69: Menopause Impact on Careers and the Role of Supportive Workplaces with Grace Molloy

Welcome to Dear Menopause podcast, where we discuss the menopause transition to help make everyday life a little easier for women. My name is Sonya Lovell and I am the host of Dear Menopause, the podcast. Today you are going to meet Grace Molloy. Grace is the CEO and founder of Menopause Friendly Australia. Grace is going to show you exactly what menopause and work have to do with each other. Menopausal women are the fastest growing workforce demographic and Grace wants women to know that, with the right awareness and support, that it is possible to continue to thrive and work. Enjoy today's episode.

Thank you, sonya. It's a pleasure to be here. I have followed your podcast since its inception, so it's absolutely my pleasure to be here.

Oh my goodness, you're like an original listener.

That's very exciting how many of those have you got? I reckon you probably have a lot, because I've been here with one of the first people that started this conversation.

I have over 70 episodes and that has been an episode every week so well over 70 weeks that we have been pumping out Dare Menopause, which is super exciting. Yeah, I like to think that I was one of the first podcasts in Australia anyway out on this topic, which is really cool. So thank you for joining us and thank you for being an original listener Really great. I'm really looking at putting guests on and then finding out that they have been listeners of the podcast as well. It's such a nice little kind of like circle of completion. Grace, why don't you introduce yourself? I always find it easier when the guests introduce themselves, much, much more seamless. Tell us who you are and a little bit about why you're here today. Sure.

Well, Grace Molloy is my name. I'm the CEO of Menopause Friendly Australia. We've recently launched our company in Australia and my background actually is sort of too pronged. I started out life as an accountant, a bean counter, an auditor probably the most unlikely change from accounting to nurse After a bit of a midlife crisis, I think probably having a couple of children and reassessing where I was at at last, I thought actually I want to go back into where my passion lies and that's around health, wellness and helping women to thrive. So I actually undertook a Masters of Nursing as a mature age student with two very young children and completed that in 2021. So from there I really started looking at how can we improve the health and wellness of people generally and going to medical research. So that was a really innovative environment to be in. I worked in a clinical trial facility for cancer research and from there, really understood how cancer can really impact people from a not only from a disease perspective, but also with many women going through a medically induced menopause. So that was really a different change for me. And then I also had my own personal experience going through paramedipause, trying to navigate the system, trying to find the information, and it really struck me then that, having done a clinical degree in nursing, that I was none the wiser to the changes that were happening in my body and started really to try and unpick why that was and how I could make an impact to change that.

That's really interesting. It's amazing how often I have guests on or I'm having conversations with different connections that I come across or women that I meet predominantly women that are doing work in this space and so often their transition into their current career is a result of their experience through their own paramedipause or menopausal transition, and I've really started exploring the fact that I truly believe that our menopause transition is actually really a gateway to a transformation and, as much as that transition can be really bumpy and challenging for many women, it's really important that we don't lose sight of the fact that there is this transformation going on at the same time, and I believe that we have all sorts of identity shifts, that we gain agency and I talk often about the power and the potency that I believe we come out with and I really truly believe that is so reflective when we talk to women that have had these career progressions that just so amazingly, are timed with their peri-menopausal journeys.

I agree absolutely, and for many people it can be a really difficult time, a really challenging time, but for others it can be an empowering time, especially those of us that may have suffered from terrible experiences with our menstrual cycle within dermatitis or lots of pain, physical and physical. We can feel a relief of changing in that. But I think, as you said, more so, there's a shift in perspective and life and I think a lot of that power comes from the knowledge, the background. We feel as though we've got a little bit under our belt in terms of experience, especially in the workforce. You know we've got that potentially 20 years of experience under our belt, so it's really important from a menopause perspective, I think as well to you know change that conversation to look at. Well, yes, there are some things that can be challenging throughout this transition, but also it can be a really great time of life for women to come out the other side with that renewed confidence and that feeling of a rebirth. I think probably into the time of life where you have more confidence about who you are and what you want to do. And I certainly feel that way myself, that I'm now on the path that I'm meant to be on in helping people to navigate this and in helping workplaces to become menopause friendly as well.

