Let’s Not Make Peri/Menopause An “Unsayable.”

Your boss might be a menopausal woman. And she might want to talk about it. Nearly every woman of an age I ask is dying to talk about how their changing hormones affect their work lives… and yet it's something we rarely do in the open. It can feel like an "unsayable."

Menopause hits women at the height of their careers (29% of the C Suite in America are women, and the average age of a woman CEO is 53.64), and it's something we're only beginning to talk about at work. I mean… how would you even open up a conversation about the impacts of peri/menopause at work?

Sadly, even many doctors don't know how to talk about menopause! According to AARP, 80% of graduating internal medicine residents did not feel competent to discuss or treat menopause— and only 20% of ob/gyn residencies offer menopause training.

Luckily, the British Standards Institution has created a very helpful guide to tackle menstrual health and menopause at work. Download the report for free, here.

It is plain stupid to lose women at the height of their skills and power.

The BSI guide offers some helpful ways to open up conversations about peri/menopause at work. Here are two I really like:

- Is there anything at work that exacerbates your symptoms?

- What can we do to help alleviate your symptoms?

Research shows that stress and symptoms of perimenopause are linked. And when we go through perimenopause, we tend to be in a pretty full-on phase of life. Tessa G. Misiaszek, head of research for the Korn Ferry Institute, found in a study that women in senior leadership were particularly impacted. She found one in four women have quit their job or are considering it, and 44 percent of those women are senior leaders or senior executives— all because of challenges with managing the physical and emotional effects of menopause with everything else.

These discussions might feel too personal for some people, and that's ok. Here's what every employer can do (and P.S., these practices will help ALL your employees):

- Offer flexible options for people to manage their workload and their personal needs

- Check in with direct reports and create an environment where people feel comfortable expressing their needs and creating solutions together

- Provide access to menstrual health and peri/menopause informed advocates, benefits providers, and clinicians. Microsoft has been working with Maven Clinic to offer tailored healthcare for women in peri/menopause.

Talk About It

And if you're willing- talk about it! The BSI guide notes that cultural portrayals of menstruation and menopause when it comes to women who are powerful are rare. There's a lot of stigma and negative stereotypes of women who are going through menopause. Also, when's the last time you saw someone's period presented as anything other than a huge pain on TV?

I want to close with insight from Professor Jim Detert. Detert studies how to help leaders create psychological safety and employees speak up competently and courageously, and he finds that every organization has its own "unsayables." In a recent MIT Sloan Management Review article, he offers prompts to open up dialogue on teams and in organizations.

What can you do to change the situation at your organization? To start, people with more power must take the lead on change. Expecting people below you to stick their necks further out isn't just unfair. It's unrealistic. People might not like the deep rules they experience, but most don't feel anywhere near safe or emboldened enough to start challenging them. Convene a group of people within the organization with whom you have an established relationship and tell them that to engage in some out-of-the-box thinking, you'd like them to answer this question: What undiscussables would we discuss if we decided to discuss our undiscussables?

Detert continues, “You might ask this generically, or you might attach it to a specific issue by adding "about …" to the end of the question. This question, which I learned from Harvard Business School professor Chris Argyris, lands well because it interjects a bit of lightheartedness, essentially acknowledging that you know you're asking people to say what has seemed unsayable.”

If talking about how peri/menopause feels like an unsayable, gather a group of colleagues you trust and say the things. I bet the responses will open up an incredible dialogue. This is how change starts. We can do it!

Morra

PS: I really recommend the BSI guide- download here https://www.bsigroup.com/en-GB/insights-and-media/insights/brochures/bs-30416-menstruation-menstrual-health-and-menopause-in-the-workplace/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=us-ks-nsb-thght-nss-hsw-other-mp-bs30416usinfluencercampaign-1024&utm_content=Morra