Sinead Sharkey-Steenson
How Menopause Impacts Women at Work with Sinead Sharkey-Steenson
Sinead Sharkey-Steenson is the Founder and Director of Generation Women and is an experienced Senior Leadership and Development Coach, Facilitator, and Motivational Speaker. Generation Women is dedicated to facilitating the development of women to achieve greatness in business. Sinead draws on over 20 years of corporate experience in HR, Leadership Development, Business Improvement, and Cultural Transformation. She has worked with over 5,000 women and developed and delivered career and leadership programmes for multiple global organisations. Follow Sinead on Linkedin. Learn more about her program the Menopause Talent Drain.
When I was growing up in Northern Ireland, women would whisper the phrase, “the change”, when talking about perimenopause and menopause.
Thank goodness the conversation has evolved since then. Yet, until very recently, no one was talking about how it impacts our joy at work.
Today we delve into the impact of perimenopause and menopause on women in the workplace with leadership expert Sinead Sharkey-Steenson. We discuss the physical, emotional, and mental challenges women face and how these can manifest in professional settings.
Sinead shares practical advice on recognizing symptoms, the importance of medical consultation, and stress management techniques. She also highlights organizational strategies to support female employees through awareness sessions, flexible working conditions, and open conversations. She gives actionable steps for individuals to reduce workplace stress, such as setting boundaries, recharging energy, and practicing focused breathing.
[00:00] Introduction: Breaking the Silence on Menopause
[00:26] Meet Sinead Sharkey-Steenson
[00:58] Understanding How Menopause Impacts Women in the Workplace
[01:53] Emotional and Mental Challenges
[03:49] Physical Symptoms and Stigma
[04:49] Organizational Support and Awareness of Menopause
[08:00] Practical Tips for Individuals
[09:05] The Three B's: Boundaries, Battery, and Breath
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.
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How Menopause Impacts Women at Work with Sinead Sharkey-Steenson
Introduction: Breaking the Silence on Menopause
Lucia Knight: When I was growing up in Northern Ireland, women would whisper the phrase, the change, when talking about perimenopause and menopause. Thank goodness the conversation has evolved since then.
Half of our workforce experience symptoms that bring around unusual levels of stress to our work. Yet, until very recently, no one was talking about how it impacts our joy at work.
Meet Sinead Sharkey-Steenson
Lucia Knight: Our next guest, Sinead Sharkey-Steenson, focuses on leadership success with women in business and sport. She's also the co founder of one of Ireland's largest business conferences, Impact Players. When you see how she brings laughter, compassion, deep personal knowledge, and scientific research to companies on how to reduce the stress that relates specifically to perimenopause and menopause, I think you'll like her as much as I do.
Let's dive in.
Understanding How Menopause Impacts Women in the Workplace
Lucia Knight: Sinead, what kind of impacts do you see in the workplace that can be attributed to either perimenopause or menopause?
Sinead Sharkey-Steenson: I would group these into three areas. So the physical, emotional, and the mental impact.
And I think the physical ones are the ones that tell us that it's perimenopause or menopause.
But one of the big problems that many women have is we've only heard the word perimenopause in the last couple of years and nobody knew it was a thing, nobody was expecting it to be a thing and so they're taken completely unawares by suddenly everything feels like it's shifted in their life and what the hell is going on.
Emotional and Mental Challenges
Sinead Sharkey-Steenson: So I might start with the more mental and emotional, and then come back to the physical, which we know more about. So what I noticed is it probably shows up at work for you before you know what's going on.
So it shows up as you forgetting somebody's name that you know, like your own mother, it shows up as you feeling anxious doing something you've always done and you know you're brilliant at. So it could be suddenly you're anxious about running a meeting that you could do standing on your head. You're anxious about driving is a real indicator especially at night.
Confidence taking a hit. A lot of women are riding at the highest point of their careers and suddenly boom, it's like the rug's been whipped out from underneath them and what the hell, how can I be feeling like this when I've just got this great promotion. I know I can do this, but something is wrong.
So anxiety, confidence, those things. Getting into really tough mood situations.
The emotional things then could be I like that mood. Crying over stuff that you never thought like, uh, with an advert can send you into a tailspin of despair or something like that. And you're like, what is going on with me?
Anger.
Lucia Knight: Yes.
Sinead Sharkey-Steenson: I experienced rage, so frustration at people that you never expected. And that can show up at work, like suddenly you've, you just got no time for people. What is wrong with you? Get that done. And it can show up like that.
