Empowering workplaces by championing women's health and reproductive health

Rachel Suff: So, good afternoon everybody.  Thank you so much for joining this CIPD webinar on empowering workplaces by championing women's and reproductive health, including creating menopause-supportive workplaces.  So, I'm Rachel Suff.  I lead on employment relations, but also health and wellbeing at the public… in the public policy team at the CIPD, and I'm delighted to introduce the three speakers that I've got with me on this panel.  So, I think on the next slide it's got the running order.

First of all, we've got Claudio Nicholls who's Chief Customer Officer for Simply Health.  Then we've got a name I think many of you will be familiar with, Mariella Frostrup, who is Menopause Employment Ambassador for the Department for Work and Pensions as the UK government's role, so delighted to have Mariella here who has done so much over the past few years to really shine a light on the importance of menopause, creating awareness, more support.  So, really glad as well at the CIPD to work with Mariella on the menopause advisory group.  So, coming onto Kevin, Kevin is Senior HR Manager at Pearson.

Now, just to introduce some brief housekeeping notes, first of all, we will have time at the end of the panel discussion for a wider Q&A.  So, please think about what questions, comments you want to make.  If you put them in the Q&A box, we can pick those up.  The session is being recorded and it'll be available on demand via the webinar section on the CIPD website.  So, it'll be there afterwards and along with all our other webinar series.  Do submit question as soon as you think of them, don't just wait for the end.

So, just to introduce some of our additional resources as well, I will come back to this at the end but the next slide just shows some of the great benefits that you can access if you are a CIPD member and in particular, the wellbeing helpline, I think many of you are people professionals working in HR on this webinar, and if you're a member you can access 24/7 help.  There is a great range of professional and personal wellbeing resources here and we’ve just highlighted some of them.

So, just to introduce the topic that we’re here to talk about today, here we’ve got the health and wellbeing at work survey report that CIPD, supported by Simply Health, published last week.  Now, I think some of you may have seen it in the media because it had tremendous impact.  There were some really big headline findings around it in terms of sickness absence going up, but there were other stories within that survey report as well and one of them was very encouraging because it does show that the level of support that employers are providing for people through the life course, so all those health and wellbeing and personal challenges that you can experience, including menopause transition, menstrual health, support has increased.

So, that's really positive and I think Claudia's going to touch on these as well.  But also, if we think about the kind of wellbeing and health challenges that women at work can experience, they're not just related to biological issues, there are also other issues that we were actually… we were talking about just before we came on live with this webinar, like the increased caring responsibilities that many of us have as we are working and living for longer.  A lot of women at work have got not just perhaps menopause symptoms but also elder care responsibilities.  I know I have myself, and we want to be as inclusive as possible when we are talking about all those different health and wellbeing challenges that we might experience as we journey through life.  And even if you don’t directly experience some of those issues, and actually if we think about fertility challenges, well, that definitely does, in a lot of cases, impact men as well as women, but we take an inclusive approach and recognise that even if you might not directly, for example, experience issues with menstruation or menopause, then a lot of people at work are going to know people who will do.  So, whether that is a mother, a sister, a female colleague and whoever else we might know.

So, all of these issues affect all of us at work.  Now, first of all, I'm going to hand over to Claudia who's going to speak for about ten minutes, and then I will come back on and have a conversation with Mariella, but over to Claudia.  Thank you so much, Claudia.

Claudia Nicholls: Thank you very much, Rachel, and thanks everyone for joining us.  So, I would like to talk to you about why women's health and why it matters in the workplace, then what the report has told us and then a little bit about how we might see a solution and what we think we all can do and what employers can do.

So, let's start with the why.  So, over half the UK population, you know, will experience menopause and perimenopause at some point in their life.  So, the estimate of that, so how does that then playout in terms of number?  That around 13 million people currently are experiencing those symptoms in the UK, and that's a third of the entire UK female population.  So, it's big, it matters.  Secondly, women over 50 are the fastest growing segment of the workforce.  So, you know, we want to benefit from that knowledge base and experience base, so we need to make sure that the support for women's health is in place.

So, coming back to the report that you mentioned, Rachel, the Health and Wellbeing at Work Report, how that is compiled is we do that together with you every two years and it is a survey that gets answered by over 1,100 HR professionals across a range of organisations, from small to large, public sector, private sector.  So, it gives a real good… it's a unique reference study, really, unique in its kind to understand what's happening with wellbeing at work.

And what it's told us is that on average per employee per year, people are having to take 9.4 sickness absence days.  So, if you think about that, that's nearly two whole working weeks.  That's huge, and people don't want to sit at home for two weeks, and employers definitely don’t want their employees off for two weeks because it's impacting other people in their team, it's impacting overall productivity.  That number of 9.4 is also up from the 7.8 it was 2 years ago when we last did the study and up from 5.8 before the pandemic.  So, something is definitely happening and what the report is telling us is that it's partly societal change, so we’re all getting older and we're working till later and with that, more people have long-term sickness issues that they're having to deal with.

