The Spark Behind the Symptoms - What Menopause Really Means

In this very first episode of Find Your Spark: Real Life Menopause Moments, host Alison a seasoned HR consultant, menopause educator, and certified menopause coach, sets the stage for an empowering and informative series.

She begins by clearly explaining what menopause is, including its three key stages: perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause. Alison shares the broad range of symptoms, both physical and psychological, that can affect individuals in different ways, some mild, some severe, and some often misunderstood or unrecognised.

Alison also speaks candidly about her personal journey into menopause advocacy, driven not by her own symptoms but by witnessing the real struggles others faced, especially in the workplace. From loss of confidence and brain fog to anxiety and resignation, she highlights how menopause can disrupt careers if left unsupported.

The episode is full of real-life examples, including a powerful story of a woman who almost left her job thinking she had early-onset dementia only to find her symptoms were menopause-related. This insight led to her receiving support, treatment, and ultimately thriving again in her role.

Alison also underscores the critical need for menopause awareness in the workplace, sharing staggering statistics:

• 1 in 4 consider leaving work due to menopause
• 1 in 10 actually do
• 8 in 10 menopausal women are in work
• Replacing one person on a £25,000 salary costs over £30,000

This opening episode lays a solid foundation for the series and calls for both individual empowerment and employer responsibility. 

If you're going through menopause or supporting someone who is, this is a must-listen.

I'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn;

www.linkedin.com/in/⭐alison-allen-chartered-mcipd

Transcript

EPISODE 1: The Spark Behind the Symptoms - What Menopause Really Means

[00:00:00] Are you or someone you know and love going through the menopause? If this is you low and welcome to find your Spark, real life menopause moments. I'm Allison and I'm excited to guide you through all things menopause. In this empowering podcast, we'll dive into honest conversations, share real life stories, and bringing guest insight to help you feel supported through every stage of the menopause transition.

Hello and welcome to this first podcast of Find Your Spark, real Life Menopause Moments. I'm Alison, and I'm a HR consultant, a menopause educator, and a menopause coach. And I'm so grateful that you've joined me on this podcast today, and I'd love to start this series with an introduction into what is menopause.

Some of you may be listening and not really know what menopause is and wonder why you've tuned in. Or you may have tuned [00:01:00] in to find out a bit more. So, let's dive in and have a look at what menopause is. Menopause is the transition. That's all individuals who are born as females go through. It's a period in our life when our hormones are in decline and also fluctuating, and it's the time that leads up to the ceasing of our menstruation for, in other words, it's the stopping of our periods.

Menopause, as we know it is divided into three stages. Perimenopause, menopause and post menopause. And these three stages make up what we know as being menopausal. Perimenopause is the time leading up to our menopause, and it typically lasts for about three to eight years. Now everybody varies, but typically between three and five years is a length of our perimenopause.

And this during perimenopause, that's our main hormones that are associated with menopause, [00:02:00] those being oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone start declining. And whilst our oestrogen is declining, it's also fluctuating as well. The perimenopause is the time that we start to experience our symptoms. That is if we're going to experience symptoms.

Research says that three outta four individuals do experience menopause symptoms, which means that one in four experiences, no symptoms, or sometimes I wonder, maybe they're experiencing symptoms that they don't recognize as menopause symptoms. However, outta the three in four that research says, do experience symptoms, one of those three in four individuals experience symptoms which they describe as severe.

So that is our perimenopause when our hormones are all over the place and we're experiencing menopausal symptoms and then we move into menopause. Many [00:03:00] people are quite shocked when they find out that our menopause is actually. Just a one-day event and it marks 12 months to the date of our last period, so we've been free of periods for 12 months.

Beyond this, we move into post menopause and post menopause is the rest of our life. Many people describe this time as experiencing a new lease of life, whereas some people still have symptoms that they associate with menopause. Now you may be wondering what are the symptoms. And let me tell you, they're vast and varied, nor two people are the same.

We typically think of symptoms as physical symptoms and psychological symptoms. The symptoms that are commonly known. IPO flushes, night sweats, changes to our periods experiencing brain fog, but there's so [00:04:00] many more. Ones such as anxiety, fatigue, low levels of concentration, achy joints, itching, skin reoccurring urinary tract infections, and the list goes on.

