Menopause at Work: How Leaders Can Support Women & Build Better Workplaces - Dr Lucy Mather - S10E34

0:00Dr Lucy Mather:We're all in this together, but actually what we need to do is all move forward from this point of view. If someone will really struggle to get decent, timely support that they deserve and need really to keep them in the workplace, it's all about communication. I'm not being scared. It's a normal thing. Let's just open the conversation up, normalise it, improve communication. And I think once staff realise that you have training in it as a senior leadership team, they then might feel more confident to then come to talk to you about it. On today's Legally Speaking podcast, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr.

0:34Lucy Mather. Lucy is a GP, women's health specialist, doctor and menopause expert with more than 20 years of experience. She has completed specialist training with the British Menopause Society and is passionate about helping women take control of their health. Today, we're exploring one of the most important workplace issues facing employers, leaders and legal professionals today. Menopause is not simply a well-being conversation, it is increasingly becoming a leadership conversation. Today we'll discuss what a menopause action plan looks like, how menopause intersects with discrimination and workplace law, and why employers need to act now ahead of 2027.

1:14So, a very big warm welcome to the show, Lucy.

1:17Dr Lucy Mather:Hello, hi, lovely to be here. Thank you for having me on your show. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. And before we dive in, we've got a couple of quick bar icebreaker questions for you. Firstly, what is your favourite beverage? And what is your preferred choice of footwear on a typical work day? Oh, gosh. Okay. So preferred beverage. So I think on a working day, water and coffee to get me through the day. Less coffee now that I'm a postmenopausal woman. on a non-work day perhaps well evenings masala chai but not shop bought and I'd say gin tonic because it reminds me of being on holiday like it like it and footwear on a typical work day footwear so it depends whether I'm clinically working or not if I'm at home working I try and have work footwear that's not home footwear so avoid the slippers and so Indian sandals actually so a nice pair of leather colour for Indian sandals but not from Prada and I think if I'm at work just very boring normal shoes that you don't get any needle stick injuries from if you drop anything on your feet.

2:36Practical like it okay what's one piece of technology or everyday technology you now rely on that you would not have think unbelievably possible early in your career that you'd be using?

2:50Dr Lucy Mather:Heidi, the platform Heidi. So I don't know, you might not know this. So basically in the medical world, there's a platform called Heidi that's really taken off, which is over the voice recognition software platform. And how that works is it records your consultations and then it allows you to then pull that into clinical notes and write clinical letters, do your referral letters. So my consultations in clinical practice are very long. And so this has saved me a significant amount of time. And it's also really accurate. So that's the newest on the landscape, but really good. Love it. Well, here's to Heidi and here's to you.

3:30And let's get into your career journey then. Could you give us a bit of a short version of your journey from training, obviously medical school to becoming a GP and then a woman's health specialist?

3:39Dr Lucy Mather:Yeah, so I've been a doctor for 25 years, so I'm quite old now. I've been a GP for 20. So originally I trained, qualified at Birmingham Medical School. I trained in paediatrics. I did my membership in paed for five years. Then I left partly because of the political landscape, which I think has not really changed very much in the NHS. and then I've been a GP really a women's health doctor for 20 years now so I work mainly in Manchester clinically in terms of general practice I've been a partner I've been salary GP I've been clinical leads for several practices but in addition to that I'm a GP appraiser so I praise GPs I work at Manchester med school doing clinical tutoring for medical students and I am I was the clinical lead for iris which is manchester's domestic abuse service well iris is all over the country but it's a fantastic organization left that role a couple of years ago um and then work privately in the women's health space i do that part-time as part of my working week and work for a quite a large private organization for a while and then left and set up dialife which is a women's hormone health clinic and mainly in north wales is my in-person clinics and but i do online appointments as well and I deliver training all about women's hormone health and women's health to all different types of organisations.

5:02Dr Lucy Mather:So that's 25 years in a nutshell. Very well done, very impressive and sort of going to that then, was there a particular moment or experience inspiring you to specialise in women's health and menopause care? I've always been a feminist if I'm honest. I'm one of three sisters, I've got three sisters, I'm one of four girls. My father is very much, he's a GP, and he's very much, you have to stand on your own two feet financially as a woman, you have to be able to be independent, so that's always been our family mantra, I suppose, and I've always been a women's health advocate, because I just fundamentally believe that if the women in the world are not well then society doesn't move forward.

