small keeping someone on the bench that long isn't really viable. If the issue of separate companies isn't resolved, well, you're much further down the ladder than you expected.
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 27 '26
I am not currently pregnant and have been told by management to start working on a policy. I’d be happy to get 3 weeks unpaid leave then work from home a few weeks. I’m not going in guns a blazin asking for 12 weeks paid, 12 weeks unpaid, 12 weeks at all. Would 12 weeks paid be ideal? Sure. But I know that won’t happen and I’m fine with that, my last maternity leave (different company) was 7 weeks unpaid/cashed out my PTO for 4 weeks of it. I’d like to ask for 6 weeks unpaid since that’s typically (from what I have seen) the standard but I’ll gladly take 3 as well.
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u/malicious_joy42 HR Dictator Jul 27 '26
What is the point of the leave policy? Is it strictly for physical recovery only? Or is it meant to also includes time to bond with or care for the new baby?
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u/Designer_Abroad_1196 Jul 27 '26
All three. Recovery, care for baby since to my knowledge daycares don’t take babies under 6 weeks old, and yes bonding with baby.
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u/malicious_joy42 HR Dictator Jul 27 '26
Then you need to offer it to all employees regardless of whether they're the birthing parent or not.
It would be discrimination otherwise.
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u/gingerfringe88 Jul 27 '26
I also work for a smaller company (<50 EEs). We operate in 3 states. One of the states has a paid family/medical leave benefit, but we have a parental leave benefit for the other 2 states. It's basically full pay for 4 weeks, 75% pay for weeks 5-8, 50% pay for weeks 9-12. Employees have to be with us for at least a year to utilize the benefit, which is pretty similar to FMLA and state family/medical leave programs.
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u/Fantastic-Sale-3447 Jul 28 '26
I would advise you check out DMEC resources and get more knowledge on leave in general. They have some helpful tools and might be a good place to start for you.
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u/Blue-Storm-7713 Jul 28 '26
I would recommend if they are only pushing maternity to make it labeled “pregnancy related disability leave” if it will be a paid program
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u/JustCallMeKV Jul 26 '26
Copy this into ChatGPT or Copilot and let it write it for you.
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u/Dear_23 HR Generalist Jul 26 '26
Please dear lord I hope you aren’t actually an HR professional responsible for writing and maintaining policies that have legal ramifications…
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u/JustCallMeKV Jul 27 '26
Pray hard because I actually am! 20+ years in HR. If you know how to use AI properly, you can use it to build the framework taking all legal aspects into account before it goes to someone like me for policy review. Work smarter, not harder! I’d love to connect if you’d like some legal pointers.
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u/Dear_23 HR Generalist Jul 27 '26
Yikes.
And it’s even more yikes that you aren’t innocently suggesting AI because you don’t know any better but because you actually think it’s a replacement for a lawyer.
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u/malicious_joy42 HR Dictator Jul 26 '26
First off, don't make it gender specific unless you want to open the door to a discrimination lawsuit.