Menopausal symptoms can start in the early 40s and may last through to the 60s. Some women even experience menopause much earlier due to medical illness or surgery. Symptoms of hormonal change are varied in their nature and severity with 20% of all midlife women experiencing severely disruptive symptoms and another 60% experiencing mild to moderate symptoms which may include fatigue, hot flashes, bodily aches and pains, sleeplessness, mood disturbances, brain fog, heavy bleeding and urinary leakage.

Many of these symptoms will impact women directly at work and make them feel less focused and less confident in their work performance. This is also a time when many women are hitting their peak performance only to be disrupted by menopausal symptoms.

Situations such as public speaking, high stakes meetings, working in hot environments or concern about flooded periods all interfere with a woman’s confidence at work.

In addition, many women feel their performance is impaired even though research would show that this is not objectively the case.

Most women do not feel comfortable discussing their experience of menopause with male or younger team members.

Vodafone completed an in depth research into menopause within their workplace. You can read more about the Vodafone research here.

Overall, they found 60% of women admitting that menopausal symptoms impact to their work, 16% severely.

What can workplaces do to support menopause at work?

There are many things a workplace can do to support their team members experiencing perimenopause and menopause. They include

educate

viv can deliver engaging webinars for women experiencing hormonal changes of midlife that outline what is happening to their body, what the symptoms of hormonal changes are, what the impact on future health might be and what solutions are available for women to consider. This 50 minute webinar includes an interactive self-assessment quiz with a live dashboard of results being shared during the webinar.