With a membership of over 450 employers and seven years’ experience working with organisations to be menopause friendly, our colleagues and independent panel have seen a wide range of great ideas.  We’ve also seen some common errors befall employers, blocking their progress.

Here are five mistakes we often hear about – read on to see if any of these apply to you or your organisation….

1. Employers are not always clear as to why supporting menopause matters to them. Not having a clear vision makes it much harder for organisations to know if they have achieved their goals. If employers want to recruit talent or recruit talent being menopause friendly will certainly help with that. Be clear about what you want and the be clear how you will measure that you are succeeding.
   
2. Employers may talk to their employees and share information with them but they don’t always appreciate how important it is to listen to their workforce. How do you know what your colleagues want and need and how are you responding to that? Showing this level of listening and response is a very good indicator of the kind of open, menopause friendly culture in an organisation.
   
3. Employers think they can support menopause in their workplace as a once and done approach. Understanding of menopause and its impact on everyone is growing and organisations need to see their journey as ongoing. Deepening an understanding of menopause at work, by having a rich appreciation of all communities and how best to support them, is an indicator of a menopause friendly organisation. Change must be sustainable.
   
4. Employers focus on outputs of their menopause journey rather than outcomes. We know that what really matters is how the changes you are making are impacting your workforce. Change must be meaningful and it must be ‘felt’ by people working in your organisation. Are your people happy to talk to their managers about menopause? Are your managers confident to support colleagues with menopause? When you can demonstrate these changes you will know you are becoming menopause friendly.
   
5. Employers don’t have a future plan. What are you doing next with your training plan? How will you ensure everyone joining your organisation understands your commitment to being menopause friendly and their role in helping to support that? 

Easily made, these common mistakes also easily rectified. We do this by speaking to employers individually, finding out what they are doing – if anything – around being menopause friendly and establishing which barriers to success they and their employees are facing.

If you, your employer or someone you know recognises these common errors or are struggling to create a menopause friendly workplace, we can help you. 

Together we can develop bespoke training, awareness-building activities and support to fit your organisation, overcome existing problems and set in place plans that will bring positive and sustainable change.

You can reach our expert team here.