Many women suffer silently when they don’t receive the care they need, impacting their personal lives as well as their careers, with 9 out of 10 stating that the menopause is having a negative impact on their working lives. The lack of support for those going through menopause can lead to disengagement from their work, struggling to fulfill responsibilities, and unfortunately can lead to some leaving the workplace entirely.

Women at the peak of their careers who resign due to a lack of health and wellness support can seriously hurt an organisation. By integrating thoughtful measures around menopause, companies can assist their valued employees. This kind of support can help build a stronger pipeline to senior leadership by retaining women through this life stage.

What can workplaces do?

Organisations can start by making some simple additions to employee guidelines, such as offering flexibility for remote work. Creating an open, kind and compassionate environment where women feel they can share their experience and ask for support is also important, as is education to create awareness of what women are going through. This should be open to everyone in the organisation as it will help those who aren’t experiencing menopause build empathy towards what their colleagues are going through.

YuLife has created a simple checklist with small changes that can have a huge impact within organisations:

• Offer hybrid working – support working from home where possible, particularly for those days when symptoms are difficult. 
• Provide a comfortable office environment – Consult with workers to assess the office temperature. Is it comfortable? Is there adequate ventilation? Consider providing a cooler area that employees can move to if they need to, or desk fans as a matter of course.
• Allow flexible hours – for many people, the first hours after waking can be particularly hard; coping with brain fog and night sweats. Giving people the option to adjust the start and end times of the working day can be immensely useful.
• Empower your team with knowledge – It’s important that all HR team members and line managers understand what menopause is, how it can affect colleagues and how they can talk to team members about it. 
• Encourage comfort – Providing loose fitting / layered uniforms where uniforms are worn, try to offer loose fitting, more breathable fabric options. Be open-minded and try to work together to make them comfortable.
• Ensure welfare facilities are adequate – Make cold drinking water available for staff to access easily and situate suitable sanitary facilities within easy reach of workstations. Provide a good range of sanitary products in the toilets. 
• Protect your people with an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) – Quick and easy access to anonymous and professional mental health support can be invaluable to people mentally struggling with menopause symptoms.
• Have a fair sickness policy – Allow menopausal women to attend medical appointments during the working day as often this is the only time these appointments are available. Provide paid time off for treatment.
• Encourage promotion in the workplace – Raise awareness of menopause by running internal events or lunch and learns. Are there adequate notice boards to enable information to be displayed? 
• Negotiate flexible rest and toilet breaks – Make sure that there are good rest facilities and a quiet area for this. Flexibility to take short breaks during the working day, particularly between meetings.
• Consider health apps – There are a number of apps out there that can give your people personalised menopause support. Allowing your employees to access information and real, human menopause experts at the touch of a button is a high impact tool to improve your employees’ health and wellbeing.

These are just a few simple ways to support menopause in the workplace. However, it’s important to remember each person is a unique individual who might require different support, so be open and flexible to discussing what’s right for the specific person in question. 

Increasing conversations

For a long time, menopause has been a taboo subject in the workplace. When we consider that this is the fastest growing segment of the working population this quite simply needs to change. 

Yet in today’s workforce, many women do not feel comfortable asking for accommodations at work and do not speak with employers or managers at work about their menopause symptoms for reasons such as feeling ashamed, and fear of discrimination or worried about being seen as weak and making excuses.

Organisations must educate their teams with the requisite knowledge to understand what menopause is, how it affects their colleagues and to appropriately talk to their team members about it in a supporting and caring manner.

The consequences

To employers:

When seeking employment, women are increasingly looking for a company that clearly expresses a commitment to supporting employees with menopause symptoms, and their broader health and wellbeing. Workplaces that don’t recognize the issue are at risk of losing talented senior women.

Workplaces must normalise being human and work toward making supportive environments the minimum standard for all workplaces. That way, they can attract and keep the best talent across all life stages.

The good news is that more and more businesses are recognising the importance of this issue and are working to better educate their staff about it. At YuLife, we recently hosted a discussion with broadcaster and author Davina McCall, whose documentary ‘Sex, Myths and the Menopause’ significantly boosted public awareness of the topic. Davina highlighted the wide range of resources now available to employers looking to support their employees around menopause and perimenopause management, including the growing trend of hiring a menopause specialist who is available to speak to employees, either on an ongoing basis or whenever specific issues arise.

To women:

Menopause is becoming the unspoken issue for women who are leaving the workforce. By not addressing this issue, women are feeling forced to leave simply because society is unwilling to normalise a natural life stage. This is a ticking time bomb for not only women’s welfare but also for organisations and the wider economy.