Yeah, and I think I love the fact that you've taken all of your own experiences your nursing and clinical research experience and you're channeling that now into making change and a difference in the workplace for women. So that's what we're here to talk about today. So let's talk about the workplace. Why did you choose the workplace? As where you felt you could make the biggest difference, the great question.

I think I sort of reflected on the fact that I couldn't identify perimenopause myself. So would I actively have gone out and saw information about menopause being the reason why I was feeling that way? And I don't think I would have, and I actually didn't. So what I thought was well, how can we get to people where they are? We need an intervention for women, we need to start educating women around this. And so where are they and what are they doing at this time of life? And we know that 81% of people will be employed through their menopause transition. So for me, workplaces are a really obvious place where we can, en masse, start raising awareness for menopause, start giving people some evidence-based information and giving them some places to start in terms of seeking some changes in lifestyle and some treatment, if that's what they need to do so that they can continue to thrive. The average age of menopause is 51. And so what we see is that 51, life expectancy now of 86, we've got a lot longer that we're living without our hormones. And so why is that? Why are we living long without our hormones? Well, that's just because we've got a lot better health and we're living longer, but our body hasn't caught up in terms of our menopause transition. We're still experiencing these changes in hormones and that's really important to understand from not only a longer term health perspective, but also from a workforce perspective, because most of the people that are going through menopause at 51 and earlier through perimenopause, are at work and, unfortunately, the symptoms of menopause don't stop as soon as you walk through the door at work.

No, they don't? No, they don't, and that can become quite problematic for some women. From your experience, what do you believe are some of the most challenging symptoms for women to be managing in the workplace?

Yeah, so there's been some brief, quite a lot of research around this in the UK. The research is still emerging in Australia and there are some great researchers working on this at the moment. To see from an Australian perspective, Looking at the landscape from the UK and the US and Australia, our workplaces are quite similar, so we can rely on some of this research from overseas. So the sort of five main symptoms that people report that are troublesome for them at work are more those what we call vasomotor symptoms, so that is night sweats and hot flushes, and so obviously those symptoms on their own cause problems for women at work. But also night sweats and vasomotor symptoms can then lead to sleep disruption. So one of the most reported problematic symptoms is the lack of ability to sleep and then again that, you know, flows over into then an inability to concentrate. So people sleep deprived. They've got hot sweats, not, you know, they've got difficulty sleeping. Their sleep patterns are all over the place. They go to work and then they can't concentrate and then what we see, unfortunately, is a real lack of confidence. People feel as though they're not able to perform the way that they used to be able to perform. They might not be able to remember the conversations that they had with people in the corridor, and some people they can't even remember the names of their colleagues. It's you know, it can be really quite severe in these sort of changes in our cognition. So from a workplace perspective, those are the sort of main physical symptoms. And then, unfortunately as well, we know that this is a time of life for women when anxiety and depression can be higher, and that's as a result of our hormones changing too. So in the workplace those symptoms can also be quite a problem for people in navigating the workplace, while they're feeling a heightened sense of stress, a heightened sense of anxiety and then not being able to perform in the way that they used to.

