They witness
- Clarisse LeCourtfounder and CEO of the Claripharm laboratory
- Elise Thiebautjournalist and author of “This is my blood” (La Découverte Poche)
- Gaele Le Noanefounder of Marguerite & Cie
- Tanguy Dufournet-Mousseriondoctor in sociology of work, specialist in changes in work, at the Square Research Center
- Charles Priourecruiting coach at Ignition Program, a recruitment agency for high potential start-ups
- Xavier MolinieHRD of Critizr
- Gaelle Baldassaricreator of Kiffe ton cycle
- A commercial from a sanitary protection brand (who preferred to remain anonymous)
Why are employers interested in the rules of their employees?
Menstrual cycle, pelvic pain, periodic protections… we would be exaggerating to tell you that employers talk about it without taboo. But let’s say that these subjects now have a place in the boxes. And even at the highest level. So why such an interest in the rules of their collaborators?
Periods, a societal subject
Clarisse LeCourt
In fact, we have been talking about it since 2016 with the debate on the “pink tax” which led to the reduction of VAT on periodic protection. “Covid has also brought to light the menstrual poverty of thousands of women, emphasizes Clarisse Le Court, founder and CEO of the Claripharm laboratory, which specializes in durable periodic protection. The government has also released budgetary envelopes to fight against this scourge. The release of women’s voices around endometriosis did the rest.
“This theme of rules has risen in civil society, so employers have taken it up” analyzes Élise Thiébaut, journalist and author of “This is my blood” (La Découverte Poche)
The rules, a QWL and CSR criterion
Companies have CSR budgets for quality of life at work and professional equality. And the subject of periods ticks both of these boxes.
Gaële Le Noane, founder of Marguerite & Cie, a Breton company specializing in the B to B distribution of eco-responsible period protection
If they wish, companies can consider the subject to move beyond strict personal responsibility (basically, “your rules, I don’t want to hear about them and they shouldn’t interfere with your work”) to become a subject of social responsibility, the famous CSR.
Free hygienic protection = increased productivity
Tanguy Dufournet
Indirectly, by offering self-service period protection, employers hope to increase productivity. “When the rules arrive at work and the employees have nothing on hand, they must either ask their colleagues or deal with toilet paper while waiting to find another solution. This creates obvious anxiety and discomfort. By providing sanitary protection in the toilets, employers intend to contribute to the well-being of their employees. And therefore indirectly to their productivity”analyzes Tanguy Dufournet-Mousserion, doctor in sociology of work at the Square Research Center.
Free hygienic protection = boost in purchasing power
And then, there is an undeniable financial motivation: providing employees with free sanitary protection amounts to indirectly boosting their purchasing power and costs less than a raise! ” It’s a real financial boost. Over a lifetime, women spend on average between 3,000 and 22,000 euros if we take into account protections, drugs to fight against menstrual pain, stain removal from clothes…”argues a commercial of a brand of periodic protections, who preferred to remain anonymous in order to express himself more freely.
The solutions: what are companies doing to “fix” this subject of menstruation?
1/ Offer free periodic protection
The simplest and least expensive is to make sanitary protection available in the women’s toilets.
Group’hygiene, the French group of manufacturers of single-use products for hygiene, health and wiping, specifies that “periodic protections are sold almost entirely in distribution channels intended for the general public. Nevertheless, the manufacturers of these products note growing demand from businesses and local authoritiesand more and more public tenders for these products”.
Marguerite & Cie distributors of protection are now installed in 120 companies and allow more than 10,000 employees to experience their period peacefully at work. Claripharm announces for its part a hundred business customers.
