A Conversation about the Midlife Exit: Retaining Experienced Women Through Workplace Adaptation

[00:00:00] So I want you to imagine for a moment that you are standing on the floor of like a massive state-of-the-art manufacturing plant. Oh, like a really high-tech facility. Exactly. You know, you can hear the hum of the conveyors, you can smell the ozone, and you're looking at the absolute most expensive finely tuned machinery in the entire place. Right. The core of the operation. Yeah. These are the machines that took maybe 20 or 25 years to calibrate perfectly. They are producing your highest value output.

[00:00:27] It's basically the lifeblood of the company's revenue. Okay. I'm picturing it. Now imagine that one by one, seemingly at random, these machines just start glitching. Like just breaking down. Yeah. They slow down. Sometimes they just power off entirely and have to be physically dragged off the factory floor. And the executive management team, they just shrug. Wait. They just do nothing? Nothing. They look away. They whisper to each other that it's just, you know, that time in the machine's life cycle.

[00:00:56] And they write off a multi-million dollar financial loss as just completely unavoidable. I mean, that would be absolute industrial malpractice. The shareholders would be in open revolt by the end of the quarter. Oh, absolutely. You'd have a fleet of management consultants flown in overnight, right? Taking the machinery apart piece by piece to find the flaw. It would be total boardroom panic. But the crazy thing is, when you step out of the factory and into the modern corporate workforce, this exact scenario is playing out every single day.

[00:01:25] Yeah, it really is. Except, of course, we aren't talking about machines. Right. We're talking about human beings. And that boardroom panic, that is the mission of our deep dive today. I'm your host, and I'm joined as always by our resident organizational design expert. Hello, everyone. Really glad to be here for this one. So today we are exploring what is arguably the most expensive, invisible talent leak in the modern workforce.

[00:01:48] We're talking about a phenomenon where highly experienced senior women in their late 40s and 50s are just quietly stepping back. Or reducing their hours. Right. Reducing hours or just walking away from their careers entirely. It is a staggering drain of talent. And for decades, the corporate world has treated this as a private, whispered health issue. Like something to be managed individually behind closed doors. Right. Instead of what it actually is.

[00:02:13] Exactly. Instead of addressing it for what it actually is, which is a massive, systemic, structural failure in the leadership pipeline. So if you are listening to this right now, maybe you're on your commute prepping for a major Q4 strategy meeting. Or maybe you're a line manager, right? Trying to figure out how to keep your absolute best people from burning out. Or honestly, even if you're just insanely curious about the hidden forces that shape how we work, this deep dive is going to fundamentally change how you view organizational design.

[00:02:43] We are anchoring this whole conversation today in an incredibly robust piece of research. It's a 2026 peer-reviewed article by Dr. Jonathan H. Westover. Right. Published in the Human Capital Leadership Review. Yes. And the title really gives you a clear sense of the urgency here. It's called The Midlife Exit, Menopause, The New Action Plan Era, and How Leaders Can Keep Experienced Women Working and Thriving.

[00:03:07] And what immediately grabbed me about this work is that he just outright refuses to let this sit in the, you know, the wellness bucket. Oh, totally. He drags it right into the boardroom, which I love. And that is the necessary paradigm shift, I think. I mean, I always say that knowledge without application is just trivia, right? Right. If we spend this entire time talking strictly about endocrinology and biology, we're letting organizations off the hook entirely. Yeah, because it's not just a medical issue.

[00:03:34] Exactly. This research frames the midlife exit as the ultimate test of organizational design. It's a stress test of manager capability, of environmental flexibility, and of systemic fairness. If your company cannot retain women through a completely predictable, universal biological transition, your organizational design is failing. Full stop. Absolutely. So, okay, let's unpack this and put some real numbers to that failure.

[00:04:01] Because the sheer scale of what is hiding in plain sight here is frankly difficult to wrap your head around. It really is. So, let's look at the global demographic data. According to the research, globally there are roughly 657 million women aged 45 to 59. 657 million. Yeah. I mean, just to ground that number for a second, that is roughly double the entire population of the United States. Yeah. We are talking about a massive demographic cohort.

[00:04:31] And about half of those 657 million women are actively participating in the workforce during their menopausal years. So, we are looking at hundreds of millions of workers globally. Right. So, what is actually happening to them on the ground? The Fawcett Society in the UK actually ran the numbers on this. They surveyed 4,000 women aged 45 to 55. And what did they find? They found that 1 in 10 women who worked during menopause had outright left a job entirely because of their symptoms. 1 in 10? Yes.

[00:05:01] I want everyone listening to just picture their own company's organizational chart for a second. Look at the director level, the VP level, the senior technical experts. The people who really keep the lights on. Now, just arbitrarily erase 10% of the women in that demographic. Just wipe them out. Think about the institutional knowledge, the client relationships, the nuanced problem-solving capability that just walked out the door. I mean, the loss is profound. It's catastrophic. But the bleeding doesn't even stop at the full exits, right?

[00:05:31] No, it doesn't. That same survey found that 14% of these women had reduced their working hours. Wow. And 8% had actively decided not to apply for a promotion. So they're just self-selecting out of leadership because the friction is just too high. Exactly. And this is where the economic impact begins to really cascade. The research references a major study by the Mayo Clinic. Right. I saw that. They looked at employed women in the U.S., didn't they? Yeah. 4,440 employed women in the U.S. age 45 to 60.

[00:05:58] And they found that 13.4% had experienced at least one adverse work outcome due to menopause symptoms. Okay. And nearly 11% had missed work in the previous year. The median was three missed days. So when the Mayo Clinic extrapolated those missed days across the whole demographic, they estimated the U.S. economy is losing about $1.8 billion annually just from absenteeism. Wait, wait, wait.

[00:06:24] $1.8 billion is just from the days they physically could not come into the office? Just from missed days. Yes. So if we go back to our factory analogy at the start, that's just the cost of the machine being powered off for a Tuesday. What about the days the machine is running but it's glitching? You're hitting on exactly why that $1.8 billion figure is actually a massive underestimation. It fails to account for presenteeism. Right. Presenteeism.

[00:06:51] So that's someone physically sitting at their desk but staring at a spreadsheet they can't even comprehend because they haven't slept more than two consecutive hours in three days. Precisely. They're logged into the Zoom call. You know, they're physically present but their cognitive capacity is severely, albeit temporarily compromised. And it's due to unmanaged symptoms in an unsupportive environment. And presenteeism usually costs organizations significantly more than absenteeism, right? Oh, way more.

