Feeling well and confident has a huge impact on how your employees engage with the workplace, especially if they are experiencing a challenging time such as menopause. As at April 2023 in the UK, 700,000 women age 50+ are on long term sick leave from work, many of them being medicated with anti-depressants for symptoms of anxiety and/or constant low mood.
At a guess, I think most of those women need support for symptoms of menopause, even though it is likely they will all now be in the post-menopause phase of their lives. The loss of oestrogen becomes harder for a woman to tolerate once her periods stop, and her body is struggling to maintain balance both mentally and physically. The problem is that so much of the current conversation is around perimenopause when the phase of post-menopause is equally as critical to wellbeing.
When you have done the work and created a policy for managing menopause within your workplace, is it worth a little bit extra to actually implement that policy? Should problems arise at work and an employee takes your company to Employment Tribunal citing menopause as her reason, the Tribunal will want to see that you have implemented your policy with procedures, and those procedures are active before your policy is considered a defense.
To prevent you becoming one of those companies which just pays ‘lip service’ to employee wellness requirements here are 5 tips to implement your hard work.
