Deborah Garlick, Director, Henpicked, is one of the names synonymous with the menopause revolution in the UK workplace, and she’ll be speaking on a panel about inclusive women’s Health & Wellbeing at The Watercooler on 7 & 8th May in London.
This panel will be looking at how to take a wider approach to women’s health, which is something Garlick feels strongly is the right move now, given the campaign around menopause has put the topic firmly on the corporate and political agenda.
We caught up with her to find out more ahead of her panel at The Watercooler…
You are a big believer that, when it comes to menopause awareness at work, the UK is doing it best. Why is that?
I often credit employers as being the ones who have actually made the biggest impact on this front.
If we rewind to 2016, there wasn’t a menopause policy in the whole of the UK. At that time I was working with the team who wrote the Government Equality Office report on the effects of menopause on economic participation in the UK.
That resulted in headlines that said the UK is losing billions every year because bosses don’t understand menopause. That create a huge trigger for many UK employers to take action.
E.on was one that took early action, right?
Yes. Its menopause policy was published in 2017, and I’m aware of two others published that year because I was involved in all of them. (Matt Grisdale, Senior People Champion at E.on will be sitting on the same panel as Deborah at the Watercooler Event).
All three were very different in their approach – and they had to be because every organisation is unique with different leadership styles, cultures and job roles.
So, yes, you can download a policy off Chat GBT today but that doesn’t mean it’ll work for your organisation. We see factual inaccuracies when employers do this too. The best policies come from when you’ve clearly listened to your people and created something that is right for your organisation and its employees.
Any other advice on writing a good menopause strategy?
It should absolutely not be a tick box exercise, created and stored with other policies. You need to bring it to life, embed it into the culture and practices of your organisation. Regularly communicate it. Engage with your people around it. Otherwise, you might as well not bother and you’ll probably find the organisation is more at risk from tribunals.
How so?
When somebody goes to tribunal, one of the first questions that is asked is ‘what’s the policy in your organisation?’
And if you’ve written a company policy and just stashed it away without engaging people and upskilling people, you’re more at risk of losing a tribunal.
When you look at the tribunals where employers have lost, there is a consistent theme around line managers who don’t know about menopause or how to support someone.
You have a Master’s and your specialism was financial strategy. Did this help in terms of credibility when fighting for employers and government to take note of the impact of menopause on economic activity?
It’s definitely a benefit because I know how corporates work. I know that if you want to do anything in an organisation you’ve got to look at a return on investment. You’ve got to say how does this contribute to the business? Menopause programmes can actually save employers money!
How easy is it to link things like menopause to reduced economic activity?
It’s like anything to do with wellbeing; it’s very difficult.
But we tend to switch the ROI equation around.
We say that we know X number of people experience symptoms. We’ve got research showing X women consider leaving work. We’ve got research saying X leave. So, we encourage employers to consider that if you can save one person leaving your organisation, you save the cost of replacing that individual and, if the programme costs less than that, it’s already making a positive impact on your bottom line.
Because we’ve been supporting employers for nearly a decade now, we have researchers looking at the impact these programmes have made.
Are you seeing organisations cut back on training at the moment with the financial pressures, like National Insurance Contribution increases?
There’s concern about the economy, general cutbacks, headcount reductions and redundancies. Sending out wellbeing messages while there are redundancy programmes happening doesn’t sit comfortably. It makes people ask: why are you spending on this when you’re laying people off?
But remember that research tells us that people increasingly look for employers that look after them, and if employers want to retain and attract talent, wellbeing programmes are essential.
So what’s your advice to Health and Wellbeing professionals in this current cutting climate?
Remember it’s cyclical.
I’ve worked in corporate life for over 40 years now and worked through everything from Covid to all sorts of purchase order freezes.
Trust, and have faith that it will change. Don’t stop what you’re doing.
The key for me is that many organisations have made huge progress on menopause. But we can’t stop until the job’s done.
How can they keep going if the messaging might not sit comfortably in the current cutting climate?
We offer all sorts of opportunities to keep going without costing employers a lot. For example, we do lunch and learn programmes and great value training and membership options. Use things like that to keep the drumbeat going.
As well as financial pressures like the NIC rises, employers also have to think about legislation like the Employment Rights Bill. How’s that going to impact the market do you think?
Yes, that is thundering through parliament right now, which is understandable given Labour’s manifesto was all about making work pay.
There’s a big focus on women’s health and keeping women in work.
For instance, all employers with over 250 employees must now have an ‘equality action plan’. When it was first published it actually said ‘menopause action plan’. Of course, I was happy about that! But I’m very aware that the conversations around menopause have opened up the conversations around women’s health more widely.
And do you think that’s where employers should focus more going forward, widening the focus of women’s health?
Yes. We’ve been doing menstruation training for two years now, and it was primarily because organisations told us that after doing sessions on menopause they were getting more queries about other lifestages. We’ve now got a Menstruation Friendly Membership and a range of training options.
Where would you like the conversation to go now?
Menstrual health is really important.
One in 10 women experience endometriosis, for example, but we are constantly hearing that people have no idea they might be experiencing a menstrual health condition.
Women are still told that the pain is just something to ‘put up with’ for the next 40 years when, actually, there could be things they could do to help prevent them being held back at work because of it.
And there are lots of other conditions besides endometriosis.
The fact that careers are still being so held back simply because you’re a woman is shocking to me.
Women make up nearly half of the UK’s labour market and their economic participation is key to productivity. We’re an aging population and, for most of us, it takes two incomes to pay the mortgage. So the best thing employers can do is make workplaces women friendly.
The more we raise awareness, provide education and support, the more we avoid losing more women. That is still what gets me up every day.
You can hear Deborah speak at The Watercooler Event, which takes place on 7th and 8th May 2025 at ExCeL in London, which is Europe’s leading trade show, with free-to-attend content, dedicated to creating workplaces that empower both people and business to thrive. She’s speaking on Day 1, as part of the Prevention, Intervention, Holistic & Inclusive Wellbeing stream.
You can find out more and register to attend here.
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