Making Menopause Matter at Work
Our ESG, Innovations & Research Director, Darran Yates, attended a webinar hosted by Davina McCall ‘Making Menopause Matter at Work’.
The webinar, that was presented by YuLife, coincides with the launch of Davina’s book, ‘Menopausing’, that she wrote with Dr Naomi Potter following the interest that was sparked from her open and frank documentary concerning menopause, perimenopause, HRT and all the myths surrounding this normally taboo, awkward subject.
Davina’s experiences
Davina can now look back and see that she was perimenopausal at the age of 43 with some symptoms showing a year or so prior.
Perimenopause is a natural process caused when your ovaries gradually stop working. Ovulation may become erratic and then stop. The menstrual cycle lengthens, and flow may become irregular before your final period. Symptoms are caused by the changing levels of hormones in the body.
On reflection, Davina noticed a slow change and small changes in herself, she did not have ‘hot flushes’ but she did have ‘night sweats’ which were irregular. She noticed she had stopped laughing, no real ‘belly’ laughs, she started to become anxious over little things like driving in the dark and also felt lonely.
When live on TV she would sometime forget the person’s name she was interviewing, such a Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, having said it just a moment earlier. She developed coping mechanisms to deal with her ‘brain fogging’ occurrences.
Looking back on this time, Davina wishes she had sort HRT and enjoyed a Mediterranean diet sooner.
Workplace adaptations
Once a taboo topic in the workplace, menopause is now at the forefront of many leaders' priorities. With nearly 8 out of 10 menopausal women being in work, organisations can no longer ignore this critical conversation.
Many companies are now breaking into workplace adaptations. Some companies have even started to adopt a Menopause Café and/or have published information links on their intranet.
At Indepth, it is a subject that we are taking very seriously, and this webinar has given us our first step towards making some positive changes.
We would firstly like to share some excellent resources with all of our colleagues – it’s very important we all understand what menopause is and how it affects people.
https://www.themenopausecharity.org/menopause/
https://menopausesupport.co.uk/
https://www.menopauseandme.co.uk/
This year, World Menopause Day is taking place on October 18th and to coincide, YuLife will be releasing a workplace menopause guide on LinkedIn. You can follow them here and download the guide once released: www.linkedin.com/company/yulife
It’s time to talk about menopause!
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