[00:07:19] And beyond that, the $1.8 billion doesn't even touch the replacement costs. Oh, for sure. You don't just replace a senior VP of engineering on a whim. You absolutely do not. Think about the hidden mechanics of replacing senior talent. You have executive search firm fees, which can easily be 30% of the role's base salary. Right. Plus the months of onboarding. Exactly. You have the disruption to the team's psychological safety and their momentum.

[00:07:46] When a company loses a 15-year veteran leader, the financial and cultural impact is exponential. It's not linear. Which honestly just brings me back to the absolute absurdity of the situation. How so? Well, if a poorly implemented HR software rollout was costing the economy $2 billion and causing 10% of senior women to quit, the CEO would make it their sole priority. Oh, immediately. It would be on the cover of Forbes.

[00:08:11] So why is this massive, quantifiable talent leak still being treated like a taboo, hush-hush personal problem? Because we are dealing with the heavy inertia of historical workplace design. I mean, the modern corporate environment was largely designed in the mid-20th century. By men. By men. For a workforce primarily composed of men. Who also happened to have full-time domestic support at home. Right. The classic 1950s setup. Right.

[00:08:39] It was never built to accommodate the biological realities of women's life stages. And instead of updating the design, society just sort of decided that biological transitions were a personal burden to be hidden. But the workforce just isn't willing to hide it anymore. I mean, the forward-looking data from Dr. Westover's research shows a workforce that is becoming acutely aware of this friction. Yeah, look at the Aviva data from October 2026.

[00:09:05] They surveyed women in the UK and found that 37% were actively terrified that perimenopause would force them to retire earlier than they had financially planned. 37%. That is a huge portion of the workforce operating under that fear. Furthermore, roughly 1 in 10 perimenopausal women and 17% of postmenopausal women had already proactively changed roles or employers. Just to find better support. Specifically to find better support.

[00:09:32] They are actively migrating to competitors who get this right. Wow. And we aren't just guessing about this happening in the U.S. either. There was that joint October 2026 study by the Society for Women's Health Research and an organization called the Fuchsia Tent. Right. Looking at the American workforce. Yeah. They looked at over 1,000 American employees. One in three women experiencing menopause symptoms had considered leaving their job or reducing their hours. One in three.

[00:10:00] Let's contextualize this within the macroeconomic environment of 2026. We are in the middle of a massive global skill shortage. Right. Oh, everywhere. Demographics are shifting. Populations in the West are aging rapidly. Companies are fighting tooth and nail to retain capability. Losing highly skilled mid-career talent because you, I don't know, refuse to buy a desk fan or adjust a uniform policy. It's frankly an incredibly stupid way to lose competitive advantage. It really is.

[00:10:28] So, okay, we've established the immense scale of the exit and the astronomical financial cost. But to actually plug this leak, the research demands that we completely reevaluate the core problem. Yes. We have to stop viewing this as a clinical issue that HR occasionally has to deal with and start viewing it as a foundational system failure. To fix the system, we need to make sure we are speaking the exact same language.

[00:10:52] The terminology matters immensely here, especially when you are drafting corporate policy or, you know, dealing with employment law. Right. So let's delineate what we mean by these life stages. Clinically speaking, menopause itself is defined as a single point in time, right? Yes. It is exactly 12 months after a woman's final menstrual period. Which is often where corporate policies mistakenly focus all their attention. But the real workplace turbulence almost always happens earlier. It happens during perimenopause.

[00:11:21] And what exactly does that timeline look like? This is the transitional phase leading up to menopause, which can last anywhere from a few months to up to 10 years. 10 years? Yes. And this is when the hormone fluctuations, specifically the erratic drops and spikes in estrogen and progesterone, are at their absolute most volatile. And the research is very deliberate about using inclusive language here, which I think is crucial for anyone writing policy today. Yes.

[00:11:47] The data reminds us that trans men and non-binary individuals can also experience menopause. Right. This might happen naturally as they age, or it might be medically or surgically induced as part of gender-affirming care. If you are a leader designing a retention strategy, your language and your support structures must be expansive enough to capture everyone navigating this physiological transition. Because otherwise your policy is inherently flawed from day one. Exactly. So I want to spend some time on the symptoms themselves.

[00:12:16] Because I realized reading this that I had a massive blind spot here, and I strongly suspect a lot of our listeners do too. It's very common. Because when pop culture portrays menopause, it's always the exact same tired joke, right? A woman vigorously fanning herself in a boardroom. Maybe she snaps at a colleague, and then the scene just moves on. We are so trained to think of vasomotor symptoms. Right. The classic hot flushes and night sweats. Yeah.

[00:12:41] And while those are obviously incredibly disruptive, the research highlights a symptom profile that is vastly wider and honestly often much more debilitating for knowledge workers. Oh, without a doubt. We are talking about severe sleep disturbance, overwhelming fatigue, joint stiffness that makes just sitting at a desk agonizing. But the category that actively destroys careers, and the one nobody seems to talk about, are the psychological symptoms. This is a critical realization for leaders.

[00:13:10] Let's just look at the biology for a second. Estrogen doesn't just regulate the reproductive system. There are estrogen receptors all over the human brain. Really? Yes. All over? Yes. So when those hormone levels become erratic during perimenopause, it directly impacts cognitive function and mood regulation. Wow.

[00:13:30] The research notes that psychological symptoms, we're talking debilitating brain fog, severe difficulties with concentration, sudden memory lapses, low mood, and acute anxiety, these often have a far greater negative impact on work performance than any physical hot flush. And the 2023 survey from the UK's CIPD backs this up perfectly, doesn't it? It does. They surveyed over 2,000 employed women. They surveyed over 2,000 employed women, and psychological symptoms were the number one reported issue. Number one.

[00:13:59] Nearly 80% of those with symptoms said they were less able to concentrate. I mean, think about the day-to-day reality of that. I mean, think about the day-to-day reality of that. If your entire value to your company relies on deep, focused knowledge work, right? You're analyzing complex data. You're writing code. You're leading high-stakes negotiations. High cognitive load tasks. Exactly. And suddenly, without warning, you cannot remember a term you've used for 20 years.

[00:14:26] Or you just lose the thread of a presentation halfway through. The internal panic must be immense. It is. You can entirely see the psychological domino effect here. A highly competent woman experiences this brain fog. And because nobody talks about it, she doesn't realize it's a temporary, manageable, biological transition. She just thinks she's losing it. Exactly. She thinks, I'm losing my edge. I can't keep up anymore. So what does she do? She quietly steps back. She turns down the VP role.