5:52I think for me in terms of when I started the IRIS

5:56Dr Lucy Mather:clinical role, so delivering the training for domestic abuse to GPs across the whole of Manchester, that was a real light bulb moment. I did eight years delivering training all about domestic abuse to primary care services so that they could recognise and improve recognition of domestic abuse and then referring to our iris service and then we could support women and men to manage abusive condition you know abuse that they were living with but also to move forward with their lives so that was a really important to think change of direction for me in terms of women's health and really understanding the importance of the holistic health care and then when after covid came um covid was a very difficult time um in medicine in general practice so we were juggling you know home working in person in you know face-to-face working practice um managing you know an awful awful time and then i got covid and i was really quite poorly after that and i acutely went into the menopause so i didn't have a period when i when i had covid and then nonsense and that's of six years ago so i was young i was relatively young 44 and with no real sort of perimenopausal symptoms and it was from that point then i was just like okay i get it i understand like what this means how poorly you can feel i was off work for a period of time and i think that really galvanized my sort of drive to you know setting up giant life really but i'm a real believer in in-person medicine so I think although everything's online this recording's online um I still think there's a real role to have a an in-person clinic setting yeah and you're doing such great work and you know it's such an important topic and obviously it cuts across every industry of course not just obviously legal and that's why it was so important for us to have the conversation because you know the menopause is becoming a significant workplace topic even more so in recent years as you've sort of reference there we've had covid various other things going on in the world and menopause has become a significant topic of discussion i think from spring 26 employers correct me if i'm wrong with 250 or more employees are being asked to design implement and report a menopause action plan with expectations of this becoming mandatory in 2027 so why do you think organizations are paying much closer attention now than perhaps they may have been even five years ago there's several reasons really i mean obviously there's nothing like a little bit of a push from the government to sort of galvanize thought processes isn't it um i think obviously women are in the workplace so women are are also pushing this agenda for change um politically as well which is really important social media has completely got hold of this hasn't it and for good and bad there's a lot of misinformation on social media but also a lot of great work that's done out there as well.

8:54Dr Lucy Mather:I think if you look in the terms of the law, obviously, because this is a law podcast, isn't it? You've got sort of one in four women are of menopausal age. So if we take 45 onwards, but really lots of women can go into the menopause earlier than that. And so from a legal sort of professional point of view, that's your senior talent pipeline, isn't it really? So we know that one in ten women will consider or will leave the workplace when they get to that point in life. So from a personal, you know, woman's perspective, that's significantly impactful in terms of finance as well. So we're looking at the gender pay gap as well.

9:34Dr Lucy Mather:And we know that women say that they lack support in the workplace as well. So from a law firm point, only about less than 25 % of law firms have a menopause policy in place that sort of works. and we know that basically one-to-one support for your team is almost non-existent and it's very difficult at the moment to get good care sometimes across the NHS it's very patchy I mean there's some fantastic GPs out there and I work alongside many of them but it's also some women really struggle to get decent timely support that they deserve and need really to keep them in the workplace. You're touching on the scale of the challenge there and you know when we're researching this this episode you know i think 18 of women say their workplace has a menopause policy and one in ten women leave work because of the menopause only 17 have considered leaving due to a lack of support so what do these figures really tell us about the current state then of the workplace support i think it tells us it's incredibly varied and it depends on your sort of senior leadership team whether they take this forward this sort of challenge really to improve this landscape that women are working in.

