Dive Brief:
- Twitter is the latest company to announce that it will help working moms ship their breast milk back home when they are away on business trips, reports Fortune. Others on board: IBM, Accenture, and EY (who said they have offered the benefit for eight years).
- For many women, the benefit is “a game-changer,” says Fortune, especially for those who must return to work early and still want to breastfeed their babies. Milk pumping tends to be an onerous, but necessary, affair for nursing women to maintain milk production.
- While only nine women used the perk during the program’s pilot at a recent conference of about 1,500 salespeople, Twitter’s VP of diversity and inclusion told Fortune that the program “would have big impact for the people it did include.”
Dive Insight:
With breastfeeding on the rise, according to the CDC, demand for services like this will likely continue to increase.
To see why this benefit is gaining so much attention, one must look at just how long and often a woman has to breast pump in order to keep her milk supply going. According to Fortune, a nursing mother needs to pump every three to four hours and each session can last 20 minutes or more, meaning over the course of a four-day business trip, women can pump upwards of a gallon of milk. Without shipping, almost all of it goes to waste.
Palo Alto-based Milk Stork lets women order “breast milk storage bags and postage paid coolers on their own.” Problem is, the company is still in beta -- and the service costs $99 per day, reports Fortune.
This perk will most likely gain popularity in industries with the most intense talent hunts. It serves a small sub-section of employees, but speaks volumes about a company’s commitment to work/life balance.
