@emxcore Exactly. It disproportionately affects women but if you carved out an exception for pregnancy, the discrimination would be against everyone else on any other type of leave. Bonuses are incentives and as such need to be structured in such a way. It's a fact of life. This is an important factor to consider. If you are able to use PTO, it could serve to lessen the negative impact
@mh86 I'm sorry, OP and yes this is fairly common. My bonus's are calculated based on how much the company actually pays me for the year. I am lucky to have 8 weeks paid maternity leave by the company which will be included in the bonus calculation. But the 4 weeks I am being paid through STD and not the company will not be counted.
@mh86 It's official policy at my company and very up front. The reasoning is that bonus is based on impact and I wasn't making an impact during leave . My stock grant and merit increase were not affected.
@mh86 I work for a large company famous for its generous leave policies and a frequent best place to work list company and they do this for bonuses. However, what they don’t do is prorate your raises so you get the full raise and just take the one time hit for bonuses, so your future earning potential is not affected.
@mh86 I work in compensation and our company policy is this: paid leave gets 100% of bonus. Unpaid leave does not get any of the bonus if it’s paid out while you’re gone.
@mh86 It would be if someone is out on an extended leave of absence and is not getting paid during that time. If they worked 11 months of the year, but take an unpaid leave of absence for all of month 12 ..and the bonus check is cut on December 31st, then they would not get any bonus. Maternity leave isn’t part of that category at my company. Maternity is a paid LOA.
@mh86 This is typical. My company only this year changed the policy that you will not be pro-rated a bonus if you are on maternity leave. You will just not accrue PTO or sick leave
@mh86 My company does this too. Bonuses are pro-rated for periods of paid leave. The paid leave is the perk. They also give a small stipend (like 3k) when returning from parental leave, meant to provide a tiny offset to those first couple months of childcare. I work in a company where most people don’t have kids (especially not young kids), and there’s a lot of judgement from the childless people toward parents who take parental leave and get paid during that time. It’s a shame.
@mh86 It’s really dumb. If you feel comfortable with your manager I would push back. My company did prorate mine. It was documented multiple times in the general benefits package and was brought up again when I started the leave process, so I knew it was coming. BUT my manager pushed for me to get a higher bonus percentage, so even though it was prorated for leave, the higher percentage made it so I still received the equivalent of what my bonus would have been if it was standard percentage and wasn’t prorated. It’s dumb that she had to do that, but I’m happy to have a manager that gets it.
@lindakaye49 That’s great she was able to do it! Apparently it in the general handbook but no one mentioned it when I started leave. My boss had to take an extended loa following and injury a few years ago so I’m curious if his was deducted too. He’ll be the first to admit our leaves are totally different. His was a shock and we all had to scramble to cover for him (we were in the same position back then) and since mine was known, we had everything planned and ready when I actually left so it was really easy for my coworkers to run my jobs off the side of their desk while I was out.
@mh86 Ohhh I’d also be so curious to know if his leave impacted it! That would be even more messed up if only maternity leave was impacted. I hate when employers expect you to know about a single sentence in a giant handbook, it’s something that should be mentioned explicitly especially if it impacts your pay. Sorry you’re dealing with this, I hope you get some good resolution!
@lindakaye49 His was deducted because he was 2 days over the limit. I just got off the phone with him and he’s working to make it right and feels horrible he didn’t warn me about this since he got burned in the past.
. My stock grant and merit increase were not affected.