10:43Dr Lucy Mather:I think clinically when I sit in clinic and when I deliver training women don't feel supported or they don't feel that they can talk openly about their symptoms. Lots of women sort of try just to get through the working day they might feel incredibly poorly they don't prioritize their health and well-being they don't put themselves first you know because well they don't women don't and I think it from a financial perspective as well from a business perspective you know if you're losing your sort of really people who are really good at their job and financially has huge impact with respect to legal law firms but all firms as well you know you've trained these people up to be really good at their job they're really at the peak of their career they're the best they can be and then their own well and they're not functioning um in as well as they can do really so and that can be for many different symptoms really many different reasons like lack of sleep mental health issues you know cognitive clarity concentration focus brain fog word finding problems but also physical symptoms muscle joint aches and pains um hot flushes you know there's nothing like having a hot flush in the middle of a really important meeting where you feel that you know you're meant to be standing up presenting in front of people and you're sweating it's really you know debilitating for a woman really and then also things like urinary symptoms as well that can impact women's health you know you're only attracting infections and there's loads of different reasons that women's sort of health and well-being and their ability to do their job is impacted really and thank you for giving such you know rich context because it does go beyond like you say a health and well-being point of view issue particularly as in terms of the business leaders and people actually operating here you're infecting your star talent ultimately and you know particularly in the legal world your product is your your people so you should try your best to absolute support uplift them through all stages of their not just entering their profession but all the way through and let's talk about the workplace reality then again when we're looking into this and that's what's so important for us to have today's discussion research suggests 53 percent of women have been unable to work at points due to menopause symptoms and you've obviously listed a number there previously while almost half do not disclose the real reason for absence so what are some of the most common workplace challenges existed by women going through the menopause that employers often fail to recognize that we could help educate them on i think mental health at the moment i think you know we've we've done a real broad brush on mental health in the workplace so we have you know mental health champions people who are trained to recognize mental health symptoms but the connection with the fact that that women who struggle with mental health i'd say any any woman who struggles with mental health you need to ask is this hormonally related struggle so is it related to the cycle things like pmdd i see a lot of women who have pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder which can happen at any age isn't isn't a menopausal issue um but i think mental health anxiety that's sort of imposter syndrome the the the women retract from society they don't go out they have body image issues because sometimes they can put on weight or often do put on weight a lot of this sort of knee-jerk reaction to society now is you know go and see a gp they might talk about the menopause they might not they might not recognize this especially in women who are going through menopause at a younger age and then the knee-jerk reaction here's some antidepressants off you go go and have some counselling and actually really what you need is a decent conversation around supporting you one to recognize that it's related to hormones and two um to give you the all the treatment options that are available to you to get you in a better place and it's actually it's not not difficult medicine you know there's lots of nuances to it but what we do is we put it on the backbone and we don't access health or care we don't come you know we don't make a timely appointment or we can't make a timely appointment because maybe work's a bit of a blocker or you say oh i'll do it i'll do it another day i'll do it another time i'll do it when i'm on holiday etc and so you sort of you know you just wait hopefully it'll get better i'll have a bit of counseling and often they put it down to other things so you know jobs are stressful aren't they relationships can be very very difficult kids can be a complete nightmare you know you might be looking after an elderly relative so all of these things are sort of imploding on you and and you know making you feel unwell and then you don't recognize the bottom line which is actually it's hormonally driven as well so I always say to women you know look 10 years ago and life would have been tricky 10 years ago you would have been you know doing professional exams maybe you know jumping through a load of hoops in personal and professional lives but if you're able to cope with it then what's changed and if it's actually you know more menopausally driven then actually let's sort that out first and then see what's left and then see how we can help to unpack what else is going on in life really so i think mental health from from a professional point of view but also um sleep sleep's a big issue for women so they wait two three o 'clock in the morning you know and they can't go back to sleep and that has massive sort of ramifications in terms of work, life, motivation, wanting to exercise, wanting to sort of carry on, you know, they just drive themselves to the day.

16:09Dr Lucy Mather:It's going to be really, really hard. I'm a massive advocate for sleep. I really do try to double down on eight hours, even with a young daughter, as demanding as that can be, because it really does affect performance and everything that you've just mentioned. And we've had and do as much work as we can to raise awareness, particularly in the legal world around mental health. We've had the former CEO of Lawcare, They're the largest mental health charity for lawyers. Come on. And like you're saying, the British Association, I understand, for counselling and obviously psychotherapies reported almost two thirds of women over 50 are struggling with their mental health.

16:39So we appreciate you highlighting that and all the great work you're doing.

16:42Dr Lucy Mather:And that will be usually, not always, but hormonely driven. So lots of women who have perhaps undiagnosed things like ADHD, perhaps autism, you know, high functioning, doing very well in the workplace, then go through perimenopause and menopause hormonal changes and it all enrables then later they present with significant mental health symptoms so suicidality um anxiety depression lots of different mental health sort of manifestations really of it so yeah and it can be difficult for managers to recognize that or feel that they can openly talk about it with people as well because you you're afraid aren't you perhaps sometimes you're saying the wrong thing or um inferring that it might be something when it's not, or maybe that person who is your employee doesn't recognise that it's menopause.

