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Many mums returning to work after having a baby face a loss of confidence, and who could blame them with the Australian Human Rights Commission finding that half of all mothers reported experiencing discrimination at some point during their pregnancy, parental leave or return to work.

There’s a phrase that haunts many women as we get ready to swap our nappy bags for briefcases, brave commutes, navigate the bureaucracy of the childcare system and become fluent in industry jargon once again. It’s the idea that once we have grown, birthed, nurtured and sustained the life of a tiny human, our bodies are meant to ‘bounce back’. 

In homes across the country, women planning their return to work after having babies are looking at their work clothes and sighing. In fact, research has found that postpartum body image is at its lowest 6-8 months after having a baby because it’s when a woman is likely to be preparing to return to work. 

Body image plagues us on so many levels. Even for those of us who have worked hard on embracing the new version of our body, there’s the logistical challenge of building a wardrobe of clothes that fit, feel good and are appropriate for work. This can be stressful, expensive, and impacts our confidence. 

And it’s not just the clothing that rings up the bills – research conducted by AMP found that women pay a ‘pink tax’ — 29% more for razors, 16% more for body wash and that’s without even getting into the price of make-up and skincare compared to brands marketed to men.

Returning to work is hard enough without being compounded by body image challenges. In a time when our bodies have done something incredible, they should be celebrated, not discriminated against. When employees can turn up to work in a way that makes them feel comfortable and included, they will be more productive and engaged. 

Supporting workers to build a better body image is good for the employee, good for the business and good for the entire Australian economy. Goldman Sachs found that bridging the gap between male and female employment rates could provide an additional $114 billion each year to the Australian economy.

How to support new parents returning to work:

1. Regularly check in with staff who are on parental leave to help them maintain a connection with their colleagues.
2. Provide practical support for parents who return to work by getting them up to speed on any changes while they’ve been away (like new technology, different processes and people changes).
3. Rather than acting like they’ve been on holidays, recognise the skills they’ve built while they’ve been parenting — agility, resilience, creative thinking and problem solving are some typical skills that new parents develop
4. Ask parents how they would like to mark their return to work after a new baby. Some parents might appreciate a morning tea or lunch, while others may prefer something more low key.  
5. Be mindful of language — the number one thing we can do is stop commenting on other people’s bodies. Even phrases that are intended as a compliment, like “wow you’ve got your figure back already” and “you don’t look like you had a baby” can place unintentional pressure on new mums.  

Embrace @Work is a revolutionary offering for proactive companies at the forefront of building employee productivity, engagement, and wellbeing. We know that 70% of women and 60% of men are dissatisfied with their bodies and spend time and energy worrying about their appearance. Imagine if we could harness this collective energy in solving the world’s greatest problems? Embrace@Work helps unlock your people’s potential by removing the invisible barrier to productivity in your workplace.

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Well, the short answer is because it’s something their employees spend a LOT of time caring about. In fact, we know that up to 60% of men and 70% of women are dissatisfied with their bodies and 91% of women want a different body. 

That’s a huge proportion of our workforce that are spending their time focused on diets, gyms, clothes and appearance. Imagine the collective energy we could harness if we stopped spending so much time wishing that our bodies were different and focused on helping others, solving problems and kicking goals at work.

Body image might seem like it’s something that’s completely separate from work, but it’s a hidden drain on our focus, productivity, positivity and energy. And it doesn’t stop there. We also know that poor body image makes you 24 times more likely to develop depression. 

While negative body image impacts our self-esteem, the inverse is also true — better body image can boost confidence. Psychologists have found that this increase in self-esteem can improve work performance and boost productivity.

Until now, workplaces have been ignoring one of the most prevalent issues impacting our mental health, focus and productivity. A lack of understanding about building a workplace with a positive, inclusive culture is also costing businesses talented employees. Having worked in HR for a decade, I’ve seen my fair share of workplace behaviour training. But one thing that very rarely gets mentioned is the deeply held biases that mean that many of us (consciously or subconsciously) discriminate against workers based on their appearance. 

Research shows that many of us believe people in larger bodies are less motivated. This bias around appearance impacts who gets hired, who gets promoted and who gets celebrated at work. It also means that organisations are missing out on hiring and fully utilising great talent because of outdated views about health and wellbeing. Like all forms of discrimination, we can’t change it until we know about it. 

It’s time for corporate Australia to decide — will we keep pretending body image doesn’t show up at work and leave it to individual employees to muddle through alone? Or will we see employers unlocking their staff’s potential, creating more inclusive workplaces and becoming world leaders in wellbeing? 

Would we be more productive if we embraced our bodies? Absolutely. Embrace @Work is a revolutionary offering for proactive companies at the forefront of building employee productivity, engagement, and wellbeing. We know that 70% of women and 60% of men are dissatisfied with their bodies and spend time and energy worrying about their appearance. Imagine if we could harness this collective energy in solving the world’s greatest problems? Embrace@Work helps unlock your people’s potential by removing the invisible barrier to productivity in your workplace.

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Body dissatisfaction is complex and highly linked to other mental health concerns like anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, which are all well recognised as impacting on workplace productivity and wellbeing. Yet our workplace culture, diversity and inclusion initiatives rarely address how we feel about the way we look.  

The Deloitte Access Economics report estimated that the combined financial and economic costs of severe body dissatisfaction in the US was $84 billion in 2019. These costs were due to the lost productivity and reduced workforce participation associated with body dissatisfaction. So what is causing all of the concerns about our appearance at work? 

Mostly, it’s our words. 

