Hi M R

My experience is that this is something that the HR team deal with, asking the HSE team for help when appropriate, just as they might with e.g. a return to work programme after extended absence.

P

A menopause  policy is a very  good idea but why would it be a H&S matter? When it comes to risk assessment  please see my comment(#14)  on the “Defibrillator public access”.

idle hands are the devils workshop

yes; ask those nice people in HR!

Kmason83 I think some re-reading and quite reflection might be in order.  The majority of teh repsonses in the thread are saying that a menopause policy is a good thing.

As I read it Grim72 is saying obviously it's a no-brainer that women going through menopause should have access to reasonable adjustments, suppport, and so on. They say that in some case it may be a 'little thing' that is all that is required, which I think is probably true.

You are vehemently (and implicitly violently) disagreeing.  You are accusing someone who says obviously yes there should be support of being sickening, offensive, and smacking you in the mouth.

Do you really find the idea of supporting people going through menopause to be offensive, ignorant, and sickening?

Originally Posted by: kmason83

It’s clear that a lot of old male dinosaurs lurk in these forums

What is clear is these forums are being visited by the Selectively Offended.

As a dinosaur (at my age I do not take offence) I read grim72 contribution as being supportive of the OP.

For the record, as a perimenopausal woman and (dare I say?  what the hell) a feminist, I didn't take any offence at Grim's remarks, which I found constructive.

I was only mildly annoyed by the emphasis on hot flushes.

During my fire brigade career of 25 years I worked with men except for the station cook/s and cleaners, no real menopause discussions although the cooks did seem to suffer a bit in the hot kitchen with very little or no complaint.

My first job after retirement was FPO in a factory employing 1500 with the majority of them women on produchion lines.  Lots of complaining about hot temperatures and asking about maximum workplace temperatures, which there is not, cold orange juice by the bucketful was always available with electric fans as many as they wanted, and they were allowed to take breaks at reasonable times.

I was based inside the Personnel Department with mostly women who did symphasise about the heat but also assisted the company in providing the cool drinks and work breaks but were obviously suffering themselves while on their Menopause, but hey ho they had a job to do and carried on doing it. The mood in the office was always quite jovial.

On a personal level when I met my second wife I was told by her father that her nickname was 'Storm' and I soon found out why haha.

I think the point about the social acceptability of hot flushes is an important one.

For me the devastating symptoms were cognitive impairment and emotional instability.  In our line of work, as many others, we live or are sacked by our cognitive and emotional abilities,  so it would be frightening to admit to this without confidence in a sympathetic response.  This was all solved for me just by medicine, but while I was struggling to get the medicine,  I was really worried that I would make a serious error or blow up in the workplace.  So greater understanding about this and how to deal with it is important.

Hot flushes, while annoying, are trivial by comparison!

Originally Posted by: firesafety101

During the second world war our British women played a huge part in us winning the war.  They were the Land Army farming our food and my Mum helped make Barrage Baloons in the old Littlewoods factory.

I wonder what might have happened if they all claimed time off for their menapause.  I would wager most of them worked right through 

But the world has evolved since then (otherwise we'd still be sending young urchins up chimneys because they used to just get on with it too lol) and the problem is that a lot of companies do just expect menopausal women to get on with it because, let's be honest, a lot of companies are run by men and a lot of times by men that put profit above most things (whether that be safety, mental health or wellbeing). It is why I'm of advocate of highlighting it under the Equality Act as a "disability" - and as such should be treated with the same level of understanding and adjutments as someone using a wheelchair should expect.

I do think that by opening up the conversations and raising awareness in the news/IOSH etc that it will help bring about some long overdue changes in terms of opening eyes and minds. Some of the stats are quite staggering - eg, 20% take time off work to deal with menopausal symptoms, 63% feel their worklife has been negatively impacted, 11% forwent the offer of promotion, 50% feel depressive, 37% suffer from anxiety, 9 in 10 feel that they can't speak to their manager about the menopause, and the list goes on. 

For some reason these stats, the mental issues and the medical issues don't seem to get the recognition they should - probably because so many of the decision makers are men and just see it as "one of those women's problems" because we have no first have knoweldge or experience of exactly what they do go through. It is why we are trying to make a difference by introducing women that have gone through the symptoms and have been trained in mental health to act as "menopause champions" and act as a go-between to management to put forward additional requirments that have neen suggested/asked for by employees. 

