Episode 17 - Menopause at Work: Recalibration and Resilience

The Career Conversation: When Menopause Meets Your Ambition

How to protect your professional life when your body is rewriting the rules

In this episode:

Nobody talks about this at work. You’re sitting in a meeting with brain fog, anxiety, and a hot flush threatening to arrive at any moment — and you’re performing your way through it. I cover the hidden workforce crisis (one in ten women have left or considered leaving their jobs because of menopause), practical strategies for managing symptoms at work, whether and how to have the disclosure conversation with your employer, and the provocative question: is menopause asking you to change your career, not just endure it?

Your One Thing this week:

Identify your best two hours of the day — the window where your brain is clearest. Then protect that window for your most important work. Stop answering emails in your peak hours.

Links:

→ Grab the free 5 Riviera Standards Starter Guide: https://rivieramenopausemethod.kit.com/5-riviera-standards

→ Follow Riviera Menopause on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rivieramenopause/

If you know a woman who is silently struggling at work, send her this. Tell her: you’re not falling apart. You’re working through something. And there are strategies that help.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I once sat through an entire presentation, a presentation I was giving, incidentally, with a hot flush so intense I could feel sweat running down the back of my neck and pulling on my collar. It was running down between my breasts, and I was standing in front of a room full of people, mid-sentence, and my body decided that this was the perfect moment to simulate being inside of an oven. Did I stop my presentation? No, I did not stop. I did not mention it. I did not say, excuse me, my body's currently going through a hormonal event that I have no control over. I just smiled and kept talking and hoped nobody noticed that I appeared to be slowly melting. Oh, they noticed. If you have ever performed your way through a working day while your body was falling apart underneath, this episode is for you. Today we're going to talk about menopause at work. And we're going to talk about it honestly, because the silence around this topic is deafening and it's costing women their careers, their confidence, and their sanity. So let's get into it. The brain fog in meetings, the anxiety before presentations, the fatigue that hits at 2 pm when you've got four hours of work left, and the invisible calculation that millions of women make every single day. Can I get through today without anyone noticing? This isn't a niche conversation we're having right now, this is a conversation about half the workforce navigating a major health transition in silence because the professional world still hasn't caught up. There is a hidden workforce crisis, and there are some numbers that nobody's really talking about. Let me give you some stats that should make every employer in the UK sit up and pay attention. There are approximately 4.5 million women aged 45 to 55 in the UK workforce right now. The majority of them are experiencing menopause symptoms to a greater or lesser degree. Research from the Forsyth Society found that one in ten women who worked during menopause left their job because of their symptoms. One in ten. That's hundreds of thousands of experienced, skilled, senior women walking out of the workforce because their symptoms were unmanageable and their workplace did not support them. Other studies have found that women reduce their hours, turn down promotions, avoid travel, skip networking events, and sideline themselves from career opportunities because symptoms they don't feel they can talk about. This is not a personal problem any longer, this is a structural failure, and it's costing the UK economy billions of pounds in lost productivity, lost talent, and lost experience. And yet, most women would rather resign than have the conversation. Why? Well, because the conversation feels impossible. It feels embarrassing because menopause at work still carries a stigma, because admitting that your body is affecting your performance feels like professional suicide, and in many cases it is. So how do we get through it? What's the answer to managing our symptoms at work? Because there are some practical, immediate strategies we can use. Let me give you some things you can do right now, while the world catches up to the reality of this. Firstly, know your energy window. We're not equally productive all day. Most menopausal women have a peak performance window, often mid-morning, but it varies, and a significant dip in the afternoon. Identify your window and protect it at all costs. Schedule your most important, most cognitively demanding work for that window. Emails, admin, routine tasks, those go in the dip. Strategy, creativity, important meetings, those go in the peak. This is one adjustment that you can make that will make a disproportionate difference to your professional output. The second thing you can do is manage your physical environment. So we're talking a desk fan, water bottle, protein-based snacks in your drawer, a light cardigan you can put on and take off quickly. These sound trivial, they sound trite, they're not. They are the difference between a manageable day and a day spent just in survival mode. Number three is building recovery. If you have back-to-back meetings, you need five minutes between them. Not to check an email, but to breathe, to drink water, to let your nervous system settle a bit. The old you could probably have sprinted through a nine-hour workday without pausing. The current you needs micro breaks, not because you're less capable now, but because your nervous system requires them. And have a code word with a trusted colleague, someone who knows what you're going through and can cover for you if you need to step out, someone who can pick up a presentation if your brain fog is bad that day. You don't need to tell everyone. You need one person, one ally in the room. That alone can reduce the anxiety significantly. I also want to say something about the performance pressure that sits underneath all of this. Most professional women in menopause are not just working. They're overperforming to compensate. They arrive earlier, they stay later, they prepare more because they're terrified that someone will notice they're not operating at 100%. And the irony is that that overcompensation is draining the very energy they're trying to protect. You're running a marathon to prove you can sprint, and it's making the marathon harder. Give yourself permission to be at 80% on some days. 80% from a senior experienced woman is still better than most people's 100%. You've earned the right to coast occasionally, and coasting is not a failure, it's a strategy at this point. And it's one you need to use. So if you spent your entire life working at 100, you need to shift that mindset slightly and realise that nobody will notice the dip occasionally. 