I’m sure by now you will have read the headlines about Avanti giving its menopausal staff a ‘menopause gift bag’ that included a fan for hot sweats, a jelly baby sweet “in case you feel like biting someone’s head off”, a tissue “if you’re feeling a bit emotional” and a paperclip “to help you keep it all together”. Menopause symptoms can be debilitating for some women and it’s not something to trivialise in this way, especially when we know 1 in ten women end up leaving their job due to their menopause symptoms. If the bag is a delaying tactic, I’m horrified. But if it’s a way of people learning more and hopefully being able to signpost them to the right treatments, then I think that’s good. Only a minority of menopausal women are receiving HRT which is first line evidence based treatment for the majority of menopausal women. It is therefore so important that we’re not just allowing people flexible time or reducing their hours, or women are simply talking about their symptoms – we’ve got to be more proactive into enabling women to understand what treatments are available, in the same way that we would if they had any other condition that was affecting them in the workplace.

This years International Women’s day 2024 theme is #inspireinclusion. Check out our IWD 2024 webpage for events and webinars that are taking place within SY for our workforce syics.co.uk/workforce-wellbe…. What have you planned and we can add to webpage!