The positive is also that more organisations, more employers, are investing in their wellbeing of their employees.  So, we… and those that do, so about three-quarters do, so that's great, and of those that do, nearly 40% saw a reduction in sickness absence.  So when you put something in place, it gets used and it works, so it makes economic sense, if nothing else, the moral need to help in this case women in the workplace, but moreover men and women in the workplace.

We looked at the top causes for short-term absence and long-term absence.  What the two have in common is mental ill health, so that's an issue that carries across both.  For short-term absence, it's also things like not being able to access the GP for minor illness, and what we believe would simply help is it's better to address those things early on so you prevent a small issue from escalating into something more serious.

Then in terms of long-term absence, not only mental ill health but also musculoskeletal.  I can never say it properly.  Back pain, joint pain, knees, shoulders, all that stuff, and of course it's linked with mental health because if you're sitting at home and you've done your back in and you can't work and you can't earn, that also impacts how you feel about life.  So, mental issues, anxiety, depression, is often linked also to physical issues.

And you mentioned, you know, caring responsibilities.  That comes into it, but also more serious health conditions like cancer.  So, like I said, organisations want to do more and they can, so what we are recommending is first off, break the taboo and that's definitely something that if I think about my personal situation, when I first got perimenopausal symptoms, I thought I had onset of early Alzheimer's because I did not know that there were so many more symptoms beyond the temperature issues, the, you know, what people call hot flushes, which I think is a very negative term actually.  It should be called power surges, because then it doesn’t sound like you're making a fuss over nothing.

But anyway, so breaking the taboo is really important.  Equipping your managers with language around women's health issues.  So, some women experience heavy menstrual bleeding.  What do you do with that?  Then perimenopause, making sure people know that it can include things like brain fog, concentration loss, anxiety, depression.  All these other issues that are beyond the physical aspects of maybe, yeah, not being able to sleep.  All that, of course, you bring into work too, so it makes sense for managers and employers to create an open and supportive culture.

Then the other thing they can do is provide easily accessible services, health service, so that people that do need support can get it.  We see often with traditional benefits that there's barriers to access, so it's not simple, it's not fast, it might be expensive.  So that's where employers can help, by making it simple to use and often also tailored.  So we were in 2024 the first provider to offer, if a woman wants to, a GP specialist… with specialist qualifications in women's health issues.  So, if you want to speak to a GP like that or an advanced nurse practitioner, they are specialised in women's issues and they know what they’re talking about and thus, will be able to help you more quickly and better.

A couple of examples of stuff we do at Simply Health.  So, we have a menopause employee support group and we get together every so often and we talk, we create a safe space.  Men are welcome to, but it tends to be mostly women, where we talk about, you know, I've seen a webinar or here's a signpost to a link, where we support each other so you don't have to reinvent the wheel but you can build on what others have done before you.

Like I said, we provide access to a specialist women's health GP service.  We are in the process of applying for menopause-friendly accreditation.  We don't have it yet, but that's what we're working towards, and we have created a women's health alliance which is working with charity partners who've got great content to help with various women's health challenges, and the partners include Bloody Good Period, the Miscarriage Association, Ovarian Cancer Action, Endometriosis UK, Prevent Breast Cancer, etc.  So, those are some of the examples of things that we do, and you know, I'm a passionate advocate of women's health, partly based on my own experience.  

We had fertility challenges and in the end, we did seven rounds of fertility treatment.  I asked my then employer for time off, I asked for six months unpaid leave and they wouldn't give it to me.  So, I resigned from that employer, but I'd like to think that now where we're at with women's health and how that's discussed and the support that's getting in place, that that would not happen again, and that's partly why I feel like I have a responsibility as a female leader to help others understand what the challenges are, understand why it makes economic sense to invest in women's health support and make sure that those doors are open for people.

So, how am I doing?  Was that ten minutes?  Not quite.  Eight minutes according to my stopwatch.

RS: That's great, Claudia.  Thank you.  I'm going to move on to Mariella now, and it's great to have you here in the hot seat so I can ask questions that I think will really help to inform our discussion around the menopause and women's health issues at work, and I think my first question was what prompted you… I remember years ago seeing you on the television and I think it was just at he time where I was realising that yes, I am perimenopausal, so it really helped me having somebody in the public eye speaking about this issue because I don't think I'd had a conversation about it.  What prompted you to start your campaigning work and why do you see it as such an important workplace issue as well?

Mariella Frostrup: Well, thank you very much for having me today.  I guess a bit like Claudia, you know, I was prompted by my own experience which was that having worked in, kind of, you know, the gender equality arena for most of my life alongside my broadcasting career, I suddenly found myself in this period around 47 or so where I didn't know what was happening to me.  I was full of anxiety; I had terrible insomnia.  You know, I struggled through for about a year and a half.  I had young children at the time because I had my children pretty late, you know, in my early forties, and I just didn't know what was happening and it took a very long time until I was about, you know, late 49 for me to be diagnosed, if you will, as menopausal.

And so the first thing that I understood was that the medical support is not what it should be, and I was dealing a lot of the time with doctors that didn't have specific menopause training.  You know, I was asking questions, I was being given blood tests at a time when, you know, your hormones are in such a state of flux that you can't take a blood test that tells you whether or not you're perimenopausal.  You know, you can do it in your late fifties and sixties when things have levelled out and understand better, but it just doesn't work then and we were still at the stage where that was the way people were gauging it.  Not listening to a woman's experience, not listening to what their bodies were telling them, but sort of going, "Oh no, you're 48 and the blood test says you're not menopausal at all so you're not," you know, and then the one the next month would be that I was peri and the one after that would say I was post.

