Maternity leave

I have a new secretary who has been with me for about a year and I would like to keep her. She is expecting and due in early September. Thanked her for avoiding tax season. I have no FMLA nor state requirements for any paid leave. She will get 1 weeks paid vacation that she can use anytime. We only have 3 employee's so we can't afford a lot, but I want to be fair and retain here. What do you who are in similar situations do?

My prior assistant was with me for three years when she had her second child - she had some PTO that she used up, and the rest was unpaid. The baby was born in Sept, so she took off all of Sept and Oct, and worked part-time for the rest of the year, and went back to full-time in Jan.

We're a two-person shop, so I was flying solo for a while. She was a great employee who only left for family reasons.

Bid her farewell. She has a new job for the next several years.

Unpaid leave. When I had my baby, I had nine weeks of accrued PTO. It is what it is and I worked for a hospital. If she's a good employee, you can offer her flexible schedules or part-time when she returns.

For such a small business, it can be really tough to cover this, and if you do it for one you have to do it for all (or risk angering your other employees).

Have you considered offering short-term disability insurance as a part of your compensation package? It won't help for this employee, of course, but for the future...