Employers want the pregnant employees they insure to receive quality preconception and early prenatal care, but working women are reluctant to disclose their pregnancies to their employers. What can a responsible business do to encourage a healthy start to pregnancy if they are unable to target particular individuals with information and resources?
1. support overall health. Healthy parents are more likely to produce healthy offspring, and this is true for both males and females. All employees of childbearing age will benefit from taking part in corporate wellness programs that promote a healthy diet (with good food options in the cafeteria too), exercise, quitting smoking, managing chronic illnesses, and scheduling routine medical and dental checkups.
2. Include details on the advantages of preconception wellness and early prenatal care in regular healthcare correspondence to all of your employees. Encourage those of childbearing age to understand that good basic healthcare includes taking certain precautions to ensure a healthy pregnancy. Simple actions that can be encouraged as part of general healthcare screening include maintaining good overall health, knowing family genetics and health history, and encouraging folic acid supplements for women of childbearing age. Given that 50% of pregnancies are unplanned, including these three recommendations in routine healthcare for all women of childbearing age can prevent a lot of issues before they even arise. Again, two of the three issues concern both men and women, so widespread distribution of the knowledge benefits all of your employees.
3. Support internal and external community education regarding pregnancy. Before they experience a positive pregnancy test, many future parents have very little knowledge of healthy pregnancy. Providing lunch-and-learns or other learning opportunities within the company can be a low-pressure way to spread the word. There are many local chapters of BirthNetwork National or independent birth networks that offer details on healthy pregnancies and deliveries. The problem of women being reluctant to reveal their pregnancies at an event in the workplace can be avoided by supporting those nonprofits and encouraging your staff to attend meetings and events.
4. Establish a family-friendly workplace. Women are reluctant to disclose their pregnancy primarily out of concern that it will have a negative impact on their career. Creating family friendly supports, including extended maternity leave, on-site childcare, supportive breastfeeding policies, emergency home care options, flex-time, telecommuting, off-ramps and on-ramps and other such policies help all workers to adequately balance the demands of life and work. The need for women to conceal their pregnancies from their employers is eliminated by policies like these.
Even if they are unable to offer specialized prenatal information to any one employee in particular, employers can still support their employees’ healthy pregnancies. Healthier pregnancies naturally result in healthier mothers and children, which lowers the employer’s healthcare costs. There’s no need to wait for the “reveal” when there are so many opportunities for health promotion that benefits all workers, pregnant or not.