You know, it was incredibly distressing to be trying to be a parent at home, do my job and go through this thing, and the thing that made it worse of all, really, was the fact that there was no information.  It was incredibly hard to come by.  When you brought it up in public, you know, amongst friends or, you know, at a dinner or, you know, people would just sort of clam up and they'd look horrified like you'd just told them that you had the bubonic plague or something.

And so what I understood was that here was this absolutely compulsory stage of women's lives, a transitory phase that was absolutely covered in shame, nobody wanted to talk about it.  As a result of that, there was very little information about it.  Doctors, it wasn't mandatory for GPs to train in it.  You know, you could do a sort of half-hour module if you opted in, and so the level of ignorance combined with the level of shame and secrecy around it was just untenable and for me, the idea that this would happen to every woman and that we were in this particular position with it, I think that that's what prompted the campaigning.

And, you know, actually when you, sort of, say you know, menopause ambassador, and we mention menopause a lot now, you know, in many ways that is incredible progress, but what it also did for me was just, sort of, prove to be a sort of prism into understanding how much women's health and our biology which we're born with impacted on us along our career journey, and impacted on us, quite honestly in 90% of the time, negative ways.  And you know, post the Second World War, with more and more women joining the workforce and now making up nearly half of the workforce.  

For the challenges that women specifically experience to have no traction in how we shape our workplaces is completed unacceptable, I think, and particularly now in the 21st century.  And the interesting thing about it is that it's not just a, sort of, moral crusade for women to be supported.  I mean, I even react badly when I hear the word help, because in many ways it's like you need to facilitate workplaces that women can happily exist in, and yet all the data that we can get now and all the access to all the figures and the economic figures that we have say that women are imperative to the economy, and our inclusion in it is imperative.  So, that's why I think it's really important in the workplace, and I see menopause really, because of the fact that we could make a noise about that because it had been so terribly overlooked, I think menopause is just prove… like a sort of window into a greater understanding of the whole of women's health journey through work and through life.

RS: Yeah.  No, that's brilliant.  I can identify with so much and it took me so long to join the dots myself, and you're so right about it… the onus is on organisations to create those working environments that support women and everybody, but throughout all our life stages, and the… we know from our research there are so many women still who are having their careers stunted or just leaving work altogether because they are not working in workplaces that are conducive to supporting people through natural life events.

But on the issue of progress, because I mentioned at the beginning that we have seen progress, and we have.  In the few years that CIPD, we've been campaigning and lobbying and carrying out research around menopause and other women's health issues, we have seen a real increase in the number of employers that are creating those kind of working environments.  But do you think we've seen a lot of progress?  How would you measure progress over the last few years in terms of creating those environments?

MF: I was laughing the other night because I've been watching these two series.  One's called The Assassin with Keeley Hawes playing this menopausal ex-assassin, and what struck me about that, and this other one called The Girlfriend…

RS: Yeah.

MF: Which is on at the moment, was that there were jokes being made about menopause, not the sort of, you know, mother-in-law jokes that we're used to, but actual jokes that required a level of understanding about menopause and menopausal symptoms.  So, in The Assassin there was this scene where she's… she goes back to her gun case after 20 years of it being redundant because she's a retired assassin, and then she's looking at it because she needs to open it up and it's, you know, imperative for her safety, and she's looking at the combination lock and her face just goes blank.

And anyone watching that now thinks brain fog, you know, whereas a decade ago that would not have been the case.  So, I think that, you know…

RS: Yeah.

MF: There's incredible progress being made in terms of the public conversation around it, the reduction of stigma and shame.  You know, the amount of women who used to come up to me in darkened corners of toilets to talk about that thing, and now talk to me openly on the street, on the bus, you know, out at dinner.  You know, wherever it… you know, whatever you're doing.

So, I see all of that as great progress, but I think that it's very much amongst, shall we say, the chattering classes at the moment, and I'm worried that there are huge swathes of the population that haven't yet been infiltrated in the same way.  So, there are still millions of women out there, I think, who are very uncomfortable about talking about it and are not at the cutting edge of, you know, understanding that there is support and they can ask for it and so on.

But I think the other, sort of, thing that's interesting in terms of what Claudia was saying is, you know, it is a positive and negative picture because on the one hand, you do have employers that are changing and, you know, we do a women in work, a (gem? 22.34) survey that we started a couple of years ago where we identify the companies that are doing the most in order to… I mean, the three, sort of, criteria: parental leave; women in, you know, positions of board level; and the gender pay gap.  And what we're seeing is more and more companies are moving towards resolving those issues and the comforting thing is that these are big, successful companies.

I mean, someone like Octopus Energy, you know, only started out, you know, 12 years ago and has turned into this huge billions and billion-dollar organisation, but they tick all the boxes on those levels and there are many other companies, and it's become an aspiration.  And I think not an aspiration, again, just because of a moral imperative, because I don't think women want to feel like they're, sort of, second-rate citizens that need extra support, but because of the economic picture that we see and the fact that companies that look after their employees, whatever sex, actually do better and flourish more.