[00:14:55] She drops to four days a week. She internalizes a structural and biological issue as a personal failing. Which brings us to what I consider the absolute core of this entire deep dive. This is the paradigm shift that every HR professional listening needs to hear. Okay, let's hear it. It comes from a groundbreaking 2018 study by Hardy, Thorne, and their colleagues. They studied 216 women aged 45 to 60. And what they discovered completely dismantles how we traditionally view health in the workplace.

[00:15:25] I remember reading this section of the source material and actually having to read it twice to make sure I understood it. I'm not surprised. The researchers found that menopausal status itself does not predict work outcomes. I really want to say that again so it lands. Go for it. Whether or not a woman is going through menopause is not the primary predictor of whether she will have high absence rates, poor performance, or an intention to quit. The biology alone does not dictate the career failure.

[00:15:52] So if the drop in estrogen isn't what's pushing them out the door, what is? The work environment. Specifically, job stress. The lack of role clarity. And what organizational psychologists call the demand-control-support environment. Those environmental factors dictate whether a woman stays and thrives or struggles and leaves. Okay, wait. Stop right there. Break this demand-control-support concept down for me. Explain it to me like I'm a five-year-old trying to run a neighborhood lemonade stand.

[00:16:21] I love that. Okay, let's use the lemonade stand. Demand is the pressure of the job, right? Right. It's a 100-degree day. There is a line of 50 angry people waiting for lemonade, and you have to squeeze the lemons manually. High demand. Sounds terrible. Right. Control is your autonomy over how you do the work. Can you decide to take a five-minute break in the shade? Can you switch to pre-squeezed juice? If your parents say, no, you will stand in the sun and squeeze them by hand without stopping, you have zero control.

[00:16:51] Zero control. Got it. Finally, support. Do your parents bring you a glass of water, or do they just yell at you for not working fast enough? Okay. So a high-demand, low-control, low-support lemonade stand ends with a very stressed-out five-year-old basically abandoning the stand and crying in the house. Exactly. Now, translate that to a corporate environment for a woman experiencing menopause. The research shows it is a two-way street. Yes, symptoms can affect working life.

[00:17:19] But a poorly designed, low-control work environment actively, biologically exacerbates the symptoms. So you're saying the software is working exactly as designed, but the design is fundamentally flawed. The Hardy study highlighted one specific exception that perfectly proves this point. They found that the only symptom directly associated with a woman's intention to leave her job was how problematic she found hot flushes while at work.

[00:17:48] How problematic? Yes. The operative phrase is how problematic. Let's look at the mechanism here. If you have a hot flush in a high-demand, low-control environment, say you are wearing a heavy, mandatory polyester uniform, you are working a cash register with a line of customers, and you will literally be written up if you step away without managerial permission. That hot flush triggers an acute stress response. Because you're trapped. Yes.

[00:18:17] Your brain panics. Cortisol floods your system. That stress actually intensifies the physiological heat and triggers severe anxiety. It becomes a disabling event. But if you take that exact same biological hot flush and put it in a high-control environment... The outcome completely changes. If you were in a flexible environment, wearing breathable clothing, and you know you have the total autonomy to just say, Hey, I need to step away for five minutes.

[00:18:44] Go to a cool room, grab a cold water, and come back. The symptom is just a brief physiological event. Right. It's just a thing that happens. It doesn't cascade into a cortisol spike. It doesn't ruin your workday. The biological symptom is identical in both scenarios. The environment is what determines whether it is disabling. I mean, that reframes everything. Because if the problem is defined simply as women having symptoms, then HR's only job is to tell them to go see a doctor and tough it out. Exactly.

[00:19:13] But if the problem is defined as the friction between human biology and a rigid, low-control work environment, suddenly this is a management problem. It is entirely within the organization's power to fix. And we must recognize that this friction is not evenly distributed. The source data dives deeply into intersectionality here, showing us that these poorly designed environments hit certain demographics with disproportionate force.

[00:19:39] Right. The CIPD survey data is incredibly revealing on this point. They found that 38% of women from ethnic minority backgrounds reported that menopause had a negative impact on their career progression. 38%. Yeah, compared to 25% of white women. That is a massive statistical gap. It is. And we see an even starker contrast for women with disabilities.

[00:20:02] Women managing a pre-existing disability or a long-term health condition were significantly more likely to have already left work because of menopause. What were the numbers there? 8% versus 5%. And they were much more likely to have considered leaving at 24% versus 14%. So why does the system fail these specific groups so much more aggressively? I mean, are their symptoms biologically worse or is this an environmental failure? It all circles back to that demand-control-support matrix we just discussed.

[00:20:31] A woman from an ethnic minority background or a woman with a visible or invisible disability is often already expending a massive amount of baseline energy just navigating systemic biases or microaggressions or a lack of psychological safety in the workplace. Right. They're already operating in a deficit. Exactly. They are already working in a lower support environment.

[00:20:53] So when you introduce the unpredictable, highly stigmatized symptoms of perimenopause on top of an already strained daily workplace experience, the cumulative burden becomes completely unsustainable. That makes total sense. The researchers are emphatic about this. If you only look at the average female experience, you will fail your most vulnerable workers. Policy has to account for how occupation, income, ethnicity, and pre-existing health intersect with midlife.

[00:21:21] Okay. So researchers have clearly identified the mechanism. The workplace environment is the culprit turning biological symptoms into mass resignations. But for decades, corporate leadership has just relied on a culture of silence, right? Oh, completely. The unspoken rule was basically if nobody is officially complaining to HR, there isn't a systemic problem. But the research says that era of willful ignorance is dead. Dr. Westover calls this the action plan era. Yes.

[00:21:48] Regulators and courts are grabbing the corporate world by the collar and forcing them to wake up. And the reason regulators have to step in is because internal HR departments are suffering from a staggering delusion about their own company cultures. Delusion is honestly the perfect word for it. Let's look at the 2023 research from Bank of America. This data is wild. They surveyed both HR benefit decision makers and the actual female employees working at those same companies. This is my favorite part of the data. Right.

[00:22:18] 71% of the HR decision makers firmly believed that their company had a great positive menopause culture. They literally graded their own homework and gave themselves an A. Exactly. But when the researchers asked the actual women working under those policies, only 32% agreed. I mean, there is a canyon between perception and reality there. A massive canyon. And here is the truly damning statistic.

