Employees favor breastfeeding-friendly policies

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Most employees have positive views of workplace policies that help women keep up breastfeeding after they return to the job, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that among 407 employees at a large U.S. corporation, most looked favorably on such accommodations -- including giving women a designated area to breastfeed or pump breast milk during the work day, or covering lactation services under the employee health plan.

The findings, while based on only one company, suggest that "a corporate environment designed to enable and encourage continued breastfeeding does not endanger positive attitudes toward breastfeeding in other employees," the researchers report in the International Breastfeeding Journal.

For the study, researchers led by Kathryn Suyes of the Virginia Department of Health in Richmond used an online survey to gauge breastfeeding experiences and attitudes of employees at a large corporation with "family-friendly" policies.

Those policies included services like on-site daycare, flexible work schedules and paid family medical leave.

The survey asked workers to rate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with various statements on workplace breastfeeding policies -- such as "Allowing women to breastfeed in the workplace will interfere with productivity," and "Allowing women to breastfeed in the workplace will decrease absenteeism."

Overall, the researchers found, 40 percent of the workers said they or a spouse had breastfed at some point during their time with the company; 76 percent said they knew at least one co-worker who had used a breast pump or breastfed during the work day.

And on average, employees held positive views on workplace breastfeeding accommodations -- typically agreeing that the policies attracted job candidates and kept current employees happy, and disagreeing with the idea that they harmed productivity.

Employees who knew a co-worker who'd breastfed or used a breast pump at work were particularly likely to favor such policies.

The results, according to Suyes and her colleagues, suggest that most employees do not react negatively when they see a breastfeeding co-worker receive "special services."

However, they add, given that the findings come from one corporation, it's not clear whether the same attitudes would be seen at other companies or across industries.

SOURCE: International Breastfeeding Journal, October 20, 2008.