So, that's the positive picture.  I guess the negative picture is the increasing number of people who are, you know, taking time off work, that 9.4% I think you said it had risen to, and I would slightly temper that with the fact that I think as soon as something becomes okay to talk about and you can say, "I'm exhausted.  I haven't slept for three nights.  I need to take a day off," or those things, then you will see an increase in numbers.

So, I kind of think yes, we need to understand why it's increasing and we need to do more to alleviate it, but at the same time, you can get a kind of vague glimmer of hope from the fact that people are actually feeling, in particular these extra numbers of women over 50 who are joining the workforce, who are feeling that they can bring symptoms to their employers.

But you know, it's not just companies.  I mean, I'm also very worried about the idea that, you know, all of the onus now falls onto business to deal with things that actually need to be dealt with, you know, on a societal level, and certainly across government.  You know, we have a 40-plus health check.  I know we were talking about it just before the seminar began.  The webinar began.  You know, so showing my age.  At the 40-plus health check, we're all invited to it.  It's supposed to predict, you know, potential future conditions that can be debilitating and the one thing it doesn’t mention is menopause, and yet if you go at 40, it's such a brilliant opportunity to be informing women about the things that they should look out for, the symptoms that they might experience and where they can turn for help.

So, you know, we need the Department of Health, you know, signed up to that.  We need financial institutions looking at creating ways in which to create policies for pensions and so on that in some way level things out so that women don't end up… because they take time out to do 68% of the caring in this country.  So maybe a joint pension.  I mean, I know it sounds shocking, but we do joint mortgages.  There has to be room for a product like that, and I think key to all of it, to be quite honest, is parental leave because until you shift the notion that women will do the majority of the caring and that starts with the fact that we carry the babies and have the babies and are, you know, society expects us to be the ones who take time out.  It's not like we get a choice a lot of the time, and I think until you remove that expectation, then you continue to expect women to do everything they did before as the unpaid half of the economic picture, supporting the paid power-receiving half of the workforce, and you perpetuate something that is no longer sustainable.  You know, the world has changed and we have to change.

RS: Yeah, I mean I couldn't agree more.  I think we do need a more aspirational vision and I think it needs to be holistic and in terms of how employers create those supportive environments, because women are affected at work, not just by issues like menstruation, menstrual health, fertility issues, pregnancy loss, menopause, but there's also a whole other series of, sort of, pressures, challenges, for instance around caring responsibilities.  So, it has to be holistic.  Government policy needs to be and so does workplace policy.

We are seeing, I agree, positive change, and I think the most significant one in terms of government policy is going to be the inclusion of support for menopause as part of large employers having to produce a gender action plan.  So that is something concrete that will be coming into force.  Where do you think the biggest gaps are?  Because I agree, I think it's quite uneven.  That's the sense we get from our research at CIPD, that there's some real success stories in terms of what organisations are doing, and we're going to come on and talk to Kevin soon, but it's not even.  Where do you think we need to focus a lot of attention?  Is it in parts of the economy?  You know, people working in certain sectors where they're not attached to a… you know, they're not in an office, they're not at a desk.  Where do you think that that challenges lie?

MF: I mean, that's why I think that it has to be, you know, societal-wide change, because I think ultimately, what we have to accept and understand is that women aren't going back into the home.  You know, they're not giving up working.  We are a fundamental and incredibly important part of the workforce, and I think for way too long it's been regarded as a minority issue, which is perplexing when you think that we are half the population and I think until that sense that dealing with women's issues is a sort of afterthought, that it's something to kind of finetune afterwards, that's not helpful.

You know, ultimately, most workplaces have been built on a male linear trajectory.  You start at the bottom, you work your way up, you retire, you disappear and play golf or whatever.  Sorry for the stereotype.  But ultimately, that's what they've been shaped around and that's not because men have chosen that particularly, but it's because men inhabited the workplaces, and what we haven't done is stopped and looked at the whole picture and gone, "This is a different world.  This is 50% of the workforce."

When we create workplaces that work for all, everybody benefits.  It's not just about women and singling women out and it's certainly not just about menopause and singling menopause out so that we stigmatise another part of women's lives.  You know, it's like am I going to employ the 32-year-old man or woman that haven't had a baby?  You know, we know that there's still, sort of, institutional bias and systemic bias when it comes to she's going to have babies and she's going to take time out and… we don't want to do the same thing with menopause.  What we have to do is to create workplaces, and I think, you know, one of the interesting things about flexible working as a result of the pandemic was that what we discovered was that at first, it was considered to be something that was beneficial to women because the expectation, the assumption is that women are the ones who are going to have to leave early to pick kids up from school or any of those things, but what we discovered with flexible working was that it worked for everyone.

Men took it up as much as women did and we've yet to work out a way in which we can ensure that there aren't these huge companies with tumbleweed blowing through them and no employees in place, but actually, thinking about creatively, how you can make room for flexibility not just in whether you're in the workplace or not but, you know, in terms of perhaps you need time out, as you mentioned, you know, you want to take children… you talked about wanting to take six months off and that not being allowed.  You know, we have to be more creative about how we look at things.

