Worksite Breastfeeding Connection

Breastfed babies are healthy babies and healthy babies are good for business. Healthy babies mean fewer medical expenses, which is a tremendous financial incentive for a self-insured company. Companies that promote and support breastfeeding for their employees save money and increase productivity! Both employees and employers benefit from lactation programs in the workplace.

Benefits to the Employer

• Reduced staff turnover and loss of skilled workers after the birth of a child
• Reduced sick time/personal leave for breastfeeding women because their infants are more resistant to illness
• Lower health care costs associated with healthier, breastfed infants
• Higher job productivity, employee satisfaction and morale
• Added recruitment incentive for women
• Enhanced reputation as a company concerned for the welfare of its employees and their families

An absence of just one day costs the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power average $360 (for a $15 per hour employee). And it takes one and one-half days to have someone else do that employee’s work.

"It works to everyone’s advantage to show people that we really care about them and their babies," says Tory Arriaga, a nurse at PanEnergy Corp, Houston. "The Company wins because we’ve got an employee who is very happy and who is probably gong to have less sick time and a healthier baby at home."

"This newfound corporate interest arises from studies showing breast-fed babies have fewer minor illnesses. Sick babies pile up medical bills and frequently keep their mothers and fathers out of work. Providing new mothers with a private room, breast pumps, refrigerators and an extra break or two a day becomes a money-saving proposition."

Benefits to the Employee

• Facilitates the mother’s postpartum recovery
• Reduces the incidence and severity of allergies and of ear and respiratory infections in infants, which translates into less time off and sick leave taken
• Provides the most complete, easily digested, convenient and economical source of nourishment for infants
• Creates a special closeness between mother and infant
• Enhances the mother’s self-esteem and confidence
• May lessen the risk of breast cancer
• See Benefits of Breastfeeding article for an inclusive list.

"Providing the opportunity and the resources for new mothers to be able to continue breastfeeding after they return to work enhances employee morale and productivity".

"I’ve continued to nurse my daughter because this service is available," says Kim Trepton, 29, an executive recruiter who uses the lactation room at First Chicago NBD, Chicago, to provide milk for her 5-month-old daughter.

There are three essential requirements to ensure that employees can successfully combine work and breastfeeding:

Time: Allow employees sufficient break time to pump, or provide flexible work hours.

Space: Have available comfortable, clean and private space for expression and storing breastmilk or provide nearby or on-site child care so that employees can breastfeed on break and lunch.

Support: Develop "mother-friendly" workplace policies, improve attitudes towards breastfeeding by educating workers and management about the benefits of breastfeeding.

Use of Breastfeeding Fact Sheets developed by The Breastfeeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles

The Breastfeeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles has developed the Breastfeeding Fact Sheets as a service, and site visitors are welcomed and encouraged to use them. If the Breastfeeding Fact Sheets are used "as is", we request that the Breastfeeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles be credited. If the Breastfeeding Fact Sheets are modified or adapted, we request that we be credited as "adapted from ...", and that a copy of the adapted material be sent to us. Site visitors are also encouraged to draw upon and use the information contained in the Breastfeeding Fact Sheets as resource material to support their efforts to promote, support and protect breastfeeding.