[00:22:45] 76% of the HR managers claimed they were actively discussing menopause support with their employees. But only 3% of the peri and post-menopausal women said they had ever actually had that discussion with HR. Which perfectly quantifies the disclosure gap. HR thinks they are approachable, but the employees are terrified to actually approach them. The research found that 58% of peri and post-menopausal women felt fundamentally uncomfortable disclosing their symptoms at work.

[00:23:15] And we have to ask why. Why would you suffer through brain fog and insomnia and not ask for the help that HR claims is right there waiting for you? Right. Why wouldn't you? The data shows it isn't just because the topic feels private. The overarching fear driving this silence is gendered ageism. It's the sheer terror of being perceived as old, as losing your edge, as being past your prime. Researchers Grandy and her colleagues coined a brilliant term for this.

[00:23:44] They call it the double risk. The double risk. Explain that. When a woman in midlife discloses menopause symptoms to a manager, she isn't just taking the normal risk of being seen as temporarily unwell, like somebody admitting they have the flu. She risks triggering deeply ingrained systemic societal stereotypes about aging women. Which are brutal in corporate environments. Brutal.

[00:24:07] She risks being permanently categorized in her manager's mind as less capable, less sharp, and fundamentally less worthy of promotion. It's like throwing a lavish corporate dinner party but aggressively refusing to send out any invitations. HR stands there saying, look at this great buffet of benefits. Why isn't anyone eating? It's a great analogy. Well, if the unspoken corporate culture penalizes women for walking into the dining room, if asking for a desk fan makes your boss secretly question your capability to handle the new regional account,

[00:24:37] of course, the uptake of those benefits is going to be zero. Exactly. Waiting for an employee to formally request an accommodation in an environment where stigma actively prevents that request from being made is a catastrophic failure of leadership. But relying on that silence is no longer a viable legal strategy. Not at all. The regulatory ground is shifting violently under employers' feet, most notably in the UK right now. Right.

[00:25:01] So if you are leading a multinational organization, you need to pay close attention to the UK mandates, because this is really where the rubber meets the road. In March 2026, the UK government launched major new guidance under the Employment Rights Act 2025. This is a monumental regulatory shift. It really is. The UK government has explicitly directed employers with 250 or more employees to begin publishing the specific structural steps they are taking to support staff through menopause.

[00:25:30] And they aren't letting companies bury this in some feel-good wellness brochure on the internet, are they? No. No. They have mandated that these action plans be published directly alongside the company's gender pay gap data. Wow. They are tying it directly to economic equality and structural sexism. Yes. They are forcing the market to recognize that unsupported menopause is a primary driver of the gender pay gap at the senior level. Which it absolutely is.

[00:25:57] And while the government framed 2026 as a voluntary rehearsal year to let companies sort of get their houses in order, they have explicitly stated that publishing these menopause action plans will become mandatory by spring 2027. And the clinical landscape in the United States is shifting to meet this moment too, right? In November 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made a pretty major announcement. Yes, they did. They removed the boxed warnings for menopausal hormone therapy labeling.

[00:26:26] The implications of that FDA decision are massive for the workplace. Because for years, those boxed warnings, which, you know, they're designed to signal severe life-threatening risks, they terrified women away from seeking medical treatment for their symptoms. Right. They thought it was too dangerous. Exactly. So with those warnings removed, based on updated science, we are going to see a massive surge in women feeling comfortable discussing treatment options with their clinicians. And how does that hit the workplace?

[00:26:55] Well, as the medical community normalizes treatment, employees' expectations for workplace support are going to rise exponentially. The workforce is just not going to tolerate the old cultural silence anymore. But here's the thing that should truly terrify poorly trained managers. You don't even need to wait for these new 2027 mandates to kick in to get sued. No, you don't. Organizations are already bleeding cash in tribunals based on existing laws.

[00:27:22] The research details a couple of major legal flashpoints in the UK that prove ordinary, everyday HR processes are currently operating as massive legal liabilities. These case studies are vital for leaders to understand. They show how standard, unthinking management decisions instantly mutate into discrimination lawsuits when you fail to contextualize human biology. Let's really look at the 2018 case, Davies v. Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service.

[00:27:49] I really want to spend a minute on this one because the escalation of this situation is just wild. Walk us through a day in the life of this court officer. So imagine you are a senior court officer. Your job is highly public, highly stressful, and requires rigid adherence to procedure. Okay. Now, add to that the fact that you are experiencing severe, debilitating menopause-related health problems.

[00:28:15] Her condition was so disruptive that her doctor had prescribed specific medication that she had to dissolve in a jug of water and sit throughout her long shifts just to manage her symptoms. Okay, so she has a formal medical accommodation in place. Right. But one day during her shift, she leaves her water jug in the court for a short break. When she returns, she finds that her jug has been emptied. Frustrating, but it sounds like a cleaner or a colleague just made a simple mistake. Exactly.

[00:28:43] But here's where the brain fog and the stress of the environment collide. Because of her severe symptoms, she experiences a moment of genuine memory lapse. She couldn't remember with absolute certainty if the jug that was emptied had already contained or dissolved medication or if it was just plain water. Oh, wow. So she suddenly terrified someone just drank her prescription medication. Yes.

[00:29:05] Out of a genuine immediate concern for public safety, she approaches two men in the public area of the court and asks if they drank from the jug, just trying to assess the risk. I mean, she is literally doing her job, protecting the public in her workplace. Exactly. Now, an internal investigation later determined that the water had not, in fact, contained the medication, so no harm was done. Right. But how did her employer, the Scottish courts, react to this moment of medically induced confusion? They hauled her into a disciplinary hearing and fired her.

[00:29:35] They fired her? They dismissed a senior employee for gross misconduct based on this single incident. They fired her because a medical transition caused a momentary memory lapse that harmed absolutely no one. Yes. And the Employment Tribunal fundamentally agreed with how absurd that was. They ruled that she had been unfairly dismissed. And more importantly, they ruled she was subjected to discrimination arising from a disability. Wait. Menopause is legally considered a disability.

[00:30:03] So under the UK's Quality Act 2010, menopause itself is not automatically a disability. However, if the symptoms are severe enough that they have a substantial and long-term adverse effect on a person's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities, it absolutely meets the legal threshold of a disability. Wow. Okay. The tribunal recognized that her memory lapse was a direct symptom of her condition. They ordered her full reinstatement and awarded her substantial financial compensation.