We also have to look at very simple stuff, because an awful lot of, particularly the female workforce, is part time, isn't particularly well protected or in fact isn't protected at all.  You know, zero-hours contracts were until, you know, quite recently the norm for, you know, a huge swathe of the female population, and I think in many of those jobs, it's things about adapting uniforms and just creating, you know… I've talked to an air hostess from British Airways the other day and they've, you know, got these brand new uniforms… well, about a year old now, by Ozwald Boateng and they're very, you know, sleek and, you know, but actually, those uniforms are made of man-made fibre and they're really sweaty and a huge number of people working on those airlines are working for long hours in these sweaty uniforms and it…

RS: Yeah.

MF: It's just actually starting to understand what people need.

RS: Yeah.

MF: And it doesn’t have to be a huge cost to companies.  That's the thing that's…

RS: No.

MF: Quite frustrating at the moment, is that actually (Inaudible 32.19) and you know, we talk about tech and all the bad stuff about it, but the great thing is you can access so many different platforms, ways of getting information for your employees, ways in which they can get, you know, be enlightened about menopause, about endometriosis, about, you know, all of these things.

If you create a convivial of environment and those things don't cost, you talk about, you know, partnerships…

RS: No.

MF: With charities and so on.  You know, it's about creative thinking and it's about accepting that women are 50% of the workforce, or very soon will be, and it needs to be shaped around both sexes.

RS: Yeah, couldn't agree more, and when we asked women in work typically experiencing the menopause, "What would you find most helpful to help you with symptoms?" planned flexible working was the top one, but exactly as you say, no, not everybody can work from home.  We've got results in our survey showing how much absence reduced and performance went up when people were able to work from home, but not all roles, of course, as you say, can be done from home, but there are so many other sorts of flexibility and flexible working that you can have if you just think about it and be a bit creative.

So…

MF: Yeah, and I think an empathetic environment as well.  You know that costs nothing.  You know, ultimately what it means is that you have resources that you can point people to and they don't have to feel ashamed to talk about the things… and they shouldn't actually have to go to… into huge amounts of detail either.  They should just be resources that you can direct people to, and so they’re very…

RS: Yeah.

MF: It… the frustrating thing, I think, is that they're very simple and cost-effective and indeed, you know, cost-neutral a lot of the time, things that can be done.

RS: Yeah.

MF: It's just a question of accepting that those are the workplaces we want to create, and they will benefit everybody.  It's not just women.

RS: Yeah.

MF: They'll benefit other minority groups that need, you… the same degree of flexibility or more so, you know, and so on and it means that we can use the best resources that people have to bring, you know, in the most creative ways. In many ways it's helpful.

RS: And that's what workplaces are going to have to do if they are going to be able to attract and keep really valuable skills and talent.  Because I know… we know a lot of organisations find that challenging, and so creating those environments are going to benefit everybody, you're absolutely right.

Mariella, before I move onto Kevin, is there anything… I've asked you a lot of questions, but is there anything you'd like to say or add?

MF: Only that…

RS: At this point?

MF: I really think that, you know, I started to worry about… which is ironic because of my title, you know, the whole, sort of, identifying and "loudhailering" menopause.  I think that what we have to see menopause as is an opportunity for all of us to understand better the many stages of women's biological journey, the imperative fertility that means that we create the next generation and the next generation, and also their imperative value in terms of the economy.  And this shouldn't be a discussion that keeps being, you know, downplayed.

You know, the fact that we still don't have equal pay is not acceptable.  You know, I'd like to see… I would actually like to see this government go, you know, "By the time we leave office, you know, we intend for the, you know, gender pay gap to not exist any longer," because it's inequitable, it's unsustainable, it discourages women from working when they could because they're not making enough money.  I mean, I think the other thing you didn't mention in terms of… I mean, I think it's great the policies for, you know, 250-plus companies, but also, you know, more free childcare.  Because, you know, if a woman's having to make a choice where it's going to cost her more money to have childcare than it is for her to be able to go to work, that doesn't work.  It doesn't work for anybody.

RS: No.

MF: You know, and so I think we probably need to be more revolutionary in how we perceive this and not accept excuses and finetuning and, you know, levelling up mentions.  You know, it needs to change.

RS: It does need to change.  Thank you, and we'll be coming back to you and Claudia in the discussion, and please keep your questions coming through everybody.  Well, thanks so much, Mariella.  I'm going to move onto Kevin now.  Welcome, Kevin.  Really looking forward to…

Kevin Lyons: Hi Rachel.

RS: Hearing about the work that you're doing at Pearson.  Thank you.

KL: Could… okay, yeah, so follow that.  Thanks, Claudia, thanks, Mariella.  Yeah, I think where I start in terms of Pearson's journey, let's go back to the pandemic.  So, most people were working in offices then.  So, following the pandemic, what we did during that time was we took the opportunity to look at our workplaces and to turn them into more collaborative spaces, so less desks and more different opportunities to work in different ways.