Physical Symptoms and Stigma
Sinead Sharkey-Steenson: And then we've heard of the physical stuff.
And these are the things that can be really debilitating and could cause a lot of stigma at work. And so things like the hot flashes, such a rubbish name. You could be drowned in sweat in a heartbeat, imagine doing that while you're doing a big presentation. Could be palpitations, itchy skin there's all kinds of physical symptoms.
And it's often only when we get the common ones, the known menopause ones that we know what's going on. So I always say to people, pay attention. If you're feeling shifts in, in life, how you're feeling suddenly going from coping quite well to not coping. Hello. Maybe look at it.
Lucia Knight: Fabulous. So write down what you're experiencing. Just get it out
Sinead Sharkey-Steenson: or Write it down. Yeah. Yeah.
Organizational Support and Awareness of Menopause
Lucia Knight: So let's shift a little bit to organizations. What can organizations or companies do to understand more about the difference between general workplace stress and then workplace stress that's related to perimenopause or menopause?
Sinead Sharkey-Steenson: The thing we all need to recognize is stress makes it all worse, just like it does with anything.
And so what do workplaces need to know? They need to be aware so that this is something that happens to women. I can happen at any age. It's not post puberty.
Somebody can experience this at any age. It's most common perimenopause will hit early 40s and menopause itself will happen early 50s. There's a lot of shift in that.
Women are often at their stress sandwich point of life, most responsibility at work, children, aging parents, aging life all becoming a bit more tricky .
And so all of these things can hit at one time and suddenly it can feel like the wheels come off. So traditionally what happened even in the NHS is women would have been managed for stress and lo and behold, it didn't work.
Lucia Knight: Yes.
Sinead Sharkey-Steenson: and so you can't really say to an employee.
Do you think you might be perimenopausal because that's not going to go down. What you can do is do awareness sessions in your organization, have support systems in place. You can talk to people, ask them what's going on, is there ways that we can help? And actually quite often what is needed, the accommodations, the support, will work whether it's perimenopause or not.
Like saying, would it be worth having a chat with your GP if you're experiencing a lot of stress? Would a bit of hybrid working help right now?
Lucia Knight: So opening up conversations and offering some more flexibility or just being supportive. Lovely.
Sinead Sharkey-Steenson: Be supportive and being like, how can I be a great employer here? This person is brilliant. I don't want them to walk out the door. And this is the kicker so many women walk out of the door at this point in life. They might not know they're perimenopausal. They might not know what's going on and they might not know why they're leaving.
But you can be there to say, okay, it feels like there's a bit of struggle going on right now. How can we help? What's going to work for you? And presumably you want to keep this fantastic person. We all go through bad stages in life. Home stuff, health stuff, life stuff, it impacts us all. And so this is one of those things that's going to impact at least 50 percent of the population.
Practical Tips for Individuals
Lucia Knight: so let's go more practical now. Let's go back to the individual. So if a listener feels that their very natural symptoms of perimenopause or menopause are negatively impacting them at work. What can they do practically to reduce their stress at work this week? Where do they start?
Sinead Sharkey-Steenson: Okay. And I love that you said to reduce your stress because that is going to make everything worse.
So there's five things to look at. But the last one, the fifth, the net one after is the most important.
One is medical. Go to the doctor. If you don't know what it is, just go to the doctor, have a chat, make a note of your symptoms, take them with you.
Sleep, nutrition and exercise are all things that are going to help you. But quite often, if you're in the thick of it, you're stressed out to the hilt. They are the hardest things to fix at that time.
So medical and then stress management.
If you focus on those two things, it's going to make a huge difference for you.
The Three B's: Boundaries, Battery, and Breath
Sinead Sharkey-Steenson: So I have got a little three B's, boundaries, battery, and breath.
So what do you need to start saying no to? How could you need to build in more boundaries?
The second one is your battery, your energy. Stop treating yourself like something that you can run to the end and hoping the weekend will build you back up. You need to build in a bit of something every day to regenerate.
The third B is going to help you with that, which is your breath. So focused breathing really helps. If you think of your energy like a battery and your breath as like a plug in to the wall to recharge that, take a few moments to do a simple breathing exercise.
So breathe in for four, Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four. Four square breathing. It is magical. It can help you reduce your stress hormones, reset, give you a bit of breathing space and help your brain focus more. And that is going to be a massive help.
Lucia Knight: If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed. It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.
