Is menopause a taboo in your organization? Plus, who is going to save the office?

HEALTH

Tackling the menopause taboo

Rarely a topic of open discussion in the workplace, menopause is gaining more attention from employers rethinking the health benefits they offer women

AS THE WORKFORCE ages, one particular problem is becoming more and more evident: the modern workplace is not a very menopause-friendly place.

But that is beginning to change. A new movement to create “menopause-friendly workplaces” is catching on, and it’s an issue that HR departments are starting to think more and more about these days.

“In 2016 we couldn’t find a menopause policy in the land,” writes Deborah Garlick in HR Magazine. “The taboo is well on its way to being broken and employers are recognizing their responsibilities. But what does it mean to be menopause friendly?”

One of the biggest hurdles has just been to talk about it. A survey earlier this year found that 58 per cent of women don’t feel comfortable raising the issue, fearing the taboo or being seen as ‘old.’ That alone exacerbates the problem. With so many workers experiencing symptoms that interfere with their work, some estimates suggest that a lack of support for menopausal workers represents a $150-billion productivity drag.

What can workplaces do, then, to become more menopause friendly?

Some workplaces are starting to offer more comprehensive medical benefits, or empowering employees as menopause advocates. Often, it’s not the complicated changes that have the most impact, but the easy ones.

“In Britain, some workplaces are offering women desk fans,” noted the New York Times. “Uniforms can be modified to breathe better. Women having a particularly bad time can ask to change shifts or work from home until they get their symptoms under control.”

“Central to menopause friendly workplaces are knowledgeable executives, line managers and menopause champions, trained to have the confidence to help someone experiencing problems during menopause,” writes Garlick. “While these will differ from business to business, a great start point for all is to raise awareness by hosting an event, in person and/or online. Once people start talking, employers can ask colleagues what’s getting in the way of them being their best at work.” Kieran Delamont

REAL ESTATE

Who is going to save the office?

More people are going to the office more of the time. Offices are still in trouble

FOR A WHILE, the tug of war around hybrid and remote work has seemed primarily about productivity, collaboration and work styles. But as remote work has become a more permanent feature, the offices that many assumed would eventually be filled by someone have stayed empty.

Office vacancy rates remain stubbornly high ― here in London, a recent report pegged the downtown office vacancy rate at around 25 per cent. And as we get to the middle of 2023, those vacancy rates are now starting to look less like a pandemic blip, and more like a permanent shift in what resources the workforce needs.

For the commercial real estate sector in North America and beyond, it’s starting to become a very worrisome problem ― and folks are starting to wave the warning flags.

“Offices are struggling perhaps more than most casual observers realize, and the consequences for landlords, banks, municipal governments and even individual portfolios will be far-reaching,” writes real estate reporter Dror Poleg in The Atlantic.

The notion (hope) that employers pushing return-to-office plans on their workforce would help to bail out the office sector has come up against workforces not all that enthused about it ― with many employees growing suspicious of corporate messaging about collaboration and teamwork being the true reasons for an RTO push.

“Workers think things like: the government is pressuring [the banks] so that the downtown businesses can be supported, or that management secretly believes they’re not really working from home,” said Chris Ford, president of Intelliware in Toronto.

And then there are the firms that are seemingly more than happy with remote arrangements. For every high-profile company forcing workers to return to the office, another lets them work where they wish.

The result of all this is that the rubber is starting to meet the road in terms of rethinking how downtown infrastructure is used. So far, there has been little momentum to teased plans for residential conversions, even as class B and class C real estate flounders. On paper, the case for converting office buildings to residential apartments is compelling. On the ground, however, some of the few developers who’ve completed office building conversion warn of how difficult and pricey the work can be.

“The financial towers are more than half empty now,” writes Christine Dobby in the Toronto Star, and their very purpose is, for the first time, being questioned.”

