ISO 45010 and Period Products at Work: A Guide for Employers 

“We’re not expected to bring our own toilet paper to work. So why our own period products?”

It’s a rhetorical question we like to ask here at Yoni. Periods never wait for a convenient moment. They can arrive mid-meeting or at the start of your shift, and sometimes you just forget to restock your work bag with some extra pads or tampons. Having period products readily available at work means that moment remains a small one.   

Period products are a simple thing to provide, and they makes an ordinary workday much easier for the menstruating workers in your workplace.  

The good news: there is now a global standard!  

If you have been thinking about raising the idea of having period products available at your workplace, your timing is just right!  

In 2026, the International Organization for Standardization published ISO 45010 — the first ever global standard on supporting people through menstruation and menopause at work.   

It was developed under ISO/TC 283, the same committee behind ISO 45001, the global standard for occupational health and safety. So, the same organization that sets standards for a safe workstation design has now also turned its attention to menstrual health. 

What’s in ISO 45010? 

There’s a few important points the guidelines have highlighted, let’s break it down: 

Facilities: Keeping clean and private sanitary facilities with water, soap, disposals and somewhere to change your menstrual products.  

Access to products: Menstrual products should be made available wherever people will need them, free of charge. This usually means the bathroom, but not just the women’s. Accessible washrooms as well as gender neutral bathrooms should be considered when thinking about where to place menstrual products. 

Uniform and dress policy: For workplaces where uniforms are worn, ensuring that uniforms account for breathable fabrics, darker colours, and even spares in the case of any accidents! 

Training and culture: Managers should be able to have the conversation around menstrual health comfortably, without it being intrusive towards an employee’s privacy. This could also mean that workers and managers are provided with access to education on reliable information and practical actions they can adopt. 

Access to support systems: The organization itself could make regular confidential check-ins to workers about managing menstrual or menopausal symptoms in the workplace accessible. This gives people an additional opportunity to request or discuss personal needs or raise concerns. 

Products are just a small part of the bigger picture, and they’re generally the easiest place to begin with when looking to adopt the new ISO guidelines! 

What ISO 45010 could do for the people you work with 

A survey looking at 32 000 women in the Netherlands, reported that 80% of respondents felt a decrease in productivity during their menstruation, and 67.7% of women wished they had greater flexibility in their tasks and working hours.  

A support system network, and managers equipped with access to reliable information on menstrual health could make a difference with the presenteeism in the workplace.  

Another study in Queensland looked at the solution: researchers supplied a workplace with free period products for two months, then asked staff what changed.

Nearly everyone reported feeling more positive at work, and roughly two-thirds of menstruating members reported improved mental wellbeing.  

Supporting employees through something as ordinary as a period is one of the clearest ways a workplace can show it means what it says about employee wellbeing.  

What’s Next? 

As mentioned, ISO 45010 covers how workplaces support people through menstruation and menopause. What it doesn’t go in detail about is the products themselves — and that’s coming with ISO/TC 338. 

The International Organization for Standardization has dedicated a committee for menstrual products, ISO/TC 338, which aims to develop the first global standard for menstrual product safety and quality. However, those standards are still in the making, and in the meantime the conversation on getting period products in your workplace sits on the backbone of making a safe workstation. 

ISO makes the comparison themselves: condoms and wound dressings are strictly regulated. Tampons and pads which is used on and inside the body, every month, for decades, have no equivalent global standard. Around 300 million people are menstruating on any given day, and what goes into the products they use is entirely down to whoever makes them.  

The direction is clear: safety, performance, and better information for the people using them.  

This is also worth keeping in mind when you decide what to stock. ISO 45010 makes menstrual health a workplace health matter, and TC 338 is a reminder that health includes what the product is made of.  

It’s also, as it happens, the direction we’ve been walking in since the beginning. 100% GOTS certified Organic cotton, no perfume, synthetics, pesticides or any unnecessary chemicals — and full ingredient transparency, because we’ve always thought you should be able to know exactly what you’re putting in and on your body. We didn’t need a standard to tell us.

Want to know more about period products for your business? Sign up here

Read more about the survey done in the Netherlands here

Read more about the study done in Queensland here