Testimonial: Charles Priou is working to break the taboo of menstruation in his box
At Ignition Program, there is not yet any distribution of free hygienic protections but Charles Priou, in-house recruiting coach, is working hard on it. To confront the men of the box on this still taboo subject of menstruation and menstrual pain, he first organized an internal collection of period protection given to women in need. “Men and women played the game. Some employees were sometimes embarrassed to buy this type of product. Others discovered the wide selection of brands. In any case, it opened the debate on the subject., he summarizes. Due to a lack of available budget, the young man first takes his own money to buy and make sanitary protection available in the toilets of his female colleagues. “It was a budget of 12-15 euros every 3 weeks because it is mainly used for troubleshooting”, he says. Since then, HR have become aware of the subject and reimburse him for his purchases in the form of an expense report. But Charles Priou does not despair of seeing the installation of a vending machine, or even the establishment of menstrual leave, as at Critizr.
2/ Grant “menstrual leave”
Let’s be frank: menstrual leave is far from unanimous in France. He nevertheless has followers in companies. After the cooperative “La collective” which we talked about in this article, the company Critizr decided to offer such leave to its employees and explains why:
Testimonial: Critizr’s HRD introduces menstrual leave in case of pain
Since May 2022, employees of Critizr, a specialist in customer interaction management, can benefit from one or two days of additional paid leave per month in the event of menstrual pain or pathology, without the need for medical proof. “This menstrual leave was in fact part of a reflection on pain following miscarriages. Since its implementation, 3 employees have each taken 2 to 3 days of menstrual leave. We see that this is not recurrent but only mobilized when the pain is present and makes work impossible. A simple email to the manager and HR is enough to take this leave. In order not to stigmatize our employees, we did not make it a feminist issue but a subject centered around pain management”, explains Xavier Molinié, HRD at Critizr. And we understand why so many precautions.
Gaelle Baldassari
An a priori empathetic gesture that Gaëlle Baldassari, however, disapproves of, creator of “Kiffe ton cycle”, a book and a training program. “Menstrual leave is like sending women back to their sofa for a day or two, considering the pain as normal and without accompanying them. Worse, it goes against the empowerment of women. 12 days a year, this potentially reinforces inequalities between women and men.
Elise Thiebaut
For her part, Élise Thiébaut is in favor of “menstrual leave accessible to all employees, regardless of gender and age. This would be to admit that men also have to pay attention to their health and that they too have hormonal cycles. And that it’s not just women’s bodies that raise questions. And why not a menstrual leave at menopause. Hot flashes can also be unbearable”. This author also campaigns in favor of a donation of days of menstrual leave modeled on the donation of RTT days between employees so that it benefits the most precarious.
For Tanguy Dufournet-Mousserion, “this taboo subject affects the universality of human resources. The company must integrate the fact that it has the right to adapt its services, its processes… to particular groups of collaborators. This is already the case with disabled employees, parent employees. With the obligation to feminize certain professions, the Rixain law… the company must become a place that is not hostile to women”.
We see that menstrual leave is not unanimous. Between refusal in the name of equality, more cynical skepticism or frenzied enthusiasm, it is not tomorrow the day before that it will be generalized. Unlike Spain, which legislated the creation of menstrual leave in May 2022, France is still at the debate stage. While waiting for a hypothetical text of the law, companies are coping with the means at hand.
You might be interested:
3/ Possibility of placing orders grouped by the CSEs
Claripharm’s service offering includes the provision of distributors but also the possibility of placing group orders for periodic protection by CSE. Or even individual discount codes for employees, men or women.
4/ Offer training to lift the taboo of menstruation
The founder of Kiffe ton cycle intends to convince companies to subscribe to her online training on rules and more particularly on the factors that generate pain. For the time being, its 5,000 clients finance all their training on an individual basis.
Program “Kiffe your cycle: the first periods”, led by Gaëlle Baldassari.
Who carries this topic of rules in the boxes?
Menstrual leave, requests for the provision of periodic protection, etc. sometimes come from employees themselves or are carried out by the HR department, CSR managers, or even general services. As many men as women? Hard to say. Except by way of example.
At Marguerite & Cie, of the 82 incoming requests over the last 5 months, 33 came from men. “When I got rejected…