According to this study, 42% of respondents find the toilets in their company smelly, and 36% not well enough stocked with toilet paper.
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It is a delicate subject and yet it is part of the daily life of millions of employees: access to and use of company toilets. A study comes out Thursday, May 19 on this issue. And women are much less comfortable than men.
A survey conducted by Ifop, all that is more serious, the results of which are published on behalf of Diogenes, a company specializing in cleaning degraded housing. More than a thousand people questioned and an inconvenience: the toilets at work. With already this astonishing figure: a third of employees, 34%, do not have separate toilets for men and women. While theNational Institute for Research and Security (INRS) recommends that the employer provide its staff with separate lavatories for female and male staff, with at least one lavatory and one urinal for 20 men and two lavatories for 20 women. In this survey, we even find 1% of employees to say that there are no toilets in their workplace.
When there are toilets, employees complain. These toilets are considered dirty by more than half of the employees questioned, insufficiently isolated from the rest of the premises by 45% of those polled. That’s not all: 42% find them smelly, and 36% do not have enough toilet paper. Note that the answers are the same in the public and private sectors.
Hence a feeling of embarrassment at the idea of using these toilets, a feeling of embarrassment that affects women much more than men. In general, 53% of employees have already felt embarrassed to use the shared toilets, but this feeling rises to 60% among women. Anglophones speak in this regard of “poop shaming”, “poop” being a childish way of talking about defecation. A shame that pushes 53% of female employees to be unable to use the toilets at their workplace. A situation in which only 30% of men find themselves.
A problem that forces you to use your imagination. A third of those questioned admit to using the toilets in another part of the company, on another floor for example. 21% simply quit their job to go to the bathroom. They use those of a bar or a restaurant for example. The same proportion, 21%, prefer to go home between noon and two so as not to have to face the problem and there are even 11% of employees who take medication to avoid using the toilet during the day.