[00:30:32] That is a staggering failure of internal HR processes. The managers just applied a rigid rulebook, completely divorced from biological reality. Exactly. Let's look at the second case, Rooney v. Leicester City Council from 2021. In this case, you have an employee working as a child care social worker. Think about the intrinsic emotional demand and high-stakes pressure of that specific occupation. Very high stress. Very.

[00:30:57] This woman was experiencing a severe cluster of menopausal symptoms, crushing insomnia, profound fatigue, memory loss, anxiety, and hot flushes. That's the high-demand environment we talked about earlier, clashing with severe biological symptoms. Precisely. How did they justify that?

[00:31:26] Instead of looking at the profound impact the insomnia and brain fog were having on what she could not do, they focused purely on the basic tasks she could still do and used that to deny her protections. They even issued her a formal written warning for her attendance without properly factoring in her medical reality. And she probably felt she couldn't discuss the nuances of this with her male managers because of the stigma. Right.

[00:31:51] It actually took an employment appeal tribunal to eventually overturn the initial lower court finding. The appeal tribunal explicitly ruled that the lower court had erred in casually dismissing her severe symptoms as not amounting to a disability and ordered a fresh hearing to evaluate the discrimination claims properly. Good for her. But what should keep HR directors awake at night is that neither of these major legal battles required novel, groundbreaking new menopause laws. They didn't? No.

[00:32:19] They were fought and went under existing, longstanding disability and discrimination frameworks. The root cause in both cases wasn't a malicious executive out to ruin women's lives. It was that frontline managers and HR algorithms fundamentally failed to contextualize routine workplace friction. Right. A disciplinary process designed to punish willful misconduct completely missed the role human biology was playing. Exactly. It's the blind, rigid application of the rules.

[00:32:46] So with legal compliance looming in 2027, tribunals already handing out massive compensation awards and this talent drain accelerating, the era of we'll just deal with it case by case is clearly over. Long over. Organizations need a structural fix. How do leaders move from boardroom panic to actual systemic action? What does the research say actually works?

[00:33:10] Dr. Mason, Westover's research synthesizes the data into five concrete evidence-based responses. And what is brilliant about these five fixes is that none of them require an employer to become a doctor. Which is a relief. Right. None of them require a line manager to diagnose anyone. They focus entirely on what the organization is already built to control. The physical design of work, the capability of managers, and the fairness of HR processes. Let's start with response number one. Yeah.

[00:33:39] Fix the environment first. We established earlier that the friction between biology and the workplace is the main issue. So how do we remove that friction at a structural level? You start by running a menopause-aware risk assessment. Okay. That sounds like dry compliance jargon. I know. It does. But it is incredibly practical. You physically walk through the workspace and evaluate the environmental triggers. What is the ambient temperature? Who actually controls the thermostat? Are there easily accessible toilets and cold drinking water?

[00:34:09] Is there a quiet, cool space where an employee can go to rest for 10 minutes without having to ask a manager's permission? And this is especially critical for frontline workers, isn't it? I mean, if I'm an executive in a corner office, I can just turn my AC down and close my door. But if I work on a factory floor or a retail checkout, I have zero autonomy over my physical space. Exactly. The source material highlights a fantastic example of this structural approach with ASDA, the massive UK supermarket chain.

[00:34:37] In 2024, they didn't just issue a corporate memo saying, hey, we support menopause. They literally changed the physical fabric of the job. I love this example. They recognize that mandating a heavy polyester uniform for a frontline worker doing physical labor while experiencing vasomotor symptoms is actively creating a disabling environment. Quite literally. Polyester traps heat and moisture against the skin. If you are having a hot flush, that uniform becomes an oven.

[00:35:06] It's that cortisol anxiety spiral all over again. Yes. Yeah. It triggers the exact cortisol anxiety spiral we discussed. So ASDA built menopause support directly into the redesign of their, you know, store uniforms. They initiated a massive trial of 10 new role-specific uniform types, testing them with over 2,600 frontline colleagues across 12 different stores. And crucially, they didn't just have some executive in an air-conditioned, you know, corporate headquarters pick the fabric out of a catalog.

[00:35:36] They involved the actual frontline workers in the testing. That is true. That is bottom-up environmental design. They specifically integrated natural cotton and highly breathable moisture-wicking fabrics into the designs to help colleagues regulate their body temperature. The people actually wearing them gave feedback on comfort and wearability during a six-week trial. That's incredible. Channel 4, the UK broadcaster, took a similar environmental approach in 2019.

[00:36:04] They committed to assessing the physical workspace for all employees to see if the lighting or temperature was making symptoms worse. And they provided private, cool, quiet spaces for immediate relief. This shifts the entire power dynamic. It's no longer the employee's burden to silently suffer through a hostile environment or to beg for a special favor. It is the organization's legal and moral job to ensure the environment isn't hostile to begin with. Precisely.

[00:36:31] And the most important aspect of these environmental fixes, whether it's a desk fan, a breathable uniform, or access to a quiet room, is that they must be made available universally without requiring a medical diagnosis. Right. No gatekeeping. You should not have to spend weeks getting an appointment with a doctor to get a piece of paper to prove to your boss that you need a fan on your desk. Okay. So auditing and fixing the physical space is step one. Response number two focuses on time and scheduling.

[00:37:00] Make flexibility the default adjustment. And the survey data is overwhelming on this point, isn't it? This is what employees actually want more than anything else. It is universally the most desired form of support. In the CIPD survey, flexible working was rated as the single most helpful adjustment by women experiencing symptoms. Yet, shockingly, only 26% of women said their organization actually offered it. Only 26%. Yeah.

[00:37:26] And in the 2026 U.S. study, nearly 74% of respondents explicitly cited flexible scheduling as a desirable support mechanism. But there is a really interesting philosophical debate playing out in HR circles right now about how to actually implement that flexibility. Like, do you create a specific policy for menopause leave? Or do you just make everyday working practices more flexible? This is where we see different global jurisdictions testing wildly different models.

[00:37:54] In 2022, a U.K. parliamentary committee recommended piloting specific menopause leave policies. But the U.K. government actually rejected the idea. Why did they reject it? Their core argument was that creating a separate, highly specific category of leave might inadvertently backfire. It could further stigmatize women, painting them as requiring special, expensive treatment, which could feed directly into gendered ageism. Oh, I see.