I could spend the whole of this episode telling you all about the different symptoms, and maybe that's for another episode, but as I said, there's so many symptoms that are associated with menopause. Depending on where you read and what you read, you may be reading that there are 34 associated symptoms.

I've also read that there's 48 associated symptoms. I've also heard 70 associated symptoms up to 90 plus associated, and I think that this just goes to show how much more there is to learn. The more that we learn about menopause, the more associated symptoms that we are becoming aware of. So the next question is, why are we likely to experience [00:05:00] menopause within the UK?

The average age of menopause is 51, and on average, women will experience their menopause between the ages of 45 and 55. So not all women will experience it at this time. As I said, everybody is different. Some ladies will experience a LA's menopause. This could happen into their sixties. Some can have an early menopause, which means that they experience their menopause between the ages of 40 up to 45, and then others have a premature menopause or a premature ovarian insufficiency.

As it's known, this can affect 1% of females between the ages of 12 up to the age of 39. The other thing that we need to be aware of is that not everybody who experiences menopause identifies as a female. Transgender non-binary gender questioning individuals will also experience menopause if they were born as a female.

So why did I start to [00:06:00] work in the menopause space? Many people who start to support menopause, whether that's supporting individuals or workplaces, often start to work in this space because of their own personal experience. Very often, individuals have gone through pretty horrendous experiences themselves.

With their menopause and they want to prevent other people from going through what they've been through. However, for me, it is a different story. As I explained at the beginning of this episode, my career is in human resources. Back in 2003, I was on maternity to leave with my son, and I was watching a daytime TV program where two female individuals were being interviewed about their own personal experiences of their menopause.

And interestingly, they were talking about their experiences at work and both of these individuals had lost their careers due to their menopause. At that point, in 2003, I was sat with my son thinking [00:07:00] this is wrong. In this day and age, we should not be having situations where women are losing their careers due to a natural life transition.

This is what led me down the path of learning more and more about menopause, both supporting individuals and supporting the workplace, and to make sure that we were as menopause inclusive as we possibly could be. So, throughout the rest of my corporate career, I focused on supporting menopause in the workplace.

And what I found was so many women did struggle. So many individuals were struggling, and they didn't realize why they were struggling. Some individuals didn't even realize that they were going through the menopause, and there were so many scary stories that they shared with me, such as feeling that they were starting with early onset dementia because they didn't recognize how they were feeling was associated with the menopause.

Also, through many conversations, I had [00:08:00] colleagues telling me that they felt like failure. They didn't recognize themselves. They felt like they'd lost themselves. They were a shadow of the, for myself, felt like they'd lost the clarity of thinking. They felt much more emotional and angry. Some were telling me that they'd developed anxiety, and they'd never felt anxious in their life before.

They were also telling me about the brain fog that they were struggling with and the loss in confidence. Some of these individuals struggled to go into meetings and speak up in front of their peers. They struggled with putting the cameras on when they were on teams or zoom. Overall, as I said, they felt like they'd lost themselves.

Individuals would also speak to me about their physical symptoms. They were struggling to sleep, which was impacting their brain fog and their loss of confidence. They were experiencing hot flushes, and again, this impacted their confidence because they felt that they didn't want to go into a meeting and [00:09:00] experience a hot flush because they told me they felt embarrassed.

So, there's actually one example that I can recall that just shows how easily through not supporting this individual, we could have lost them from the business. And this came about because an individual that's had historically stepped up to cover her manager, she'd covered two periods of maternity to leave.

She would cover her holidays, and on this occasion, her manager was going on holiday and she was asked to step up and cover this holiday. She said that she couldn't do it, and it led to a whole conversation where she explained that she was really struggling. In fact, she didn't feel that she was able to do her own job, let alone step up and cover for her manager.

Her manager rang me and he was quite baffled because he was telling me how brilliant and amazing she was. It's a long story short. Through a series of conversations, we found out that she actually believed that she had early onset dementia. She [00:10:00] was really worried. All of these symptoms she did not recognize as being menopause related.

She hadn't even considered that this could be her menopause. Looked after a conversation. She booked her GP appointment and within a couple of weeks she was feeling so much better. She did cover her manager's holiday and she was so grateful that her manager had opened up that conversation, and she told us that we had prevented her resignation.

