Is your organisation doing enough to support employees who are transitioning through the menopause?
To help answer this important question, Ennis & Co Group has partnered with the award-winning menopause agency, Over The Bloody Moon, to promote menopause awareness in automotive organisations as part of our DE&I advocacy.
Over The Bloody Moon provides a range of menopause training programmes and experiential events for corporate clients to raise understanding of how the menopause can impact people physically and psychologically, including its signature ‘The MenoVestTM Experience’.
This half-day programme gives male stakeholders the opportunity to experience a couple of the most disruptive menopause symptoms for themselves by wearing a MenoVestTM – a thin gilet that heats up to simulate hot flushes and brain fog. It also provides menopause inclusive training either for managers or the general workforce.
“Hot flushes are the most commonly experienced menopause symptom where heat rises from the upper torso, leaving people very flushed in the face,” explains Lesley Salem, Over The Bloody Moon’s founder.
“The vest has pads that heat up in an authentic way, with heat rising upwards very gradually in waves and lasting for a couple of minutes.
“It’s programmed to be random so that you never know you’re going to get the next hot flush, which creates anxiety when men wear it for around an hour.
“We’ve used the MenoVestTM with men in every sort of job and level of seniority – people working in factories, on railway lines, on construction sites, in offices and warehouses – and ask them to write down how they think the experience of hot flushes would impact their everyday lives at work and at home.
“Even though it’s a physical sensation, the feedback shows that the biggest impacts are cognitive and psychological – a sense of losing focus, feeling distracted, feeling anxious and self-conscious.”
Lesley’s mission to demystify and destigmatise the menopause was born out of her own experience when, at the age of 46 and having recently started a new senior boardroom role, she found herself feeling overwhelmed by a myriad of symptoms and became one of the 10 per cent of menopausal women who quit their job during their perimenopause.
“I started to get terrible brain fog, night sweats and insomnia, anxiety and palpitations but I just put it down to the fact that I couldn’t do the job and had bitten off more than I could chew. I felt I was going mad, that I was just past it.
“It was down to a lack of education and therefore preparation because, at that time, no-one was talking about perimenopause, which was triggering my symptoms.
“It was only when I left my job and went to see my doctor that I learned that what I had been experiencing was very common and was down to hormone changes.
“I started to do some of own research and became really motivated to ensure that others didn’t feel they had to quit the workplace.”
After retraining to become an integrated menopause health coach, Lesley established Over The Bloody Moon with an initial mission to provide educational classes for women in their 40s and 50s.
Keen to make as much social impact as possible, she began working with corporates in 2021, while reinvesting money she earned to provide free information and classes for people who did not have the benefit of working for a large organisation.
However, the fact that Lesley’s corporate training programmes were being attended exclusively by women started her thinking about what could be done to raise awareness of menopause symptoms among men.
With research showing that around 80% of women experiences hot flushes at some point in their transition, the idea of the MenoVestTM took shape. A survey of 20,000 social media followers that asked them to describe their hot flushes to an alien helped guide the development of a prototype.
After attracting interest from MP Carolyn Harris, a vocal menopause advocate, MenoVestTM was launched at the Houses of Parliament in 2022, generating a huge surge in media interest that, within a few weeks, led to around 350 inquiries from companies.
Since then, Over The Bloody Moon has expanded its activities significantly both in the UK and internationally, with training programmes and events being led by a team of menopause specialists, coaches and HR professionals. Globally, the agency now has franchisees and associates in every region of the world.
Lesley says attitudes towards menopause vary geographically. In the United States, for example, female employees are often reluctant to discuss their symptoms with colleagues for fear of losing their job due to the lack of employee protections compared to the UK and EU.
Generally, however, she has observed a growing interest among corporates in building menopause awareness into their workplace cultures, particularly in her core client base of organisations with 1,000-plus employees, including many global corporations.
“A lot of our clients are very progressive and have diversity and inclusion at their heart,” says Lesley. “There are multiple elements involved in becoming a menopause inclusive workplace that are systemic and cultural.
“It’s not just training. It’s not just an awareness workshop. It’s an ongoing action plan that encourages conversations, processes and activities that remove stigma, remove barriers to progression, and resources and training that support individuals impacted.
“It doesn’t have to be expensive and it will actually save companies money in the long run. Not only will it mitigate against talent loss, it will improve employee satisfaction and boost productivity.”
To learn how Over The Bloody Moon can support your organisation, please contact hello@overthebloodymoon.com or visit their website.