80% can be fine. Now, much of the advice on menopause in the workplace involves having an honest conversation with your employer. So let's address the disclosure question. Should you tell your employer? This is the question I get asked most, and the honest answer is it depends. In the UK, menopause is increasingly recognised in the workplace policies. Many larger employers now have menopause support frameworks, menopause champions, and under the Equality Act, menopausal symptoms that have substantial long-term effect on day-to-day activities can be considered a disability for the purposes of reasonable adjustments. Now that means you may be legally entitled to things like flexible working, adjusted targets, or environmental changes. But we need to remember that legal entitlement and cultural reality are not the same thing. Some workplaces are supportive and progressive, others are really not. And only you know which category yours falls into. If you do choose to disclose, here's how I'd frame it. Lead with the facts, not emotions. I'm going through a hormonal transition that affects my energy, my concentration, and my temperature regulation. It's temporary, I'm managing it, and there's a few practical adjustments that would help me maintain my performance. That's a professional briefing, it's specific, it's solutions-oriented, and it positions you as someone who's handling something, not someone who's struggling through something. You do not owe anybody a detailed medical history. You do not need to use the word menopause if you don't want to. You can say hormonal health condition if that feels more comfortable. What matters is that you frame it as something you're actively managing and you make a specific request for support. Specific is key. I need understanding is just vague and woolly. I need to start work an hour later on days when my sleep is badly disruptive, is actionable. And if the response is dismissive or unhelpful, document it because the law is on your side, even if your manager is not. Also, I want to say this: choosing not to disclose is equally valid. Some women manage their symptoms privately and successfully and see no benefit whatsoever in telling their employer. That's their right. The point is not that you must have this conversation. The point is that if you do want to have it, there is a way to do it that protects your professional standing whilst getting you the support you need. And you should not have to choose between your health and your career. If it feels like you do, that's a system failing, not you. And there is a bigger question at work here. Is menopause asking you to change your career? Because this is slightly provocative, but I do think that some women need to hear it. Not every menopause or woman who is struggling at work has a symptom management problem. Some of them actually just have a work problem. The job was already too much, the environment was already too toxic, the role was already draining. And menopause, with its reduced tolerance for bullshit, its stripped back patience, and its inability to perform enthusiasm that you don't feel, has simply made it impossible to keep pretending. When your capacity to tolerate things drops, the things that were always wrong become impossible to ignore. And that's not always a symptom to be managed. Sometimes it's clarity arriving uninvited. I'm not saying quit your job. I am saying if menopause is making your work feel unbearable, it's worth asking whether the unbearability is caused by your symptoms or by the job itself, because one of those problems is solved by better sleep and protein at breakfast, the other is solved by a much bigger, much braver conversation. Menopause has a way of stripping away your ability to tolerate things that are not right for you. Some women experience that as a loss, others experience it as the most honest signal they've ever received. And I think both experiences are completely valid. So your one thing this week. Identify your best two hours, the window where your brain is clearest and your energy is highest. Then protect that window for your most important work. No emails, no meetings you don't need to be in, no admin, just your best work in your best window, and see what happens to your sense of professional competence when you stop trying to do everything in every hour and start putting the right work in the right window. This episode matters to me because I think the professional cost of menopause is one of the most under-discussed and most damaging aspects of this transition. Women are not leaving the workforce because they're incapable. They're leaving because the environment was not designed for what they're going through. And that is a systemic problem, not a personal one. You are not less capable. You are navigating something enormous in an environment that has not adapted to it yet. And the fact that you're still showing up, still performing, still delivering, while your body's running out of completely different operating system is not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of staggering competence. If you do know a woman who is silently struggling at work, send her this episode. Tell her you're not falling apart, you're working through something, and there are things that you can do to help. I'm Laura, this is the Riviera Menopause, and your career is not over. It's recalibrating, just like you are. But for now, that's me signing off with love from Monaco. I'll see you next week.