17:33Dr Lucy Mather:I hear that a lot. They don't recognise it's going on, but the manager does, because the manager might be female and might come through it themselves, might be a bit more well-versed in it as well. So, yeah, there's lots of different presentations, really. And, you know, everybody's different, isn't there, as well? I think that's another key point to mention. You know, there's not just one big broad brush with this as well. I think that's where employers, if they can take the time to really understand their people, the far better that'll be received, particularly as people go through different stages of life with various different things going on.

18:03Coming to a sort of a legal point now, how does the menopause intersect with employment law and discrimination law in practice?

18:10Dr Lucy Mather:So I'm sure there's lots of people listening on this podcast who have a better ability to talk about that than I do. But basically, so the menopause action plan was brought in place, like you said. it's a new legal policy development in terms of UK employment. It's mandatory. Well, it's not mandatory at the moment, but it will be next year if you have more than 250 employees. And I'm sure lots of your people listening to this know this. So menopause itself isn't part of the act in terms of, you know, isn't seen as a, I think it's a discrimination, as you say, but it's recognised that obviously, you know, there's lots of ways that it might fit in, in terms of sex and female and age as well, and disability.

18:50Dr Lucy Mather:So if you're unwell with these symptoms for over 12 months, so there's lots of reasons why it might go into those spaces. And there's been sort of tribunals around that as well, in terms of employment tribunals as well, with respect to menopause being brought in as a reason. So, yeah, I think it does fit into the landscape. But I think it's just in terms of now, in terms of the the changes in days for the menopause, you know, action plan, And hopefully that will improve people's knowledge and understanding because they're having to look about their policies that they have in place in the workplace and make sure they're really up to date and they're working and that they're proactively understood.

19:31Dr Lucy Mather:Training within the team as well. So managers training, you know, training of your senior leadership team and then looking at sort of training of your staff so that people feel more confident to open and talk about these things and also recognise how they can access help and support really. And then looking at reasonable adjustments within the workplace as well. So what can you do to support your women whilst they're going through this? And it isn't just a fan or a change in uniform, though they can be helpful, but things like access to toilets, you know, in terms of if you're having heavy bleeding, but also access to actually being able to contact your GP and your doctor, which can be tricky for some people as well.

20:11Dr Lucy Mather:And also, ideally, timely, decent support. So if you're an organisation that can afford it, you know, looking at your private healthcare plan. So unfortunately, it's not covered through things like Bupa in terms of private healthcare. Do not cover the menopause because all women go through it. But that's a complete another legal entity within itself, isn't it really, whether you agree with that or not. But they'll cover the ramifications of it. So they'll cover the cardiovascular event and they'll cover your osteoporotic fracture later on down the line when you fall over and break your hip. But, you know, they don't cover it as a thing.

20:44Dr Lucy Mather:so accessing that means unfortunately paying private health care or seeing a GP and GPs can be very very good at supporting women but what a lot of women want is time with you to talk through everything that's going on with their lives so they can unpack everything and then and then make a plan and they want really timely access to appointments really that's what they're crying out for at the moment. Today's episode is brought to you by Cleo. If you're spending more time managing your practice than practicing law, it's time for a change. Clio is the intelligent legal work platform built for modern solicitors, combining context-aware AI with trusted legal research to help you work smarter, not harder.

21:27Switching is easier than you might think. Clio's dedicated migration teams handle your client and case data every step of the way, so you can focus on what matters most your clients plus award-winning support 24 5 via live chat phone and email means help is always on hand when you need it visit clio.com forward slash uk to find out why thousands of uk solicitors trust clio now back to the show what do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions employers have when it comes to their legal obligations around the menopause

