Maternity Leave Extensions: How Should Management Handle Resignations After Return?

Hi Friends, the employees who go on maternity leave often ask for an extension of leave for a couple of days by producing a medical certificate. As per the act, this is permissible. However, the same employee, after extending the leave, sometimes returns and resigns.

Is This Ethical?

How should management act in such situations? Can any policies be framed to prevent such occurrences? Kindly suggest.

Thanks,
Vijaya Rani

There is not much you can do about this. The law is heavily loaded in favor of women workers, and they often take advantage of it. Any extension of maternity leave is, in any case, unpaid, so there is no specific loss in it. However, they block a position in your payroll, which means you cannot recruit someone else in their place, and work suffers. What you can do is insist on the completion of the full notice period without a notice buyout provision and mark them as absconding if they do not serve the notice period. Other than that, anything you do will generally be struck down by the courts as invalid.