Yeah, and you can really see how, without diagnosis and therefore without management, those symptoms are just cyclical. They're just constantly feeding into each other and it is going to be a cycle that a woman is really going to struggle to break, and I would imagine that that is when we see so many women stepping back in their careers. I hear stories of women that stop putting themselves forward for a promotion. As a result, you know, potentially they're dropping their work hours back. And then obviously, we've also got the women that leave their careers altogether and you know they lead into all the other things that we know we talked about recently with Mel Birks from the AIST, which is, we've got women with, you know, losing superannuation. We've got women, you know, losing income. You know this is a really big problem for society, as well as what you touched on earlier that incredible loss of knowledge and skill, and you know just innate wisdom that comes from being able to retain women in the workplace. So this is definitely an area that I really think workplace is and women need to become a lot more aware of and a lot more proactive about supporting. So, if you're a woman in the workplace or a woman that has a job and you are finding yourself listening along and these symptoms are feeling really recognizable and you know that you're struggling at work as a result. What do you recommend are kind of some of the first steps that she can do to kind of open up the conversation at work with perhaps an employee that maybe she's not sure how responsive they're going to be?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think it, first of all, from our perspective, would be amazing if somebody could identify that menopause was the cause of how they're feeling. And that's what we're all about is trying to lift that sort of standard of knowledge and education around that so that people can first of all identify that the way I'm feeling is potentially due to menopause, and that's a topic of conversation that I need to be having. What we're seeing is that people are often feeling stressed, overwhelmed. They you know the symptoms of menopause are very similar to a stress related workplace injury. So people are not identifying that menopause might be to blame. So, first of all, you know it's great if people are understanding that menopause could be a cause of how they're feeling and then wanting to go and find out how they can get support for that. The first thing I think women should do is have a look around your workplace and see if there is any support available, because, you know, I've heard stories of people going to their workplace and saying, well, there's no menopause policy and suddenly it's menopause policy appears. So you know, it might be that your workplace does have some support available and that it's maybe just hidden in a drawer somewhere. Maybe nobody's actually asked the question before. So the first thing I would do is go and speak to somebody that you trust at work either your manager or your HR or have a look on your internet to see is there a policy around menopause and is there support available at the moment, and if there's not, then that would be, you know, the first place to start the conversation. But I guess we're winding from that as well, for people to start tracking their symptoms first, so that when they're going to their workplace they can say actually this is how I'm experiencing menopause, these are the things that are most troublesome for me and this is how it's actually affecting me in the workplace. And can we talk about how we might be able to together address this so that some of these problems that I'm experiencing can be resolved and that I can still contribute, so that the conversations are really constructive one and so that people come informed with how they're feeling to the workplace as well?

And what types of support can a workplace put in place that sentence to support a woman or a person that is struggling to, let's say it's night sweats and hot flushes and a bit of lack of concentration? So how can a workplace you know actually physically support somebody through that?

Yeah, so every workplace is going to be different. We know that. You know, police force is really different to a school, is really different to a corporate. So it's important that we don't take a cookie cutter approach to saying this is how you support menopause in workplaces, and so it's great to see you know leaders in this in the UK as well, looking at what does our environment look like in terms of how people are experiencing symptoms within our workplace and then how can we support them. So opening that conversation is the first thing that I would suggest that workplaces do. So start from the top. Get your leaders to really indicate to the workplace that this is a topic of conversation that is OK at work. We're serious about this. We really want to make sure that we're changing things meaningfully to support people at work so that when somebody is, you know, raising that conversation, they feel that they're in a psychologically safe environment and that it's a welcome conversation that that's going to be had in the workplace. The next thing I would say is to ask your staff how they you know how much they know about menopause. Do a survey, find out if people do have a good knowledge of menopause or not, and then, if they do or if they don't ask them how they're feeling at work and maybe what support might be helpful for them. And what we see many workplaces doing is setting up employee resource groups. So that's an internal group of people who champion this within the workplace, and we recommend they come from all different parts of the organisation men and women as well, because we know that menopause doesn't only just impact the women they're experiencing it, but also partners, loved ones, friends, colleagues, managers as well. So engage a group of people who are going to be your champions, your mentors for this cause, and get them involved from the beginning so that when you are designing some of your policies or guidance or support, that you've got input from across the business and it's something that is going to actually be helpful for the people that are experiencing it too.

Yeah, and I think that's really important. You touched on something there that you know, which is that we need to make sure that men are included in the conversation and the you know the leadership groups and the advocates for this as well, and you know, a thought that went through my mind when you were talking about that was when I think back on. So when I was diagnosed with cancer, my husband was able to go to work and tell his leadership team that my wife had a cancer diagnosis, and there was an incredible amount of empathy, obviously, and support that was put in place for him to help care for me when needed. Now, obviously, cancer diagnosis and menopause aren't the same. However, we know that a woman or a person may experience well, we know that all people experiencing menopause will have a unique experience and everybody will have different symptoms and those symptoms will have different levels of severity. But they can also play a significant role on relationships and you know, a partner watching their loved one suffer and struggle may be just as impacted, and that can play out in the workplace as well, and so if they know that they've got a safe space to go to and say you know what, hey, my wife is having a really hard time and that's impacting me right now. That's going to be just as supportive for them, as well as for the people that are actually physically going through the menopause.