We asked employees how they wanted to work.  So, employees could put into it and we could put that into the HR system, and that would be approved by their manager.  So, if the employees wanted to work so many days a week from home, they didn't want to come into an office at all, then they would have to go through a different conversation about remote working, but we certainly allowed a lot of flexibility around hybrid working patterns.

So coming out of that, what we found was we did not feel that we needed to mandate returns to work and we found if you gave employees the flexibility to decide their hours, and many of our employees have the opportunity to do that, there are some roles which require employees to be in an office because they're retail centres or they're processing centres, but again, you can show flexibility around shift patterns and the like.  So if you allow that, then you allow employees the chance to, if they have to come into the office or they want to come into the office, and it's worth saying that some employees do want to come into the office and there are other issues connected with employees that work entirely from home or in… were made to work from home during the pandemic, and even during the pandemic we had to allow for certain employees that were in domestic abuse situations to get the opportunity to come into the office to be away from the environment that was causing them significant issues.

But that's another fact, but if you're allowing employees the opportunity to choose, so Pearson has a flexible working policy and does not mandate returns to work or days in the office that people have to work.  It's worth saying the Strand head office has the highest occupancy of any of the Pearson offices.  It's also in a very good location and that is a factor, about destination offices, and we could talk about that in… we actually… CIPD podcast 200 is a good one, and I'm in the conversation with Dani Harmer at Aviva and we talk about destination offices and we talk about flexible working in that, so do check that out.

In terms of policies, Pearson has a menopause policy and guide, and I think that's incredibly important for organisations to look at that.  What it does is it allows the conversation to take place.  The organisation is saying, "This is important.  This needs to be considered," and it's saying to managers and to employees, "These are the resources and the content that the company provides," but also to managers, how to approach conversations, what adjustments can be made, what accommodations.  For employees, it's very much about where can I go, what resources have I got, what flexibility do I have around my working environment as well, which we've… which I've just touched on.

So, the menopause policy and guidelines were developed with the menopause team that we had in Pearson, and with the HR teams and with the business leadership, and it took some time to develop that and with outside bodies, but we felt that we had to get that right and so that's in place and that's a global policy, and that… that is, that is current across all the Pearson organisation which is in 95 countries.  So, that's important as the statement that this is an important consideration that needs to be taken into account.

The other support that is available, and it's trying to think about these things holistically, is we have a digital health and wellbeing platform and that allows for free coaching and therapy for employees.  So, some employees have found that useful in the context of female health, to take advantage of that resource.  There's also the employee assistance programme, which is more for crisis moments, but it's also there as provision, and then there's the private health cover.  So, the conversation we’ve had with our private health cover insurer in the UK is how can we expand the private health cover to provide… fertility treatment, but also to allow for certain acute conditions around menopause.

Now, the menopause isn’t counted by the medical insurers as a… something to be treated in itself, but they do, they do allow treatment of conditions arising from menopause.  So, it's trying to put all the elements in place, and the other thing is you've got to keep the conversation up.  So, it's really good to have champions.  So, Mariella as a champion of this area is speaking out about it and providing that thought leadership and providing that focus, and we did that in our organisation by trying to bring in external speakers, but also getting leaders to talk about it.  So, senior female leaders, although reluctant in some cases to talk about that, because we have to understand the challenges that face women when they come into leadership in an organisation, and it has been in the past that women have masked the reality of their lives and their health because they're trying to compete in this kind of male world, and Mariella was talking to that very well earlier.

There is a holistic element as well.  Pearson is looking seriously at its parental leave, so I was so glad that Mariella mentioned that.  Unless we get men invested in the home from the get-go, we're always going to have the situation where women are the primary project managers of the home and the primary care givers, and so the key, in my view, is for men, for fathers to have the same level of paternity leave as mothers do and allow more flexibility of couples to change and interchange.  And also, allow flexible working so men are not going to the office, they're not having two weeks' parental leave and then they leave the child and it's left with the woman.  So we, from the get-go, we have to look at our parental leave policies to try to say this is how we optimise the best from all our employees.

So what we're trying to do is we're trying to get the very best from all our employees and we do that by supporting them in their lived experience.  There's another point that Claudia picked up about, which is about MSK, and so we have a partnership with Sword Health and this provides specific MSK resources for employees.  It used to be Census and now it's an artificial intelligence platform, and what this does is we're trying to address the MSK agenda earlier in the person's life and journey.  We're… we also have a partnership with Wellhub for national gym… subsidised gym membership and Virgin Active, and with… what we're doing is trying to offer support to employees throughout their lived experience and their life and this will benefit, yeah, female employees and other employees who are going through the menopause and having health changes in their lives.  We're supporting them on their journey.

MSK is our number one health cost in Pearson, and it's a navigated cost treatment in the US, for example.  It's just something peculiar to health plans in the US, but it is something that we're trying to address at source and to make that better rather than expensive operations later in the life and interventions.

So, it's a complicated area and there's quite a lot we, you know, organisations can do at not, as Mariella was telling, not great cost, to be honest.  It's about thought leadership, looking at things holistically, putting policies in place.  I do think for the big companies, the government's intervention will help.  It will get some focus on it.  Organisations can't change society, but they can be trailblazers, and so all the big companies doing this will make some SMEs follow and it will generally bring about change in society.  Maybe gradually.  It may not be the revolution Mariella's looking for, but you've got to look… you've got to aim high with this stuff, but we are getting incremental progress, but it kind of needs to go further and I think there are symbiotic agendas such as parental leave which will help women with regards to menopause and the changes in their bodies as they get… as they go through their lives.

