Being a woman surely comes with lots of roles and responsibilities. As more women join the workplace, many of them work while menstruating. With all the duties and amount of work, dealing with menstruation never helps.
While some women experience little discomfort during their menstrual cycle, others have substantial pain, stress, and bloating. In addition to the physical difficulties, a woman contends with constant headaches, a roller coaster of mood swings, frustration, and anxiety, making it difficult to get through the day.
It would be naive to believe that these two things will not come into conflict at some point in their lives, or that it will not affect some part of their working schedule over the week. It would make sense for a company to be engaged and truly concerned about a woman's cycle as it would definitely affect the productivity and functioning of the whole organization. Therefore, every workforce must adopt some changes or develop new policies now that women are in the workforce.
Here are a few suggestions for the policies that should be adopted by the companies to ensure the well-being of their women employees
● Providing free menstrual products: Like toilet paper or tissue paper is provided as the toiletries in the company for free, the menstrual products should also be provided for every menstruating employee working in the company. Often working employee gets their periods during working hours and gets stressed due to not having access to a sanitary product. This causes unnecessary stress to the employee.
● Provide toilet facility: To avoid having to walk to another level, there should be a woman's restroom on each floor, and there should be more cubicles per bathroom to guarantee that less time is spent waiting. Additionally, each toilet should be kept clean in order to prevent the spread of urinary infections and other illnesses, and sanitary bins should be present in all toilets.
● Menstrual leave: Paid Menstrual leaves should be provided to every woman employee going through menstruation and the leaves should not be counted as sick leave.
● Stress Management: Stress may have a significant impact on our physical, mental as well as emotional health. It also impacts creativity, productivity, and overall employee engagement. Work is obviously going to cause stress, and with menstruation going on it is set to cause extra stress, anxiety, and mood swings. Therefore, helping your employees manage stress is important to create a period-friendly workplace. It is not only the smart thing to do that eventually benefits the company's productivity and success, but it also conveys a message that an employee's well-being is considered and respected.
(Jyoti Garg is Director- Human Resource, Cargo-Partner (India)--logistics service provider)
