The reality is, up to 90% of people who menstruate have painful periods. And around 80% experience decreased productivity due to menstrual-related symptoms, with some so severe that they need to take a day off work. Despite it being a natural, biological phenomenon that affects around half of an office’s workforce every month, discussions surrounding menstruation in the workplace are still extremely stigmatized.
At Flo, we know that our menstrual cycles can affect us physically, mentally, and emotionally, and believe this should be respected and acknowledged, especially in the workplace.
We’ve partnered with designer Sophia Luu to curate a set of four menstruation-related Slack emojis to better represent the experiences of people who menstruate.
We created this set of emojis to help you communicate when you need to slow down and navigate the ups and downs of your cycle. Beyond this, our hope is that they empower you to create dialogue and raise awareness around a longstanding stigma that’s ready to be broken.
Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND license @ Flo Health, Inc., 2021. Read more
Feeling crampy? Not your day? Want to avoid your usual video chats? Each emoji comes with a guide that explains when and how to use it, and how to react if your colleague uses it. To complete the set, we included the iconic blood drop emoji.
About Sophia Luu
Sophia Luu is a design consultant at McKinsey who told 11,000 people she was on her period by updating her Slack status to a red drop emoji. It went viral on LinkedIn and sparked a lot of conversations about menstruating in the workplace.
‘’It’s normal for me to throw up from pain on my period, and I found myself uncontrollably cramping during meetings.
“I didn’t feel comfortable starting this conversation in the team room, so I used the red drop emoji and set it as my Slack status.“
“It was my way of saying, ‘I’m in pain, please be mindful and recognize that I might not have the energy to deal with some tasks.
I love that Flo reached out to partner with me, because it shows just how common this experience is for a lot of people. It’s about time that period awareness was normalized in the workplace. I’m humbled to be able to offer a different way for us to start this conversation and to expand it to chronic pain, menopause, and managing our health better at work .‘’