Absolutely. It's actually been really heartwarming for me to see some of the feedback from some of the male participants who have been educated around menopause at work, because they say exactly that. You know, I'm so excited to go home and talk to my wife about this because I don't feel scared to talk about it now I understand more about it so that I feel like I can have a constructive conversation and I can know how to support her through this. And you know, from my perspective, I think absolutely that's fantastic. I mean, this might save many marriages. You know, having this open conversation oh, 100%. And we know that the stats are terrible, unfortunately, around menopause being a cause for marriage breakdowns and for relationship breakdowns. But interestingly, from a work perspective too, we've seen the UK, through our UK partner, that many male-dominated workplaces have become menopause-friendly and accredited. And there's an interesting story from one of those, which is a train company. It's a train driver's traditionally a male-dominated workplace, and every day when they go to work, obviously they have to sign a waiver that says I'm fit to drive the train today. Physically and mentally, I'm prepared to drive the train and I feel fit for work. And we had one of the workplaces, one of the train companies, say that there was a male train driver who came to work and he went to sign the document and he said no, actually I don't feel that I can sign this today. And so his manager said well, why? What's going on? Talk to me how you're feeling, what can we do? And he said have you ever slept with a menopausal woman next to you? He said do not, do not, Do not, do not. He said I have had absolutely no sleep because my wife's been really struggling with these night sweats, and so she's been up all night, and so I've been up all night and I do know the stats around. You know how much sleep deprivation can cause you reaction time reduction. You know I may as well have drunk two glasses of wine this morning and drive the train, so I really actually don't feel fit to go to work today. So even that conversation, you can see that it does impact on everyone. It can impact on partners, it can impact on colleagues and it can impact us who's you know the people that are experiencing it as well. So absolutely should be a topic of conversation for everyone.

That's an incredible story, yeah, and yeah, amazing. I think that's potentially saving lives as well as relationships. So, yeah, great. Now, when it comes to if you're a business owner or if you are a leader within a business space and and you're listening to this and you're going, you know what I really want to bring. You know, I want to make my workplace a menopause friendly workplace. Where do you give them guidance? Where do you recommend they start?

So guess first would be to see where you're at in terms of how menopause friendly are you. You may already have some things that you just need to tweak a little bit to include menopause. So we have a checklist that people can download and use that as a first starting point to look at well, where are we in terms of how menopause friendly we are? We know that a lot of Workplaces now have employee assistance programs, for example that for mental health, and that people can anonymously get help for their mental health through. So menopause as well with in terms of the psychological symptoms, it's an important time for us to stop and look at those employee assistance programs and understand Do those people have knowledge around menopause? And so if somebody is experiencing some psychological symptoms and they call the EAP, will the people on the EAP be able to help and support them Through what they're experiencing from a menopausal perspective as well? So sort of looking at what the existing support that you have available is and whether or not you can incorporate menopause into that, things like flexible workplace policies. You know, is menopause a reason why people can Request flexible work? So having those sort of conversations when you're looking at designing policies or amending policies and then also just looking at some best practice. So we know from the UK there's been some. You know, 10 years ago they started on this journey and so we can really learn a lot from those case studies of what workplaces have done and what's worked and what hasn't. Policy guidance is really important as well. So Whilst the government don't mandate policies either here or in the UK, you know, for thinking, companies know that writing down in a document what guidance is available, they can call it a policy. If you want, you can call it a guidance. We don't mind as long as there's a resource document for people to go to To understand how the workplace can support them through this. That's going to really help managers who are talking to people within their teams About what's available and what support that they can give. So, again, from a workplace perspective, you know some people want to have a policy, others don't, but as long as there's some sort of framework and and it's been considered, you know, across the organizations to to how people are impacted by it. I will say as well that workplaces are really getting getting on board with this because of some changes in legislation, which is great you know Australia really in the way we now require. We now require businesses to look at how the psychological environment is and make sure that people, when they go to work, are not psychologically traumatized and don't have a psychological injury. So what we see is that workplaces are addressing this because of this new legislation and they're starting to see that actually and understand that menopause is a time of life for women when stress and anxiety can be increased and it is the time of life when we are at most risk of suicide. So becoming a menopause friendly workplace can really help to address some of those, those hazards within the workplace. And it's something really proactive that workplaces can do to show that they are looking at the environment and looking at supporting people to make sure that if they are experiencing some mental health difficulties, that they're really addressed, you know properly within the workplace. And then, lastly, you know our gender gap, gender pay gap reporting, as we know, next year, 2024. We're just have mandated that workplaces will have complete transparency around the gender pay gap so we'll be able to go online and look up a company and see exactly what their gender pay gap is, and we're just have also asked workplaces to report what they're doing to reduce the gender pay gap within their workplace. So, again, becoming a menopause friendly workplace is a way that you can look at how you can support women to stay and work. Unfortunately, we know that one in four women will consider leaving when they're going through menopause because of their symptoms. We know that one in 10 actually will leave. We know that 18% will go part time and we know that 8% won't pursue a promotion. So this all adds up to a larger gender pay gap because women are exiting the workforce 7.4 years earlier than men, often at highly paid roles at that time of life when they're in a more highly paid role. So that again does contribute to the gender pay gap. So, from a workplace perspective as well, for those people that are looking at how to reduce the gender pay gap, bringing in some sort of a gender pay gap, bringing in some education, support and training around menopause, can really help.

