What Do You Do? podcast
Vicky Mose | Imagine How
What do you know about the menopause? Do you understand enough about it to know if you’re going through it (if you’re biologically female and over 35)? Do you understand enough about it to support someone else going through it? Would you be able to support someone that you work with, or that you manage directly?
In this episode of the podcast, Vicky Mose from Imagine How argues that not enough people know enough about the menopause, and if it was understand and discussed as well as puberty, it would make the workplace a far more supportive place.
Key Takeaways
- 10% of menopausal women leave the workplace due to a lack of support.
- Calling in sick is 25% higher for menopausal women.
- These combined are costing the UK economy £1.5 billion a year in lost productivity.
The Role of a Workplace Menopause Consultant
A Lack of Understanding around Menopause
It’s baffling to me that as a society we don’t understand more about the menopause. If almost every woman goes through it in some form, then it’s almost certain that you know someone who has dealt with it. As we discuss in the podcast, this is probably down to generational differences and not just talking about ‘gross’ biological functions.
Unfortunately, this has left generations of women unprepared to handle the menopause themselves. This is what happened to Vicky.
As she discusses in the episode, when symptoms first started appearing, Vicky did what she was supposed to do and visited her GP. She was prescribed HRT. That’s what you’re ‘supposed to do’. But Vicky wasn’t told that HRT can lose it’s effectiveness, so when she started suffering through psychological symptoms, like anxiety and paranoia, she thought that there must be something wrong with her. After all, the HRT should be doing it’s job.
A Lack of Support in the Workplace
Workplaces generally support physical symptoms of menopause, like hot flushes, but as many of the psychological symptoms are still not understood, many managers just don’t know to look out for it at all. Imagine coming into work feeling anxious, not knowing why, but also finding that no one at work is able to help you to understand, yet expects you to still perform at your best.
How is it possible to cope with that situation? This exact situation causes 10% of affected women to leave the workforce. They don’t recognise themselves, they can’t currently perform at their best – and don’t know why, or how to improve it – and rather than support, they are met with hostility or disappointment.
Is it any wonder that they choose to leave instead?
What Do We Do?
We founded the What Do You Do? podcast to hear from people like Vicky, who is trying to make a change in people’s lives.
Videos, like the one above, are a great way to educate your customers about what you do – find out how we can do it here.
written by
Videographer and video producer with over 15 years experience in both B2B and B2C video marketing. He writes about everything he learned delivering over 1200 video projects across the engineering, education, charity and tech sectors.