[00:38:21] They argued the focus should instead be on robust, universal, flexible working policies that keep women integrated in the workforce day to day. But then you look at Australia, and they took the exact opposite approach. Yes, it's a fascinating contrast. In 2024, the state government of Victoria in Australia introduced five additional days of paid leave specifically for public and community sector workers. And it explicitly covered menopausal symptoms, menstrual pain, and fertility treatments. Wow. Okay.

[00:38:49] However, just a year later in 2025, the Australian Public Service Commission, which handles federal agencies, advised against creating a new leave type. They flipped back. Yes. They argued that existing flexible working arrangements and personal leave were sufficient, provided they were actually publicized properly and culturally accepted. Let me play devil's advocate here for a second because I can hear the skeptics in our audience right now.

[00:39:15] A leader might listen to this and think, okay, I buy them a desk fan, I give them a breathable cotton shirt, and I let them log in an hour late if they had a bad night of sleep. Is that really it? I get that question a lot. Like, let's be real. Does a shift swap really solve a massive, multi-year, complex biological transition? Or is this just HR putting a tiny band-aid on a massive bullet wound? Aren't we trivializing the severity of the symptoms by suggesting a fan is the cure?

[00:39:44] It is a totally valid challenge, and it's a trap many leaders fall into. But we have to go back to the findings from the Hardy study and the demand control support matrix. The flexibility, the desk fan, the shift swap, the ability to work from home on a day when joint pain is severe, is not a cure for the biological reality of menopause. The estrogen levels are still dropping. Right. A fan doesn't change your endocrine system. Exactly.

[00:40:10] What the flexibility cures is the workplace-induced stress that makes the biological reality unbearable. Remember the mechanism here. Symptoms fluctuate wildly. You might be perfectly fine for three weeks and then have four days of crushing insomnia and hot flushes. If your workplace is rigid, that bad night of sleep triggers a panic attack because you know you will be punished for being light. But if flexibility is the default...

[00:40:37] If flexibility is the default, the symptom is just a biological event. You wake up at 3 a.m., realize you can't sleep, and instead of spiraling into panic, you think, okay, I'll email my team, tell them I'm shifting my hours today, and I'll log on at noon. Right. You take control back. Yes. The flexibility prevents the biological symptom from destroying your psychological safety. Day-to-day flexibility is what allows high-performing people to manage fluctuating chronic health conditions without derailing their careers entirely.

[00:41:06] That makes perfect sense. The micro-adjustments prevent the macro-crisis. But here is the rub, and this leads us perfectly to the next response. Environmental fixes and scheduling flexibility are fantastic when written in an employee handbook, but in the real world, they are entirely dependent on the individual manager approving them. Yes, they are.

[00:41:29] Right. If the corporate policy says, quote, flexible working, unquote, but your direct supervisor is a micromanager who thinks menopause is just an excuse to be lazy, that policy is entirely worthless. Agreed. Right. Which brings us to the gatekeepers. Which is response number three. Which is response number three. Equip line managers to hold the conversation. Because line managers are the exact point of friction where corporate policy either translates into actual employee experience or completely falls apart.

[00:41:57] And let's be honest, a lot of mid-level managers are terrified of this conversation. They don't want to say the wrong thing. They don't want to pry into an employee's medical history. They are terrified of getting a complaint from HR. So they just choose to say absolutely nothing. But as the Bank of America data showed us earlier, that silence is interpreted by the employee as hostility. Exactly. The research by Hardy and colleagues in 2017 found that women explicitly want managers who are aware of menopause,

[00:42:26] who understand how the physical environment impacts symptoms, and who possess the basic interpersonal confidence to just have a practical conversation about adjustments. So how do we actually train them? I can hear the grunts from middle management right now. Do we need to send every software engineering manager to a three-day endocrinology seminar? Not at all. And the data proved that light-touch, highly practical training is incredibly effective.

[00:42:52] The same research team developed a 30-minute online menopause awareness training program specifically designed for line managers. They evaluated it across three different UK organizations. And what happened? After just 30 minutes of targeted training, managers showed statistically significant improvements in their knowledge, their attitudes, and crucially, their confidence in actually initiating conversations with staff about menopause. Over 90% of the managers found it directly useful for their day-to-day role.

[00:43:21] Just 30 minutes to change the trajectory of someone's career. That's amazing. Yes, because the goal isn't to make managers amateur clinicians. You aren't training them to diagnose anyone. The goal is simply to demystify the topic. The training focuses on what menopause is, how it practically affects knowledge work and physical labor, what adjustments are legally and practically available within the company, and how to start a conversation without being intrusive.

[00:43:48] Vodafone is a brilliant example of doing this right at a massive scale. In March 2021, they launched a global commitment across all their international markets. They ran the demographics and recognized that menopause affected roughly 15% of their 100,000 employees globally. That's 15,000 people. 15,000 people. So they didn't just quietly train a few HR reps. They rolled out an awareness and training program for all employees globally, along with a practical toolkit on how to support colleagues.

[00:44:17] And that peer-to-peer aspect is vital. Often the colleague sitting next to you or the person you collaborate with on Slack is the first person you turn to for support long before you ever formally go to a boss. NHS England did something very similar in 2022, publishing national widespread guidance for both line managers and colleagues to actively normalize asking for help. But there is a trap here, right? What is the pitfall organizations need to avoid when they start rolling out this training?

[00:44:47] The fatal flaw is equating a one-off awareness webinar with actual managerial capability. You can't just run a PowerPoint slide deck during menopause awareness month in October, check a compliance box, and assume your managers actually know how to handle complex human situations. Right. If a historically strong performer suddenly starts crying in a one-on-one meeting because of severe hormonal fluctuations and three weeks of sleep deprivation, a PowerPoint slide isn't going to help the manager.

[00:45:15] Training has to include realistic, messy role-play scenarios. Managers need clear, mapped-out routes to connect that employee to HR and occupational health safely and respectfully. Speaking of connecting to health, that leads us to response number four. Connect people to effective care. As we've established ad nauseum today, the employer is not the doctor. But in many countries, especially the U.S., the employer holds the keys to the health care benefits. And right now, there is a massive, costly gap between the benefits that exist on paper

[00:45:45] and the care employees actually receive. The 2026 U.S. study found that while half or more of employees technically had corporate benefits that could help with menopause symptoms, fewer than one in ten actually saw any menopause-specific support being utilized. Because they literally don't know it's there. The Bank of America data showed fewer than one in three women even knew about the available benefits. Employers need to stop relying on employees to decipher complex benefit portals.