Yeah, amazing. So so much that can be done and so much that needs to be done as well. I think what can we learn from the UK? And I know we keep referring back to the UK, but I know from my personal experience in this space I took so much of my lead when I started in this space from the UK, because that's where we had Diane Dandzenberg, we have Dr Louise Newsome, people like Amanda Thieb came out of the UK. You know, so many of the founders and the ground breakers in this perimenopause, menopausal space came from the UK, you know, and obviously menopause friendly. So if the UK was born in the UK, what can we learn from what has happened in the UK in the past two years that we can expect to see as a result here in Australia?

What we've seen actually last year is that the government actually looked at and had a parliamentary inquiry into menopause at work and there were recommendations made to the legislators to decide whether or not we would, for example, in the UK, make menopause policies compulsory and make menopause leave compulsory and make menopause a protected right under the Act. There has been, I guess, some parliamentary, some government moves in that that we've sort of been watching closely and I know the government here have too. So the decisions there were that menopause policies shouldn't be mandated and that menopause leave and menopause is not a protected right. So we actually support that. We think that workplaces who understand this issue and know the benefits will put in place those guidance documents and those policy documents off their own back rather than it being mandated. We find with anything that's mandated it's like stamp put in a draw, tick that off the list, and for us it's really important that the changes are meaningful and lasting. So some of the things we see in the UK is that now 30% of workplaces have a policy or guidance document and there's been a actual appointed person who's responsible from the government perspective to champion menopause in the workplace. So she's actually said that she wants 50% of workplaces by the end of this year menopause policy. So that's a lofty ambition but with the work that we're doing here and others, I'm sure we can get there. In the UK Anecdotally, from talking with Work 180 and others that are doing great work in this space and gathering data, 12% of their members have a menopause policy.

And that's here in Australia.

And I think on average that would be a higher representation, because the people that are going to be members of Work 180 are the forward thinking, more gender equitable companies that are really championing this. But 12% is pretty low. It's not that many workplaces that have considered how they're going to address this and actually written it down. So certainly I think that's a great place for workplaces to start and also what we've seen is an education first approach has really worked in the UK. So educating people in workplaces about the basics of menopause. You might be surprised. We know a lot about menopause, you've been through it, we understand it, but actually there's many people that don't even understand the stages of menopause. What's perimenopause? What are the signs and symptoms? What are things that can make it be induced by, as you've experienced, going through treatment for cancer? What treatments are available? What lifestyle choices can I make? So these really quite simple things that we can do to raise awareness for that within workplaces from a whole workplace wide perspective, but also then for managers. It's really important that when we're encouraging a conversation about menopause at work, that managers are trained and they understand how to have a conversation and that they feel safe and secure in that conversation and that they can genuinely provide a constructive conversation for people, Because the last thing we want is people going to their manager or going to HR and not getting that support and not having that conversation with them and then feeling like they're sort of being dejected. So training up of managers is really, really key so that they can help those really constructive and open conversations. They're going to be genuinely useful for everyone.

Yeah, fantastic Grace. I think you've given us an incredible insight into how workplaces can support employees and also how employees can approach their workplaces to ask to be supported as well, and I think that it's such important information and education that we need to get out into the ears of all of those people. Before I wrap things up, do you want to do a quick plug about how anybody that's listening would like any more information on becoming a menopause-friendly accredited workplace how they can go about doing that.