22:02Dr Lucy Mather:I suppose that they don't want to get it wrong so perhaps they won't talk about it because they don't want they fear the thing oh you're blaming it on the menopause so it's those nuances of conversation really as well isn't it and the menopause action plan itself is only for 250 employees or more but the idea really is hopefully it'll be a trickle-down effect won't it and other employees employers will hope that they'll take it on board because that's all about talent and retention of your talent isn't it really you know if you're seen as a good employer who supports people that you are um going through all different changes of life then hopefully you'll be able to recruit the best people for the job really um i don't know what they're afraid of i don't know why they're afraid of the menopause and women's health you know it's a condition all women go through it if they're lucky and fortunate enough to get to that age it can be treated it can be supported and you can get your staff back to working how they were before and being really good at their job so i'm not really sure why we're afraid of it at all um but i suppose it's made just that they tiptoe around it because they don't want to offend people or don't want to blame people um or don't want to be fair that they're blaming people when actually maybe there's something else going on at work that's causing these issues and they need to listen to people like yourself and podcasts like this that you know tell them that right and you know that there's nothing to be fearful of and that's why we want to get these messages out there so we can create better work environments you know a lot of what we talk around is around the careers within within the legal profession and obviously this has a huge impact on careers and we've talked throughout around sort of support and some aspects of this but maybe just to hammer the the message home what are the hidden business costs when organizations really fail to support employees experiencing the menopause what are things you see time and time again oh well a time and time again um so presenteeism being at work but really not doing your job as well as you should be doing or as well as you can do that you know that you can do so i think women they go to work especially with home working um you know you're present but you're perhaps not cognitively getting through the workload you can lots of women do things you know double check they work very long hours because they're double checking their work they're maybe not you know quite on it and that has a cost implication to the firm so say law firm in terms of you know securing your clients you know finishing deals etc and I think being off work if women are off work that's a huge cost to us a legal firm isn't it you know in terms of I don't know depends what your rates are but thousand to two and a half thousand pounds a day if you're not really if you're not in work and you're not billing those hours really I think leaving work early so loads of women i see in clinic and sadly have reduced their hours or um taken early retirement and and you're really at 55 or 50 obviously financially you want to and that's your choice that's absolutely fine but many women don't want to leave their jobs and work they want to carry on working but they just don't feel physically able to so they don't go for promotion so some of your best talent to not going for promotions that they can and should be going for and that has then again financial impacts, isn't it?

25:22Dr Lucy Mather:And if they're leaving work, then you're losing one of the, probably some of the best people within your firm, aren't you? And I think that, you know, it's just incredibly sad. I see it all the time in clinic, you know, women are either off work, they've reduced their hours, they've taken voluntary redundancy or early retirement or they've just not gone for promotions. And those are all, if you have sort of 50 % of your workforce or more are women, you know, and one in four lawyers are sort of a menopausal age. If you just think about that and scale that up, it's a huge, huge financial impact to law firms and businesses globally, really.

26:06Yeah, and you hit it there, which is where I was going to go next, that figure of one in four lawyers now at menopausal age, you know often holding those senior positions within firms or indeed in-house legal counsel general counsels in legal departments so we've talked a lot around the issues let's flip it to a sort of positive perspective using your experience and perhaps organizations that have done a good job of this how could law firm leaders listening to this better support their employees um you know we've talked about why they should be paying attention to it but is there any practical tactical things you would encourage them to do so i think first of all look at your

26:40Dr Lucy Mather:who have you got in your workforce and be really from an HR point of view who are who are in your firm who's in your team what are their ages you know what's their gender mix and think really critically about could these women be impacted by that are we missing that um and then I would look to see whether you have actually have a menopause policy in place and you know do you know where it is have you read it do does everybody else know where it is is it up to date is it relevant to your current workforce? Do you have support in place? So delivering of training really, which is part of the menopause action plan.

27:17Dr Lucy Mather:So, you know, like myself, going into organisations to do talks and events on women's hormone health and on how to recognise all the different symptoms, realise all the different treatments that are available. And also as a team, how How do you talk to your staff about that? How do you carefully sort of broach and manage those conversations, really? Menopause cafes are great if you have a very large organisation where you have like-minded people who are going through the same changes, supporting each other. So a bit like the mental health and menopause advocates within your organisation. So upskilling certain people to be very knowledgeable about that.