[00:46:11] They need to actively map their existing benefits, their employee assistance programs, their health plans, their occupational health services, directly to menopause needs and communicate it in plain, straightforward language. And they can also point employees toward evidence-based self-help tools that don't require a massive medical intervention. I want to talk about the MENOS at Work trial from the research. Tell us about this, because when I first read it, I was highly skeptical, but the data is incredibly promising.

[00:46:40] This was a rigorously designed trial involving 124 working women who were dealing with highly problematic hot flushes and night sweats. The researchers randomized them, giving one group a self-help cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT booklet specifically designed for menopause and putting the other half on a wait list as a control group. Okay, hold on. Let me push back hard on this. Sure. If I go to my HR department because I am sweating through my shirt in a poorly ventilated office

[00:47:08] and I am suffering from severe brain fog and their response is to hand me a cognitive behavioral therapy workbook to reframe my thoughts, I am going to lose my mind. I don't blame you. That sounds incredibly patronizing. It sounds like telling someone with a broken leg to just think positive thoughts about walking. I completely agree that if it is presented as a replacement for fixing your broken environment, it is deeply patronizing and toxic.

[00:47:34] But let's look at the neurobiology of why CBT actually works for this specific symptom, not as an HR cop-out, but as a biological intervention. Okay, I'm listening. It goes back to the cortisol anxiety spiral we discussed earlier. CBT does not stop the biological mechanism of the estrogen drop. It does not stop the hypothalamus from triggering the initial hot flush. What CBT does is help rewire the cognitive and emotional reaction to the physical flush. Okay, walk me through that.

[00:48:04] What does that look like in practice? When a hot flush hits in a meeting, the brain naturally catastrophizes the physical sensation. The internal monologue becomes, oh no, everyone is looking at me. I'm turning red. I'm going to ruin this presentation. I look incompetent. I have to escape. Total panic. Yes. Those thoughts trigger a massive release of stress hormones, which biologically dilates the blood vessels further, making the hot flush physically hotter and longer, and completely destroying your concentration.

[00:48:34] So the panic literally makes the biological symptom worse. Exactly. CBT trains the brain to observe the physical symptom neutrally. It trains you to think, my body is experiencing a temperature fluctuation. It is uncomfortable, but it is temporary, and it does not affect my competence. By neutralizing the panic, you prevent the secondary spike in stress hormones. And the trial proved it works brilliantly. Really? Yes.

[00:49:01] The CBT intervention significantly reduced the self-reported problem rating of hot flushes and night sweats, and miserably improved sleep and work adjustment. That is fascinating. It's an inexpensive, highly effective tool that empowers the individual. Aviva is also doing great work in this space, aren't they? Yes, they are. They're utilizing their digital GP service to extend immediate menopause support and consultations directly to employees and customers through an app. It's all about removing the friction to access care.

[00:49:30] And importantly, avoiding gatekeeping. You shouldn't make workplace support conditional on a doctor's note if it isn't absolutely necessary. Okay, we have arrived at response number five, and the source material calls this the least glamorous, but arguably the most structurally important fix of all. Make policies and processes fair under pressure. This is where the true structural integrity of the organization is tested. Because as we saw with the Scottish court case and the Leicester City Council case,

[00:49:57] the harm rarely comes from malicious executives twirling their mustaches and deciding they hate women in midlife. The structural harm almost always comes from ordinary, automated bureaucratic HR policies that operate completely blind to human biology. Precisely. I want to explain exactly how these invisible software systems destroy careers. Let's look at absence management software. Many large organizations use algorithmic scoring systems like the Bradford factor to monitor sick leave. Now, how does that work?

[00:50:25] The formula calculates a score based on the number of spells of absence squared multiplied by the total days absent. It is mathematically designed to severely punish frequent, short, unplanned absences. Okay, so if I take one continuous block of four days off because I have the flu, my score is relatively low. Yes, one spell squared, which is one, times four days equals a score of four. You're fine.

[00:50:48] But if you take four separate days off over a month because of unpredictable, severe menopause, insomnia, and joint pain, that is four spells squared, which is 16, times four days. Your score is 64. Oh, wow. So four versus 64 for the exact same number of days off. Exactly. Same amount of days off, But the algorithm flags the second employee as a massive operational risk. The HR software automatically triggers a disciplinary capability review.

[00:51:18] The manager gets an alert saying they need to put this woman on a performance improvement plan. The system is mechanically biased against the fluctuating nature of perimenopause. So we are talking about algorithmic discrimination. Yes. We are talking about conduct procedures that entirely ignore the biological context of an incident, like the woman who forgot about her water jug. We are talking about performance ratings that mechanically downgrade an employee without factoring in the reasonable adjustments they are legally entitled to.

[00:51:47] If we connect this back to the bigger picture, it is entirely about administrative common sense and universal design. Organizations must aggressively audit these high-risk automated processes. They have to review their absence management algorithms and disciplinary procedures, specifically looking for the stress points where menopause symptoms could be misread by a computer or a manager as incompetence or misconduct. They need to train the specific HR business partners handling grievances and appeals, right?

[00:52:16] Absolutely. If a line manager flags a 50-year-old employee for a sudden, inexplicable drop in performance, the HR person receiving that file needs to be trained to pause the automated process and ask, could this be related to a life-stage health transition? And have we offered support before they authorize a punitive performance improvement plan? And they must rigorously monitor the data. Are women in midlife overrepresented in your absence escalations? Are they overrepresented in disciplinary hearings?

[00:52:47] Are they overrepresented in sudden exits? If the data says yes, your HR policies are structurally discriminatory in practice, regardless of how neutral they look on paper. Which perfectly transitions us to the final section of our deep dive. Awareness campaigns, changing the physical uniforms, training the managers not to panic, these are all fantastic immediate fixes. But how do organizations ensure this doesn't just become a forgotten corporate fad? Right. Just checking a box. You know how it goes.

[00:53:17] Oh, yeah. We did menopause awareness month back in 2026. We bought everyone a cupcake. We're good. How do we build sustainable long-term capability? You move beyond the marketing campaign by embedding hard metrics into the core governance of the company. The upcoming UK action plan regime we discussed is going to legally force this discipline on large employers, but it is absolute best practice for everyone globally. You can't just publish a nice PR statement of your intentions.