She continued to do her job to the best of her ability for a really high standard, and also to continue covering her manager's absences in the futures. There are so many other examples that I can share with you. Through having conversations and making adjustments, individuals can feel supported in the workplace and continue to thrive.

So this passion of mine grew over time because I could see the tangible impacts that we were having by opening up these conversations and raising awareness of menopause because eight in 10 menopausal women are in the workplace, [00:11:00] and this is the fastest growing demographic. So basically, if you work somewhere or you employ people.

Chances are that you're going to be working with or employing menopausal individuals and outta those individuals. Research shows that one in four consider leaving the workplace because of their menopause. One in 10 actually have left the workplace. That is a scary number. Think of all the knowledge, the skills, the talent that is walking out of the door.

And if we add to that, research shows that 76% of hiring managers in smaller organisations struggle with recruiting the right person with the right skills into their vacancies. This states’, one of their biggest challenges and to further compound this according to Oxford economics, to replace one person on a salary of 25,000 will cost an organisation just over 30,000.

If you look at the total associated costs. [00:12:00] Now if you lose one in 10, as well as losing all of their knowledge, skills, and talent. Think of how much it's actually costing the organisation to replace them. As well as this, we've got to consider are your sickness levels and self-confidence is hugely impacted by the menopause.

So, people hold back, which means that they don't apply for those promotions. So, organisations are losing out on so much talent and individuals are losing out on their own progression. Now the other thing that organisations need to be aware of is tribunal claims. Now back in 2012, we saw this first successful tribunal claim citing menopause.

And since then, tribunal claims have increased between 2019 and 2020. Tribunal claims citing menopause increased by 44%, and between 2021 and 2022, they rose by a third of [00:13:00] 40%. So, organisations need to get this right. We need to support these individuals to prevent them from leaving, but we also need to avoid costly tribunals, and that's not covering the adverse publicity that they bring.

So whilst menopause is not a protected characteristic within the Equality Act, depending upon the severity of the symptoms and the impact on the individual's life, menopause could fall under the protected characteristic of disability. And there's also the protective characteristics of age and sexts that we need to be aware of.

Now, back in 2022 there, there was a report called the four Such reports, which concluded that workplaces are failing to support menopausal individuals. And within the report that were recommendations for each organisation to have a menopause action plan to show how they are supporting menopausal individuals.

And then in addition, in [00:14:00] 2024, the Equality and Human Rights Commission issued caution to employers that stresses the importance of supporting menopausal individuals within the workplace and to further support this message. Later in 2024 when the Labor Party came into government, they announced their plans for employees and playing over 250 employees to introduce menopause action plans.

At the point of recording this episode, we're not exactly sure when this is likely to come into effect. However, my question is, why wait until it actually comes into effect, and why would you stop at 250 employees if you employ menopausal women and have less than 250 employees? Surely, it's good practice to support these individuals.

So my ask is for all employers to consider looking at introducing menopause action plans and supporting menopausal individuals who bring so much to your organisation, it's a no brainer. And you [00:15:00] know what? I can help you with this, whether that's through education sessions, coaching sessions for individuals and groups helping you to write your menopause policy.

Helping you to set up and run menopause support groups within your workplace, carrying out menopause audits. The list goes on. I would love to help you raise awareness within your organisation. Or if you're an individual who is listening today and you'd like some help, please reach out to me. So today has been a taster of what menopause is.

A brief overview of how it can affect individuals and also the impact that menopause can have on the workplace. Throughout this series, we're going to have a look at all different aspects and impacts of menopause from personal perspectives through to workplace perspectives. I'm looking forward to welcoming in guests who will share their insights and their experiences too.

So we'll [00:16:00] provide a wide and holistic overview of menopause and how we can support you and raise awareness. So, I'm extremely excited to bring this podcast series to you. But for now, thanks for listening and please don't forget to tune in next time. For more, find Your Spark, real life Menopause Moments.

Thank you so much for listening to Find Your Spark: Real Life Menopause Moments. If you'd like to learn more, visit www.sparkshr.co.uk. Please share this episode with others navigating their Menopause journey or supporting someone through it. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. Your feedback helps us to spark, change and connect with more people.

Let's keep the sparks alive and continue this journey together.