Retaining Experience: Why Menopause Belongs on the Workplace Culture Agenda
Contributor: Deneatra Ford, LHNP, Founder, Smart Wellness Canada
A few years ago, before I built my women’s health business full time, I was working corporate as a purchaser. Our company ran volunteer days during the holidays, and that December I ended up on the sales floor of a retail store instead of behind a desk.
A woman came in looking for work pants. She worked in construction, and finding gear that actually fit her, without gapping at the waist or restricting movement on site, had become its own exhausting chore. We got talking while I pulled sizes for her, and somewhere in that conversation, menopause came up. I was already helping women with menopause health on the side, so I mentioned it gently, as something I could help her with if she ever wanted to talk.
She kind of huffed. Not unkindly, just tired. Menopause was pretty far down her list, she said. She was more concerned with finding gear that fit her body, and with getting through after-work events where a few coworkers thought it was funny to make comments about her, loud enough for everyone to hear. She knew something wasn’t right, that she was struggling, but she wouldn’t know where to start asking for help when she couldn’t get the basics sorted first.
I helped her find pants that worked, gave her my phone number, and told her to call anytime, after hours, no pressure, if she ever wanted to talk.
She never called. Some days I hope it’s because she found her footing on her own. Most days, honestly, I suspect speaking up still felt riskier than staying silent, that she’d already learned naming a health struggle out loud could cost her more than it would ever gain her. That conversation stayed with me long after the shift ended. It’s a big part of why I eventually left the corporate world to grow my women’s health work into something that could reach more than the handful of women I had time for around a full-time job.
A Retention Issue Hiding in Plain Sight
I think about her every time someone frames menopause support as a “nice to have,” something to address once bigger issues, like harassment and PPE that fits, are already solved. That’s the trap. For her, these issues don’t sit in a neat list. They stack on top of each other until there’s no room left to ask for help with any one of them.
Menopause is a multi-year transition in three stages: perimenopause, when hormone levels begin fluctuating; menopause itself, marked by twelve consecutive months without a period; and postmenopause, the years after. It usually lands in a person’s 40s and 50s, often the most experienced stretch of a construction career. Symptoms like hot flashes, disrupted sleep, brain fog, and joint pain don’t pair well with a 6 a.m. safety briefing or a full shift in PPE that was never built for her body.
Research from the UK construction sector found roughly one in ten women managing menopause symptoms eventually leave their job because of it, and most say their employer has never openly addressed the topic.
Where Construction Makes It Harder
Every industry has employees moving through this transition. Construction stacks extra barriers on top: PPE built around male bodies, inconsistent site facilities, weather-dependent scheduling that leaves little room for disrupted sleep, and harassment or casual mockery that makes after-work events something to dread. Many women don’t have the bandwidth left to raise a health concern on top of all that.
The Fear That Keeps Women Quiet
Beneath all of this sits a quieter, harder problem: fear.
Many women don’t raise menopause symptoms at work, not because they don’t need support, but because they worry it will cost them a promotion, a choice assignment, or a reputation for being easy to work with. In an industry where proving capability has long been the price of belonging, admitting to a health challenge can feel like handing someone a reason to overlook you.
That fear isn’t irrational. It comes from watching colleagues get quietly passed over after disclosing a health concern, or hearing accommodation requests muttered about as “extra work.” So, the silence becomes self-protective: push through, say nothing, don’t be the one who asks for too much.
But that silence is costly, because menopause isn’t a rare accommodation for a small group. It touches every woman who lives long enough to experience it, every woman on your crew and in your office. The timing, symptoms, and severity differ, but the universality doesn’t.
At the same time, this industry is bracing for a wave of retirements it can’t easily replace, and the women navigating menopause right now often hold the deepest institutional knowledge and the most capacity to mentor whoever comes next. Losing a skilled tradesperson, project manager, or estimator to a pile of unaddressed barriers is a critical operational loss at a time the sector can least afford it. Squashing that fear takes intention: making it unmistakably clear, through leadership, policy, and everyday conversation, that raising a health need is not a liability and never was.
What “Standing Up” Looks Like
For employers across the industry, supporting people through this transition doesn’t require a major overhaul. It looks like:
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Naming the topic. A short session, through training or a toolbox talk, signals this is a legitimate conversation, not a taboo one.
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Auditing facilities. Private washrooms, climate control, and cold water benefit everyone, including those managing symptoms.
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Building in flexibility. Flexible start times or break structures can make a real difference where the work allows it.
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Training supervisors. Managers need enough awareness to respond with basic respect instead of confusion.
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Revisiting PPE. If fit and options haven’t been reviewed recently, this is as good a reason as any to start.
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Addressing harassment head-on. None of the above matters much if a woman still has to brace for comments at the next site event.
None of this asks employers to solve every issue at once. It asks them to start clearing the pile, one barrier at a time, so no one has to choose which struggle is worth mentioning.
I never heard from that woman again. But if this ever reaches her, or reaches someone standing exactly where she was, tired, underdressed for a job that was never built with her in mind, and out of room to carry one more thing: you were never asking for too much.
A Standing Invitation
Smart Wellness Canada offers free 60-minute sessions, in person or virtual, on menopause and other topics in the broader women’s health conversation. These sessions are meant for organizations taking that first step: education that starts taking menopause and women’s health barriers off the table before they become a reason someone leaves. Smart Wellness Canada also offers courses and programs for women looking to reduce their menopause symptoms and feel more like themselves again. If that’s you, or you’re an employer wondering where to start, reach out to book a session at https://smart-wellness-canada.com/ or email Deneatra@SmartWellnessCanada.com.
