A Kolkata-based digital media company has a New Year’s gift for its women employees: Paid menstrual leave.
The one-year-old firm, FlyMyBiz, has introduced a one-day menstrual leave that women employees can take every month from January 2019, The Indian Express reported.
According to the report, FlyMyBiz Founder-CEO Samyo Datta said, “All the women employees in my company will get one extra leave every month. This means, starting from January 2019, they will have twelve holidays as their period leaves in addition to their other holidays.”
Datta said he had decided to take this step for “employee satisfaction.”
“Employee satisfaction is my duty. If they are content, I will be happy too,” he said, adding that this is not a favour to anybody.
“We all know how much mental and physical pain women go through during this phase. Yet nobody comes forward to ease it a bit for them. It is still a social taboo. Apart from this, society puts women through a lot of other sufferings, where we can hardly help out with anything other than posting a few words of solidarity on social media. So, its just an attempt to stand beside women.Samyo Datta, as told to The Indian Express
Datta claimed that this is the first company in the state to introduce menstrual leave.
“We are the first company in our state to introduce menstrual leave. In India, we are the third after two Mumbai-based companies which have already started such an initiative,” he told The Indian Express.
According to Datta, all the 12 women working in FlyMyBiz are happy with his decision and the male employees have also welcomed this move.
Two other Mumbai-based companies, Culture Machine and Gozoop had introduced menstrual leave in 2017.
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