28:01Dr Lucy Mather:My only caveat to that is that you can get a little bit of, oh yeah, I've gone through that, so it's okay, we'll all go through it together. What you need to do is create change and get access to decent support and care. And I am a little bit worried that we do the menopause cafes and they're brilliant, but it's all like we're all in this together. But actually what we need to do is all move forward from this point of view, if you know what I mean. So, and then obviously HR support. So if people are off work, you know, from an HR point of view, you know, why are they off work and what support can you put in place for them really?

28:38Dr Lucy Mather:And then disciplinary, you know, obviously from a law point of view, you're going to be looking at, you know, are people, you know, getting the right amount of work through the door? You know, are they securing the right deals, etc, or contracts, etc? And if they're not, so if you're performance managing people, why are you performance managing them and there's actually something else going on that's underlying this so it might the two things i see in clinic all the time around that are obviously women's hormone health menopausal issues or perimenopause menopause but also domestic abuse so i think the two things where people start to slip a little bit with work um and are struggling but they don't disclose so the sensitive conversations to get them to disclose around that and get them support in place are really it's really important and thank you again for being so thorough and giving advice to help organizations navigate this you know very important discussion and i know you're very you know we've talked a little bit about sort of menopause action plans and i know you talk a lot about the importance of these as well do you have an example of a best practice one or ones that you think genuinely are most effective and what they look like in reality just again to give people some practical things to be thinking about who may not have these menopause action plans in place right now so there's outline and guidance in terms of the government websites etc and obviously you need to upload it to that if you employ more than 250 employees it obviously depends I think really on your organisation and your organisation structure the number of people in the place as well and I think it's difficult to say it's not really a one-size-fits-all because it depends on on what your current workforce currently do doesn't it really so so home working I think is something that perhaps needs to be looked at and dressed within a within an organisation especially if you have a lot of people working from home.

30:28Dr Lucy Mather:I do see that quite a lot in clinic where women feel they're withdrawn because they're not mixing. And I know there's loads of benefits to working from home, as a woman being around, et cetera, especially for your kids. But it isn't always the best place for women to be all the time. Sometimes it's brilliant, sometimes it's not. It really depends on your workforce and what is it that your workforce want as well. So I would ask them, you know those are usually the best sort of policies you know what is it that you feel you need to be the best person you can be at your job what support do you all need where are we going with this so especially when you're looking at reasonable adjustments in work there's no point in somebody who's never experienced this giving you advice and guidance you know it has to be you know what what issues you're having so say i mean i used to be a tribunal member of a social entitlement chamber and oh my goodness you know one day it was boiling in the courts the next day it was freezing in the courts you know could we have could we have like just a standard nice temperature that works for us all you know that's important really so they're more the practical steps but it depends on where your workforce works doesn't it really i think if you shift working you know can you do daytime working because the flip between shift working do nights and days can be really detrimental so can you support your staff to do more daytime hours and i suppose from a legal perspective point of view if they're traveling giving people time to adjust to different time zones it's really important if they've got sleep issues so there's loads of different ways that you can look at it yeah and again you just you know open our eyes to the different ways and you know when you actually really sort of go into this the things that you should be thinking about and things that you can be doing to further support your people we've talked also you know about the commercial impact because you know we've seen the estimates of the sort of lost billable out all time between like you say a thousand to two and a half thousand a day while retaining that sort of single senior lawyer could protect you know 200 to maybe half a million or more in annual revenue so you know this is real commercial impact here that's again why we were keen to sort of pretty laser in on this so going to the the leadership again the role of managers some managers and we loosely touched on this earlier but i just want to go deeper on this topic because we've obviously got someone who's so specialized in this space who's dealing with people and says it day in day out and here's a whole host of different stories and scenarios so the managers that maybe find these conversations difficult how should the companies equip those managers to support employees confidently and more so also appropriately so i think it's just improving communication skills with around about that really some of the conversations that i've with senior leadership teams and managers are, especially if there's a gender disparity, is they just don't know this exists.