MF: Can I just interject and say that I'd really like to come and work at Pearson.

KL: Come on, then.

MF: I mean… but no, but that's… I mean…

KL: Give me a call.

MF: But that's incredible, you know, and that's, you know, and I do speak to a lot of, you know, bigger companies now that are doing these things and I think part of the worry is how you translate that to SMEs and help them understand that this isn't a cost, this is something that actually is about a mental retuning in terms of how workplaces work.  It's not something that's going to significantly impact because already, you know, as we know, we're not in a particularly robust economic climate and I think, you know, for a lot of smaller companies and, you know, ironically, a lot of them are run by women as well.  You know, this is something that, you know, has to be considered in terms of the impact it'll have on the business, but I think the really important thing, as Kevin laid out there, is that actually, it doesn't have to have major and in fact in some instances almost, you know, cost-neutral impact.

RS: No, agree, and just going back to that point as well in terms of small organisations about it isn't necessarily big, complex changes that we're talking about here.  Our big, sort of, strapline mantra when we first starting campaigning a few years ago around building menopause-friendly workplaces was small changes can make a big difference, and they don’t cost anything.  Just feeling that you are supported, that… well, normalising menopause and menstrual health and other women's health issues, it just makes you feel more comfortable, it makes you feel like you belong more.  If you could have a conversation with your manager, that makes a tremendous difference and that comes through the research that we’ve done as well.  Yes, there are practical changes that can really help and they're important too, and flexible working is one of them and temperature control and so on.  There's a lot of changes that can be helpful, but it is that cultural piece I think that's really important.

MF: And I think as well that…

RS: Go on.

MF: We keep talking about women, you know, but it isn't just women that benefit.

RS: No.

MF: Ultimately, you know, a more supportive workplace, you know, I'm sure there are many millions of men out there who would like to go to a more supportive workplace where the things that are on their mind or the things that are affecting their health, whether it be prostate or, you know, whatever it might be, I think that it… what we're talking about is creating a better working world and…

RS: Yeah.

MF: You know, along the way that will benefit everybody.  It's not about singling out women  for extra help and support, it's about creating more inclusive and more holistic environment, as Kevin outlined there, that in the end, you know, impacts positively every single member of every organisation, every business, every workplace.

RS: Absolutely agree.  Claudia, did you want to come in?

CN: Yes, I did.  You've got so much to say, it's difficult to contribute.  So, you raised a question, Mariella, about you know, it not just being large organisations but also it being smaller and medium-sized enterprise.  What I'm so encouraged about, if you look at the data for us, so where does business come from, where does new business come from, we see real growth in SME as a sector in addition to the larger ones.  So, in many ways it's helpful that there's competition for talent.

So, we see almost all of the large retailers, for example, are talking to us about how can I support not just the top layer in the organisation but everyone, all my employees, and they have… they're specifically asking for solutions for women's health and for solutions for older elements in their workplace.  The fastest growing segment for us in terms of new people buying health cover are what we call in the third sector.  So, multi-academy trusts, care, home groups, housing associations, and of course what all those jobs have in common, they're often smaller.  Some of them are bigger, but many of them are small and these jobs are quite high pressured.  They're physically and mentally demanding and the employers are wanting to put something in place to help their employees, much like what Kevin described.  It just makes sense to do that.  It makes economic sense.

RS: Absolutely.

MF: Absolutely.

RS: I've got an interesting question here and do keep them coming.  This is Pause For Thought.  So, Belinda is asking, and I think it raises quite a lot of issues this question, "On flexible work, how would you suggest employers address the published research findings [doesn't say what those are] that flexible work has a dark side for menopause support in that it can actually enable women to hide their symptoms if they're working from home or away from work and engage in overwork to compensate for perceived performance?"  I think that's quite an interesting question and quite interesting to unpick.  Would you like to come in, Kevin?  Well, anybody.  Kevin?

KL: Yeah, well I did…

RS: Interesting point.

KL: I did allude to there are nuances to flexible working when I talked about domestic abuse, and I did that for reasons that there are quite serious nuances to it and it is believed… what we found with the pandemic is there were… if you can remember at the start, there were some organisations, some leaders who were saying, "Well, we can't really trust employees and we don't think they're going to work very hard and we think they're going to be lazy."  That was completely untrue, because the evidence that came through was that in fact, employees worked very hard and it was more a case of trying to reduce screen time.

So, when I was talking about the menopause guide, what we encourage managers to do is to be mindful of the way that menopause can play out and how… and it's the same way with… I'm neurodivergent.  It's the same… when we were working on a neurodiversity guide and we talked to masking, and neurodivergent people mask all the time in the same way that menopausal people mask all the time as well.

So, I think you have to be progressive enough as an organisation to talk about that, to be able to understand that that happens and to seek to allow employees to have as much support as possible.

