T

he International Labor Office (ILO), in collaboration with the Indonesian Breast-feeding Mothers Association (AIMI), has launched a guideline to help employers implement policies on breast-feeding friendly workplaces in the country.

The guideline is important as few employers are aware of their legal obligations to provide working mothers with facilities to help them breast-feed.

The lack of awareness has resulted in high rates of absenteeism among female workers.

The Breast-feeding Friendly Workplaces’ “Guidelines for Employers” offers practical steps on how to implement a mother-friendly workplace that supports breast-feeding.

By providing a workplace with a breast-feeding friendly environment, employers can secure improved health for the children of their employees as well as guarantee the loyalty and productivity of their mothers.

Simon Field, the ILO’s Better Work Indonesia (BWI) program manager, said all factory managers in Indonesia were very much concerned about productivity in the workplace.

“Better productivity is the result of having a satisfied workforce, we’ve found that most factories that have high job satisfaction and more appropriate working conditions have high productivity. Managers look for more ways to increase productivity by improving the satisfaction of workers to reduce turnover rates among female staff,” Field said.

Working directly with 45 companies, garment manufacturers, the BWI found that most had some sort of facility that female workers could use to breast-feed or express breast milk.

The drawback was that they were often constructed in abandoned rooms or facilities. Only five of the total BWI company members had comfortable facilities where women could express breast milk or breast-feed their child.

“To get women back into the workforce is now a main priority because many employers are concerned about the high turnover rate of female staff following maternity leave,” said Field.

Studies have shown that exclusive breast-feeding for six months, followed by complementary foods and continued breast-feeding until two years old and above, are crucial to ensure that children can grow normally.

“To better promote breast-feeding more effectively, we must make breast-feeding a human right for both mother and child,” said Olivier de Schutter, the United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on the right food, during the 2012 World Breast-feeding Conference held in New Delhi, India, from Dec.6 to 9.

Breast-feeding had become everybody’s problem but nobody’s responsibility said Nicholas K. Alipui, director of UNICEF program, in the conference.

The 2010 Basic Health Research (Riskesdas) shows that only 15.3 percent of Indonesian babies are exclusively breast-fed for the first six months.

AIMI chairwoman Mia Sutanto said few employers had a proper understanding of the benefits of breast-feeding friendly policies for their workers. Many thought that such policies could strain their budgets.

“If employers support breast-feeding at work, they themselves can get benefits from the support they provide their workers,” she said.

Working mothers who can continue to breast-feed their babies following maternity leave will have higher productivity and less absenteeism. The rate of absenteeism among female workers who can express breast milk and/or breast-feed their babies during working hours is 27.3 percent lower than those who are unable to perform the task.

In a study conducted last year, the AIMI found that working mothers who breast-fed their babies until the age of two and above could save up to Rp 25 million (US$2,590). “For a factory worker, that’s a serious amount of money,” said Mia.