Certainly, so jump onto our website, menopausefriendlyau. That will sort of talk you through what we do. Membership is open from the 1st of August, so we've got many workplaces in Australia that have preregistered to join, and the membership really walks you through how to become a menopause-friendly workplace. There's lots and lots of changes to legislation at the moment. We know that HR people and DE and I people are really overwhelmed with lots of that. So membership really makes it easy for people who are looking to run a campaign around menopause to give you the resources, the tools and the education to be able to run something that's really successful, meaningful and genuinely helpful to your workplace. For those that do then want to become an accredited workplace, we have an accreditation In the UK. We have 51 members of the UK association that are accredited, so we'd like to see in Australia some of the companies that are doing great work in this being able to show that they are doing this great work by becoming an accredited member as well. So jump on and have a look at what we do, and we'd love to talk to anyone who would like some help with becoming a menopause-friendly workplace to enable them to do that as soon as they can.

Fantastic. And we have menopause awareness month, I suppose, or day, coming up in October, which is a great time. If you are in a workplace or you own a business and would like to find a natural opportunity to shine some light on menopause in your workplace or introduce it for the first time, then October being is a prime time to do that, so great time to kind of start getting the ball rolling there. Grace, thank you for that. Now I'm going to ask you what are you listening to, reading or watching right now that is bringing you joy.

Oh, okay, it's school holidays at the moment, so watching lots of different documentaries on the ocean, because my daughter's obsessed with the ocean, so I've been watching a bake off, watched a couple of bake off shows. We did have a couple of baking fails ourselves, actually but I've just come back from the UK, so what I was watching over there was obviously watching the ashes, but also there was actually a documentary or a series that has just come out in the UK and it's about a menopausal woman. So I actually came across it just when I was watching the news and they had a bit of a story about it. So it's called the change and looks quite funny.

So, yeah, cool the change. Okay, I'm going to keep an eye out for that. Somebody was telling me about a show that is on here at the moment, closer to me, and it's a something like that. It's a. It's not a documentary or anything like that. It's like a true not true crime, but a crime kind of like a who done that kind of thing, and the lead character is going through menopause Fantastic, I know, and I was. I think it's British as well. So I was like I need to go find that as well. So that's two shows there we go with my list.

I haven't seen that. But I actually did go to talking about people talking about menopause and bring it up, which is, I think, what we need in Australia was seen to be in a McCall in the UK yes, things over there. So it'd be great. I mean any celebrities listening to this. Please talk about menopause. But I was in an arena concert and I'm a tragic Tina arena. I, my partner refused to go with me because he's been once before and he went sort of mildly deaf having to listen to me. But I went to her concert recently and she was saying thank you to her band members, as they all do, and thank you to Bill on drums, and then she went, like this, to the drummer and she's like and thank you to, and you can see this fear kind of came across her face and she, you know, when everyone in the audience knew she sort of couldn't play with and she looked back at the audience and she went oh, isn't menopause a bitch I love that, yes, this is great, and did the audience go. Yes, and it's great to see someone in her workplace you know, in her own workplace, experiencing these things that we all do, and then calling it out and saying isn't it just a piece?

So yeah yeah, made my heart sing Good honor, yeah, yeah. See, and if Tina arena can forget people's names in her workplace, it can happen to anyone. Absolutely, beautiful Grace. Thank you so much. I'm going to link through to menopause friendly Australia in the show notes. I'm going to link through to the change if I can find a link to that as well, to be viewed here in Australia. It sounds amazing. I have loved your chat. Thank you so much, and I'm really excited to see you know the change that is is going to come in. You know over the coming. I know these things don't happen overnight, unfortunately, but you know the change that is going to come in our workplaces to to really support everybody when it comes to menopause.

Absolutely me too, and thank you for the work you do to raise awareness for this as well. It's really important, so thank you.

Thanks, grace. Thank you for listening today. I am so grateful to have these conversations with incredible women and experts and I'm grateful that you chose to hit play on this episode of dare menopause. If you have a minute of time today, please leave a rating or a review. I would love to hear from you, because you are my biggest driver for doing this work, if this chat went way too fast for you and you want more head over to stellar womencomau slash podcast for the show notes and, while you're there, take my midlife quiz to see why it feels like midlife is messing with your head.