[00:53:45] You have to prove the interventions actually work. Exactly. Executive leaders need to sit down and decide what success actually looks like. They need to track the uptake of support tools, the number of flexibility requests granted versus denied, and crucially, they must track the retention and promotion rates for women aged 45 to 60 compared to other demographics. That data is key.

[00:54:07] In Australia, a 2024 Senate committee specifically recommended resuming the federal collection of data on employer support for menopause precisely because they recognize that what is not measured by leadership tends to drift into obscurity. And you need a named executive owner. If this just lives in a vague wellness folder that gets passed around between junior HR reps, facilities management, and diversity and inclusion committees, nothing structural will ever actually change.

[00:54:35] It requires cross-functional ownership tied directly to corporate risk reporting, compliance, and gender equality objectives. But on a deeper philosophical level, Dr. Westover's research advocates for a massive fundamental shift in how we approach corporate policy as a whole. We need to move away from creating a million single-issue policies and move toward what is known as life-stage design. Life-stage design. Break that concept down for us.

[00:55:02] Right now, corporate policy tends to be incredibly fragmented and reactive. We have a specific policy for pregnancy. We have a specific policy for disability accommodations. We have a specific policy for short-term illness. It's very siloed. Very siloed. The source material argues that menopause shares features with all of these. It involves unpredictable fluctuating health. It intersects heavily with aging. And it can trigger disability protections under the law.

[00:55:30] Instead of creating a highly specific ring-fenced menopause policy that forces employees to disclose their private medical status to a manager just to access basic flexibility, we should design core organizational systems that naturally flex for everyone's life stages. This instantly reminds me of the carb-cut effect in urban design. Are you familiar with this? I think it maps perfectly onto what you're saying. I am, but please map it out for our listeners. It's a brilliant analogy for HR policy.

[00:55:58] So decades ago, disability rights activists fought incredibly hard against massive municipal resistance to get cities to cut physical ramps into the concrete curbs at intersections so that people using wheelchairs could cross the street safely. Right. And it was initially viewed by city planners as this very niche, very expensive accommodation for a tiny minority of the population. But once the curb cuts were actually installed, something amazing happened. Suddenly, everyone benefited. Everyone used them.

[00:56:28] Exactly. Parents pushing heavy strollers used them. Travelers dragging wheeled luggage used them. Delivery workers with hand trucks used them. An intervention designed specifically to support a vulnerable minority ended up creating a smoother, more efficient, safer environment for absolutely everyone in the city. It's the perfect way to look at it.

[00:56:46] If we apply that exact logic to the workplace, if we design a workplace that is flexible, accommodating, and physically comfortable enough to support a woman experiencing the absolute most severe debilitating symptoms of perimenopause, don't we inadvertently create a healthier, more resilient, more humane workplace for everyone? We absolutely do. That is the true essence of universal design. When flexibility is the unwritten default.

[00:57:13] When your automated absence policies are sophisticated enough to distinguish between chronic fluctuating conditions and acute short-term illnesses. And when physical environments are easily adjustable by the user, you capture everyone. Everybody wins. You capture the 30-year-old employee quietly managing a chronic autoimmune disease like Crohn's. You capture the 45-year-old manager dealing with the sudden crushing stress of elder care for a dying parent. You capture the 25-year-old recovering from major surgery.

[00:57:43] Yes. And critically, by making these supports the universal baseline default, you completely bypass the disclosure gap. The senior woman who is terrified of gendered ageism, who would never ever go to HR and say the word menopause, still gets the flexibility and the breathable uniform she needs to survive and thrive. Because it's just the way the company normally operates. She doesn't have to ask for a favor. Exactly. But to achieve that level of universal design, the culture has to change at the very top.

[00:58:13] Senior leaders, including the CEO, have to actively break the taboo. They have to speak about menopause not as a shameful, whispered secret, but as a completely normal, entirely expected phase of working life. And that absolutely includes male allies. The research notes that many line managers of women in midlife are men. And encouragingly, the SWHR study found that men were largely very comfortable with colleagues raising the issue.

[00:58:40] The barrier usually isn't active, malicious hostility from male colleagues. It's just a culturally enforced, awkward silence. Leaders have the power to reframe this entire narrative. They have to stop viewing menopause support as a well-being cost or a charitable concession to a special interest group. They need to view it as a razor sharp, highly aggressive talent retention strategy.

[00:59:05] It is the ultimate test of whether a company's glossy stated values on inclusion and flexibility actually hold up under the pressure of reality. So, to synthesize this incredible journey we've been on today, we started with a massive hidden crisis. Hundreds of millions of highly experienced women globally navigating a profound biological transition in workplaces that were fundamentally, structurally hostile to that transition. Hostile environments, yes.

[00:59:33] It is costing the global economy billions in lost talent, recruitment fees, and productivity. But the fixes are not obscure medical mysteries. They are highly actionable, relatively inexpensive organizational design choices. Run the physical risk assessments. Make scheduling flexibility the absolute default. Train your line managers with practical scenario-based guidance so they don't panic.

[00:59:57] Aggressively audit your HR algorithms and disciplinary processes to ensure they aren't blindly punishing biological symptoms. The blueprint is there. And do it now, because the regulatory mandates, like the UK's 2027 action plans, are coming. And the tribunals are already handing out penalties. It is entirely solvable. Which brings us to the end of our deep dive. But before we sign off, I want to leave you with one final provocative thought to mull over on your commute.

[01:00:24] We spent this entire time talking about menopause as a specific acute retention issue. But let's extrapolate this out to the macro level. Right. We are looking at a rapidly aging global population. Birth rates are plummeting in almost all major Western and Asian economies. The global workforce is fundamentally shrinking. The numbers don't lie. In the very near future, retaining older, highly experienced workers isn't just going to be a nice HR best practice to win a corporate culture award.

[01:00:53] It is going to be an absolute non-negotiable economic survival imperative for entire nations. Exactly. So the question is, will the menopause-inclusive design we discussed today, the breathable fabrics, the micro-flexibility, the universal design, eventually just be recognized as the bare minimum baseline for the future of all ergonomic and psychological work design? That's the hope. And if so, what other unavoidable biological realities is the corporate world currently ignoring that will soon demand a similar reckoning?

[01:01:23] A fascinating and vital question for the future of work. Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive into the research. Tomorrow, when you walk into your office, log on to your next leadership call, or review your company's absence policies, I encourage you to look at your own workplace structures and the people operating those highly tuned machines through this entirely new lens. Catch you next time.