THE IMPACT OF CORPORATE SUPPORT ON LACTATING MOTHERS’ PRODUCTIVITY AT THE WORKPLACE

Abstract

A majority of mothers with infants less than 1-year-old are participating in the labor force, as the ever-increasing populations of women who are in their childbearing period choose to become employed. Breastfeeding is essential as it provides unique health advantages to both the mother and the infant, which in turn benefits the employers to whom the breastfeeding mothers work for. A working environment which is lactation-friendly and supportive to the breastfeeding mothers helps predict the breastfeeding rates among the working women. To explore the impacts of lactation-friendly support on the productivity of a breastfeeding mothers, a research study will be conducted whose main purpose is to characterize the breastfeeding policies and programs currently offered at the workplaces in Kenya, and to hopefully identify improvement areas to support breastfeeding employees in the workplace. The main objective of this study is to examine the impact of company support on productivity of lactating mothers at the work place. The specific objective is to determine the impact of time allocation, space allocation and support on the lactating women’s productivity at the workplace. The research will employ exploratory design. This method is deemed appropriate because it is most helpful where restricted information is accessible and therefore the scientist desires to possess flexibility to future explore areas of analysis. The data will be collected by approach of non-public interview directed by a semi-structured interview guide consisting of open-ended queries aboard developed questionnaires with a target of one hundred respondents. The respondents will be the female workers of companies in Nairobi metropolitan area who have had youngsters at intervals of their working period. The data will be analyzed through content analysis method since it is suitable for analyzing various qualitative and unstructured data such as those collected during unstructured or semi-structured interviews or web-based documentary research