We are a visual species, and often the first thing that comes out of our mouths, before we’ve even had a chance to think about it, is about the way people look. “You look great, have you lost weight?”, “Looking good Jerry — have you been working out?” “Oh my gosh, did you see what Carol was wearing today? She does not have the thighs for that skirt!” You get the idea. 

These comments might seem harmless, and the compliments might seem helpful, but what they perpetuate is the idea that appearance is more important than performance. Workplace cultures with high levels of commentary about appearance can unintentionally lead to pressure because we apply that perceived judgement to ourselves. 

Here are some of the places to look out for harmful body commentary at work.

1. In the tea room 

For many people, body image comes up at work in the context of what we are doing to try to change our bodies. Gina will be spruiking her latest diet. Max is enthusiastically shaking up his pre-workout snacks. Noni sighs as she refuses the slice of birthday cake, then starts telling you how much weight she has to lose to fit into her dress for her daughter’s wedding. 

Food and bodies are often a topic of conversation in the tea room and the type of conversations can be problematic, particularly for people who had eating concerns in the past. These social norms around food can then create a negative influence on employee health and wellbeing.

One of my previous colleagues, Mia, wasn’t really worried about her weight until the constant commentary about carbs in the tea room made her feel self conscious about her leftover pasta. She started bringing salads and doing the latest diet fads to fit in. “Every single lunch time, it’s ‘oh I could never get away with eating that’. This constant comparison, critique, and conversation about food. We hear all about the latest diets, how ‘naughty’ they were over the weekend, and how much they wish they were eating something other than a cup-a-soup. These messages crept into my head and made me really self conscious about what I was eating and about my own body.” After a while, Mia started to notice that she was thinking more about food than work, had trouble concentrating in the afternoons, zoning out in meetings and struggling to meet her deadlines. 

2. In the boardroom 

Observe any highly competitive workplace and industry, with lots of stress and pressure, and you will likely see a lot of (mostly women) who look ‘healthy’ but might have underlying disordered eating. Studies have found that people in professions like law have significantly higher scores on measures of disordered eating attitudes and behaviours. Junior lawyer Annabel told me, “We all had to work so hard to get noticed. My perfectionism went into overdrive and the eating disorder I thought I had overcome from my teens resurfaced”.

There’s a bigger conversation about hustle culture to be had here, but many of the problems stem from things that are quite problematic being normalised, like 14-hour work days, working through lunch, or exercising excessively.

3. On Zoom 

Think that remote workers are immune? Think again. I conducted a  study with my colleagues and found that people’s work performance was negatively affected when they were distracted by their own appearance in video conferences. It was even found to be associated with increased drive to get cosmetic surgery. Seeing yourself in the mirror for as little as 2.5 minutes can lead to increased appearance dissatisfaction, and now we’re spending hour after hour online, watching ourselves talk in meetings! Worrying about our appearance has a significant negative impact on work performance. People weren’t speaking up because they didn’t want to be the box featured on the screen, and this was more prominent among those who were susceptible to eating disorders. 

4. Performing a public role 

In some workplaces, there are standards of dress or rules about covering tattoos, but what about the unspoken culture around body weight and appearance? A prominent Australian journalist told me she felt that she had to have botox, fillers, her hair done and teeth whitened in order to get air-time for a story she was working on. She knew that this reinforced the pressure on other women to do the same, but she couldn’t figure out how to break the cycle. Online trolls already criticised her appearance when she was on TV, how would they react if she didn’t do all of those things?

This happens in professions in the public eye, but also business owners, corporate professionals, and women in client-facing roles — many of whom end up hiding at their desk because they don’t think they look good enough that day, week, month, or year. This holds (mostly) women back from achieving their full potential.

It plays out in lots of different ways: Becky doesn’t put her hand up to do the client pitch because, even though she is the most prepared, she doesn’t feel like she is attractive enough. Liz hasn’t been able to save up enough for orthodontic work, so she doesn’t write herself into the employee training video. Kate is waiting until she loses 5kg to take a new professional headshot. Dominique knows the sort of comments other women get when they try to speak up at a meeting, so she stays quiet. And,  Mike, a really talented salesperson, doesn’t want to present at the conference because he is shorter than the other people on the team and he doesn’t feel like he can deliver a powerful performance. 

5. In HR

Biases based on people’s weight and appearance are deeply held across many sectors. In studies on biases in workplaces, researchers printed out two copies of the same resume and attached a photo of a thin candidate on one and someone in a larger body on the other. The thinner person was significantly more likely to be recommended for the role, regardless of skills and experience. 

That’s why Carla was often told that she ‘wasn’t the right fit’ for the executive assistant roles she was going for. “I could tell it was more about the size of my body than what I was capable of, but I didn’t speak up because I was ashamed,” she says. Workplaces could be missing out on top candidates because of these innate biases around appearance.

The solution

Our work and our lives are impacted by these seemingly innocuous comments and conversations, and the potential outcome of body image distress and eating disorders.

So what can we do about it?  

• Be aware of the conversations that are happening around bodies and appearance in your workplace. Redirect talk about diets at lunch to other topics. Firmly but gently remind colleagues that jokes and banter about physical appearance are not funny, and not ok.  
• Try to ensure that your compliments aren’t based on appearance. Tell your colleagues what you value about their work and achievements rather than their skin or their outfit. 
• Manage online meeting dynamics and settings so that all members can contribute. 

Our words matter at work, and we need to use them well.

The Body Image Movement offers expert advice and bespoke packages to help organisations improve employee wellbeing. FInd out more about the Embrace@Work program.

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