IBM Will Help Nursing Mothers Ship Breast Milk While Traveling
ARMONK, N.Y., July 14 (UPI) — IBM announced Monday that it will provide its female employees an express delivery service that will allow them to send their breast milk to their babies while traveling.
Beginning in September, IBM says it will launch the initiative and will keep it going even if only a small number of women show interest in the service.
IBM will develop a mobile app for the service. When an IBM employee is traveling and needs to send milk, she will tell the app where she is staying and how many packages she needs. Upon arrival at her hotel, pre-addressed packages will be waiting to later be picked up and shipped home overnight. IBM will cover rall expenses.
The program accompanies IBM’s paternity leave program, which gives working dads six weeks of leave. It also joins other companies which have passed rules aimed at increasing female employment and retaining it. Change.org announced in 2014 that it would give any parent employee a total of 18 weeks, while Apple and Facebook said in October that they would help female employees freeze their eggs.
IBM differs from other companies offering similar breast milk services in that it pays for the costs upfront, instead of requiring female employees to fill out expense reports and have the costs reimbursed later. The idea was brainstormed during a meeting between IBM Vice President of Human Relations Barbara Brickmeier and her team about helping mothers get back to work.
Twenty-nine percent of IBM’s workforce is made up of female employees, and since 1995, its female executive workforce has increased by 562 percent.