Now I know I have already offended some people by even mentioning such things and as a man I have no real authority in the subject but I have read up a lot about the issues on the many extrememly informative and educational websites that offer support and guidance on the matter and as such I intend to coninue down the route of offering the support and making reasonable adjustments where we can - maybe I should be burnt at the stake for even suggesting such "sickening" and "offensive" ideas but I'm willing to stand my ground on this one and push forward with this one. And apologies but if someone asks for a fan then we will provide them with one lol 

Thanks Grim and Tim

My thinking exactly.

I have beside me a book which is mostly inspired by one of the author's ancestors who is also one of my 5th (I think I have counted correctly!) Great Grandmothers but she has yet to appear. Instead the opening section is about how her husband to be went to Jamaica in 1749 in an effort to make a fortune.

He was about to turn 14 but had already spent 2 years in the Royal Navy in a war against the French, so had started working at the age of 11.

I really don't think that we should be considering what happened during a War or in the 18th and 19th Centuries as being a good precedent for how to manage the modern workplace.

That doesn't mean that it is not appropriate to learn from history. Many British Colonists in the West Indies had very short lives, often as a result of being exposed to diseases to which they had no in built immunity, something that happens to some "expats" and other migrant workers, who move to different geographies in the 21st Century. 

Hi Kate,

Possibly IOSH hasn't "specified" the risks in this press release, as someone at the Grange who probably DOES have significant experience and expertise of advising on OH issues has probably not done much on the issue of Menopause before.

For the simple reason that they would have been USUALLY looking at issues which are clearly WORK-related.

So, advising on how to deal with people exposed to respiratory risks at work, both before and during work, and then advising on what can be done to support a person who has been impacted.

I assume that the typical OH professional is like the typical Occupational Safety and Health adviser - too many things on their plate, so SHOULD be time managing and prioritising the WORK-related risks but helping out with advise on things like menopause when asked for advice by e.g. HR. 

Let’s go back to why we think that this is not a H&S matter but should fall to HR.

H&S is largely about looking at work related tasks and then looking at the risks to employees that arise from those task, be physical agents, organisational issues, equipment etc. Having done that we identify the controls that the employer can apply to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of employees carrying out specific tasks. The controls must be something that employer can reasonably expected to do as the tasks are something within the employer’s control.

The issue of menopause is not something within the control of  the employer: all women will go through the menopause at some point in their lives, but this will vary between individuals.  You cannot create a risk assessment which has any sort of meaning nor can you adopt controls. Instead the employer should create a policy which supports women going through the menopause while they work, just as there are policies supporting people with children and other carers’ responsibilities,  sickness absence,  or equality issues. These policies fall very much in HR responsibilities.  

Originally Posted by: A Kurdziel

The issue of menopause is not something within the control of  the employer: all women will go through the menopause at some point in their lives, but this will vary between individuals.  You cannot create a risk assessment which has any sort of meaning nor can you adopt controls.

Why not?  We create risk assessments for other medical issues and sometimes adopt individual-specific control measures. I am struggling to understand why it is impossible to risk assess a particular individual who has particular symptoms, when those symptoms arise from menopause.

I observe that we've done risk assessments for particular employees with variants of narcolepsy, with significantly less-than-normal eyesight, and who are deaf.  The symptoms of nearly all medical conditions differ between individuals.  My hearing is poor, and though I don't qualify as deaf I'm not allowed on or near the line on rail sites without special arrangemnts, but the workplace arrangements for me are differnet to those we've assessed for our profoundly deaf employee. 

I see menopause risk as a shared responsibility between HR and H&S.

When it comes to the "who might be harmed" bit of a RA, someone journeying through menopause may see their physical, mental and emotional abilities change - and not in predictable, linear ways. She may experience fluctuations in symptoms as her journey progresses; and any interventions, such as medications and mental health support, can add to the uncertainty and longevity of changes.

Being several years into this journey myself, I find women are often more likely to to be open and honest with me - the safety person - in managing the way they work, rather than HR, where "capability" discussions are feared during this potentially unstable phase of life.