But, as Poleg also points out, it is nothing if not a chance to do things better. “This crisis,” he writes, “like all crises, also represents an opportunity to reconsider many of our assumptions about work and cities.” Kieran Delamont

Terry Talks: What does a trip to the dentist and leadership training have in common? More than you might think

Often when we talk about leadership development, we think of about the education and training elements. But just as dentist cannot instill good oral hygiene without mindful daily habits, effective leadership development relies on a more holistic view. It’s less about sitting in a classroom or on a training course for a distinct and finite period. Rather it’s a mindset that sees leaders and future leaders committed to continuous improvement.

WATCH HERE

WORKFORCE

What’s next for internships?

As companies look to the future with a hybrid lens, the concept of internship may have changed forever

THE PANDEMIC DIDN’T completely kill the internship, but it has fundamentally changed how it operates. With more hybrid work, interns are having to adapt to new environments and dynamics; with the cost of living increasing, fewer new grads are necessarily willing to take a low- or no-pay internship.

The internship game has evolved, and both sides of the equation ― employers and interns ― are learning to adjust.

One obvious difference might be sheer quantity. Around half of all internships were cancelled when Covid hit in 2020, according to some estimates, and not all of them have come back. Across the board, internship participation rates are lower than pre-pandemic, with only around 22 per cent of students completing one, according to one study. Those internships that remained became “hypercompetitive,” according to students.

But the biggest shift is almost certainly the hybrid workplace, and managers are grappling with how to adjust their offerings to this reality.

“One thing that suffers in remote environments is the ability for students to learn about roles besides the one they were hired to do,” said Sarah Tatsis, a senior VP at Blackberry, in an interview with Canadian Business.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to adapt. Ana Rita Morais, chair of George Brown College’s School of Design, advised that while remote work means that employers now prefer strong communicators, the same basic rules of a successful internship apply.

“When you bring on an intern, you have to make sure they’re not just floundering in a cubicle [virtual or not],” she said. “Go out for lunch with them once a week, set up a buddy system, talk about what’s working and what’s not working.”

But both still see immense value for both parties in internship programs, even as hybrid work changes them. “Bringing in fresh perspectives generates innovation and creativity ― and that’s really what we’re after when designing new products and services,” said Tatsis.

“Just like before the pandemic, internships are an opportunity to network, understand structures and frameworks in places of work and learn how to collaborate and engage with colleagues,” summed up Morais. “Training the next generation of talent and drawing on their experiences is a tremendous way to add value to the organization. Kieran Delamont

REMOTE WORK

Back to base

Behind the wanderlust-fuelled TikToks and rosy travel blogs, a growing number of digital nomads are calling it quits

CHANCES ARE YOU know at least one true digital nomad ― that person who always seems to be working from somewhere exotic. Maybe its Portugal, or Paris or an island in the South Pacific. It is easy to be a little envious, at the very least.

“The pandemic created the perfect circumstances: workers wanted change after the boredom of lockdowns; companies had realized they could trust staff to work remotely; and tourist-dependent countries were desperate for visitors,” writes FT’s Sarah O’Connor.

Employers are now trying to wrestle this “into a less risky and more controlled form,” she noted. Some companies are now trying to put some limits on where and how long a nomad employee can be abroad for, largely for issues related to tax, labour laws and immigration. “The most common permitted timeframe is 20 to 30 days ― the safest way to avoid tax problems,” she writes.

But other digital nomads are settling down on their own. “Some nomads have left the lifestyle ― and those beachfront views ― behind,” writes the BBC. Some nomads said the untethered lifestyle was starting to grate on them. “I began to have panic attacks on a daily basis ― ones that only stopped whenever I imagined having a home,” said one. “I struggled to effectively run my business, working while lying in bed because I rarely had access to a desk.”

It’s notoriously hard to get good data on how many workers are digital nomads, and whether that number is growing or shrinking. One 2021 estimate had it at around 15 million worldwide. It ballooned during the pandemic, naturally, but now many are starting to figure that the total number of digital nomads is starting to plateau.

“Overall, more and more people are seeing the reality of this lifestyle,” said U.S. sociologist Beverly Thompson. There will always be some demand ― especially among young people ― for the lifestyle, she noted, but the pandemic-era trend is probably coming back down to earth. Kieran Delamont