33:14Or if it does exist, perhaps they don't really want to

33:18Dr Lucy Mather:feel that it's impacting their workforce. You know, it happens to somebody else. So it's about improving understanding about, you know, the menopausal transition so that they just feel but it's not this sort of like mysterious sort of thing that's going on that they can't feel that they can relate to at all. I think it's then really important to get them to have better ability just to communicate so simple questions you know the questions of you know how are you and and what does that mean really and just those better communications and being really just caring about your workforce and also I think making sure that they realize that this isn't that person forever yeah this is that person at that point in time and it just happens at that point in time that they're not necessarily able to do the job that they could do previously in the way that they previously were able to do it but that doesn't mean to say that they're never going to be able to so if you take my example you know myself for example i was off work post-covid in the menopause for a couple of well a good few months before i was able to get back to work i I wasn't able to get out of the house.

34:26Dr Lucy Mather:I couldn't mobilize. I couldn't walk very far, you know, partly menopause, but also partly post COVID. I had, you know, palpitations, I had SVT, I had lots of stuff going on. So fast heart rate, sorry. But now I'm like back weight training, running, you know, just doing normal life. So it's really important that if you'd written me off then and said, oh, well, off you go, happy retirement. You know, then you'd lose that, you know, lead leads to the person within your workforce and it's really important so I think it's all about communication and not being scared like I said before it's a normal thing happens to us all let's just open the conversation up normalize it improve communication and I think once you staff realize that you had training in it as a senior leadership team they then might feel more confident to then come to talk to you about it but if they think you don't know anything about it you've got no idea then then then they don't feel confident to come and talk to you but if they know that you've had training around it then they'll feel confident to come and maybe open up about what's happening as well i really like that you you shared that example of yourself as well because you know it's an age and stage isn't it's a chapter it's only that particular chapter you know that's of everyone's own book and like you say the organizations that genuinely show their care and have invested and trained in that you're going to build those probably trust scenarios where people are going to come more forward.

35:52So they're not going to be taking, like you said, presenteeism, just turning up, but you're not getting their best version of them or various other things that we've discussed in detail during the whole podcast. So looking forward then to 2027 in the future, again, coming back to the menopause sort of action plan as they're continuing to develop, what should employers be doing over the next 12 months to stay ahead of the curve?

36:14Dr Lucy Mather:Read what your requirements are with respect to the menopause section plan you can go there's links you can go to government organizations etc hopefully your hr team will be aware of that really obviously this is just for england and wales as well so it depends where the podcast is going at but that doesn't mean to say that you shouldn't take note of this because i think it's good we are moving in the right direction with respect to that definitely look at your menopause policy like we said before look at the training requirements in your organization do you feel well affected if you don't get training and i mean obviously i would say this in terms of I deliver training on this to organizations but I think there's different quality of training isn't there and there's training where you tick the box and you have your quick online and they've tick tick tick yes we've done menopause training we're all menopause aware that's great brilliant but have you moved the needle forward at all have you have you actually created any change within your organization and if you haven't then probably that training isn't the right training for you um so i like in-person training actually i i like in-person clinics i like in-person training because i think then you really get the conversation started so rather than i mean online training is fine i do deliver online training as well but you know obviously camera's on when you're training online and but really get in the room talking getting people feeling comfortable about it as well so training within your organization is really important.

37:40Dr Lucy Mather:And then what supports you have, where are you referring these women to? Because we all know it's a bit of a nightmare at the moment sometimes to get access to your GP. You know, do they have to phone at eight, well not phone anymore, do we have to do our total triage at eight o 'clock in the morning when we all go online and spend, you know, GPs triaging about 250 to 300 forms a morning now from online triage. So, you know, we recognise it's difficult to access care. And, you know, what does that, how are you going to support your team really, either through occupational health referrals or, you know, if necessary, partnering with an organisation to do, you know, even private healthcare as well.

38:23Dr Lucy Mather:Because you can turn, you can really support these women in a short period of time. I think, you know, within three months, you know, most of my women are feeling much better, and within six months I'd say most of them are a lot better and so it's actually quite a short period of time and many women before they come to see me in clinic have been wading through treacle really for several years before they say actually I've had enough of this I'm going to get support and so it's doing things in a really timely manner and doing things promptly really. yeah and again you've given so much you know rich rich advice there that maybe you know maybe there's nothing else you wish to add on to this but just a thought of this you know the law firm leaders have bought into this right lucy we need to get you in we need you for training uh you know i'm a leadership of a law firm or an in-house legal team here you know you come in top three action plans they should prioritize before 2027 anything you would like to restress or give new advice I just imagine you're in on the ground on that day and there.