MF: But I think as well that talks to this idea that, you know, it can't just happen in a silo.  You know, you can't just have an understanding environment at work, but in society at large, you know, a lesser one.  You know, and ultimately, as women understand better what's happening to them, the, you know, the weight of shame and secrecy that has been synonymous with menopause lifts and we manage to spread that wider through society so we reach some of the harder-to-reach communities and things.

I think that the inclination to take those symptoms home and be covert will lessen, and so all of it has to work together.  You know, it's again, you know, back to that, you know, much (Inaudible 54.52) but actually imperative word, holistic.  It's about changing society, changing the… HS in terms of how it supports women and changing business in terms of how they embrace and support employees going through any sort of life change, difficulty with health.  Often, they're things that people don't really want to talk about and are scared to talk about in public, and so you have to be working constantly on changing that, you know, I think, and that, to me, is an imperative part of it.

RS: Yeah, couldn't agree more and no, I think to me it shows how important as well that employers actually make sure that its support and understanding and policies around menopause and women's health issues is actually… and any health and wellbeing issue is integrated throughout all its policies and processes and culture as well and line managers being confident and not embarrassed of conversations.  Not just about performance in a rigid way, but actually about the whole person and how they're doing, so those regular check-ins so that it isn't felt that you've got to go and hide away with your symptoms, that actually, that there is really true, sort of, openness around health issues at work and they are, sort of, factored in to how somebody engages with their work.

So, I thought that was… that's quite a thought-provoking question there.

MF: I think vastly as well we should just very briefly mention the fact that there's a lot of menopausal women out there who can't wait to go to work in order to escape the expectations that they have, you know, at home.  So, I think it's a sort of dual… it's a dual system.  You have to allow them the office space so that they can get away from, you know, the very things we were talking about in terms of responsibilities at home.

RS: Yes, yeah, exactly.  We want a balance.  So, gosh, that's… that hour has gone really quickly.  We've only got two minutes left, so as well as saying a huge thank you to the three of you, Kevin, Claudia and Mariella, I did just want to ask you for one tiny little soundbite, a lasting thought to leave with everybody, or it could be a top tip for employers, where to start.

So, if I go in the same running order, Claudia, what's your last thought to leave with us?

CN: My last thought is for employees to be vocal and champion women's health.  Don't let yourself be fobbed off with a, you know, half answer, and for employers to know that there's lots of solutions available that don't cost the earth that will make a big difference.

RS: Thank you, and Mariella?

MF: I think probably just that change can be incremental and that every single individual can contribute to it.  You know, I didn't grow up thinking I really want to be a menopause campaigner when I'm, you know, 50, and I really do feel that, you know, change is something we fear.  We need to embrace it more and that applies to employers as well, but in our daily lives, the… you know, if we feel a little bit more confident, then there's someone else we can lift along with us and that employed in organisations I think is a really powerful thing because there are lots and lots of people, women in particular in this instance, who would be very happy to mentor other women through this phase in life.  And again, that's a cost-neutral thing to do but it also creates and galvanises your workforce to feel that they're together in a project, you know.  And so…

RS: Yeah.

MF: I think, you know, every single person listening here today, you know, if you take away that desire to make a little change and you spread the word about that, it's incredible the power that we have and we live in a world where we feel powerless a lot of the time.  We're made to feel squished, and I would argue and encourage people to not feel cowed, that we can change the world and the working world in particular.

RS: No, that's great.

MF: In this instance.

RS: That's great, and peer support, there's a real power in that feeling of belonging and community in work as well.  So Kevin, you've got the last word before I just wrap up.

KL: Well, just to build, really.  I think… you're on a journey and organisations have a role to play and I feel it is trailblazers, and what they can do is just little steps. We talked about flexible working and we talked about a policy, and actually I forgot to mention mentoring, which Mariella just mentioned, and that has been incredibly powerful in our organisation, that women mentoring other women in terms… as being… as menopause coaches.  So, it's things like that that can build and take us all on a journey of a better… big support for people's lived experience.

RS: Thank you, Kevin, and actually I have seen in a lot of organisations just it's been real community, women on the ground and allies as well in the workplace that have really driven a lot of change around menopause.  So, it is a really inspiring thought to leave us with, thank you.

So, just finally got one or two slides.  We have got some great research, reports, guidance on the CIPD website and there's a QR code that you can go to to… linked to… this is just a sample.  There's the health and wellbeing report I mentioned.  We've got guidance and its evidence based and also based on the insights of people at work with lived experience as well.  So, it's really well-developed guidance that we have there for people professionals, but also for line managers too.

So, a great selection there.  We will be sending around these slides so you can see that QR code again afterwards, and then just again to emphasise all our wellbeing is important and if you're a CIPD member, you can access really great health and wellbeing resources, 24/7 support there, and that's through Spectrum.  So, that is there for you.  So, got to look after ourselves as well as everybody else.  That is so important, and then just finally to say thank you and we will be sending around the recorded webinar.  That'll be on our website, actually, and so big thanks to our speakers, Claudia, Mariella and Kevin, but to you as well for attending.  Really great to have this conversation and it felt like we were just getting started, so watch this space for more webinars at the CIPD.  Thank you everyone.