The workplace has recently gotten comfortable tackling conversations about previously taboo topics like mental health, financial stress and fertility. Next up on the agenda? Menopause.
While 20% of the workforce experiences menopause each year, according to the blog Menopause View, the conversation around how to help women experiencing it has often been off-limits. One-third of people experiencing menopause hide it at work, according to an international Opinium survey commissioned by Vodafone, despite the impact it has on their mental and physical well-being.
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“Symptoms of menopause can have such a huge impact on people’s mental health, but also their productivity and performance,” says Kate Daley, a clinical psychologist with health tech startup Unmind. “People quite often experience brain fog, memory problems and concentration problems, which are obviously going to play out at work.”
Seventy-five percent of people going through menopause say they have symptoms that negatively impact their quality of life, according to research from Unmind, and six in 10 employees experiencing menopause say their symptoms impact their ability to do their job.
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These symptoms can cause even more stress and anxiety that will further impact their performance, Daley says. This vicious circle can be difficult to break without the right support.
“Quite often people leave the workplace as a result of those symptoms, whether physical or psychological,” Daley says. “It's just such a huge drain of skills and experience from the workforce. People work all their life and gain all of this experience and then menopause comes along and they have to then leave the workplace.”
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Employers should approach menopause as they do with other challenges employees are facing, Daley says. When it comes to managing menopause, there are several steps employers can take.
The first is to have more open and more frequent communication about menopause and the seriousness of this phase in a person’s life. Typically, menopause lasts eight to 10 years, and 5% will experience menopause before they turn 45, according to Unmind data. Providing education will help combat common misconceptions around the process and allow for more open and honest conversations, Daley says.
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“Quite often menopause is depicted as something to laugh at or a joke about,” Daley says. “Or we’ll just talk about hot flashes and hormone replacement therapy, but it's so much broader than that. In the workplace particularly, if we can get people talking about it, not just people that can experience it, but also to support the people going through, that's such a huge step.”
Employers can also make physical changes to the office in order to accommodate their employees’ needs. Just like the new mother who will need to make use of the office’s lactation room, employees experiencing menopause will need considerations of their own.
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“Have lockers if people need a change of clothes because they're experiencing a lot of hot flashes, or even just have towels available,” Daley says. “[Another option is] if their job involves a lot of presentations, it might be very hard for them to focus. So give them the option to record the presentation ahead of time.”
If employers don’t want to lose an experienced and talented population, they will need to actively work to support these employees during life’s more challenging moments. Reframing the discussion around menopause, taking the stigma away from discussions of health concerns in the workforce, and creating an environment where employees feel empowered to ask their managers for support are actionable ways to do this.
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“There are a lot of medical communities where they offer that education via social media or their own training programs,” Daley says. “Employers can reach out to those organizations to see what resources they have that they could then use in awareness campaigns. Menopause is a huge life stage and it should be acknowledged in workplace policies just like maternity leave or caring for an older relative.”
