WUN4ALL
WUN's mission is to help women to connect with other women, so they can share learnings, build confidence, and develop their own passion for the fast moving utilities space. Through our podcast episodes, we aim to provide our listeners with the skills they need to build long-lasting and fulfilling careers in the sector.
Find us at: thewun.co.uk
WUN4ALL
Ep 56. #WUNCareerStories - Female Health in the Workplace - Lauren Tyler, former Head of Innovation at Southern Water talking with WUN Advocate, Julia Stichling
Lauren Tyler - known as Loz - is the former Head of Innovation at Southern Water and a passionate advocate for innovation as an essential business capability. A problem-solver at heart, Loz is known for her creative curiosity, strategic thinking, and humble leadership.
Joining the sector at the beginning of AMP7, Loz established the Bluewave innovation team – a diverse group tasked to support the business across pollutions, customer experience, leakage and behaviour change – to name but a few. Her ability to flex across such broad problem areas in the water sector was born out of an early career in consultancy, where she worked with clients across FMCG, telecoms, transport, and women’s health.
Whilst building a capability at Southern Water, Loz also became a mum to two children, now almost 2 and 4 years old. Her experience of having children exposed her to the state of women’s health care in the UK, and she is passionate about helping solve issues surrounding menstruation, fertility and early parenthood as a result of that lived experience.
Welcome to the Women's Utilities Network One for All podcast.
Speaker B:Our corner of the world where we'll.
Speaker A:Be talking all things energy water, sharing personal stories and debating female issues.
Speaker B:Enjoy. Hello, welcome to another episode of the Women's Fertility Network podcast. My name is Julia Stichling and I'm one of the advocates here at dim1. I'm so happy to be joined for an exciting podcast recording about female health by Lauren Tyler, former head of innovation at Sodden Water. Welcome, Lars. Hello. I'm super excited to speak to you today and I think I want to directly dive into the topic and I want to kind of get a couple of your experiences and stories about how women health issues have impacted your professional life.
Speaker A:Yeah, sure, kind of a few spring to mind and I think that has been sort of my biggest takeaway thinking about and researching a bit for this conversation is how much anyone's health sort of affects the work that they do and their work in life. And thinking about specific experiences, quite a few sprang to mind. And some spanners that I'm not even sort of ready to share yet because they were so affecting specifically around women's health. Definitely anecdotes I could share about. I think we were talking about, you know, heavy periods and how that affects performance and one specific time when I was in Jersey presenting to Spec Savers as a client, which was a particularly horrible experience. But I think most recently I've had two children. So over the course of my time at Southern Water, I became a mum for the first time and that was during COVID so that was quite an experience. And then became a mum a second time. So I have a two and a four year old and I think the experience through fertility and into pregnancy was completely life changing. And I think quite naturally affects your personal life. It affects everything about life. And personally I went into, and I think this isn't unusual as well, which is part of what we'll talk about. But I went into trying to become a parent completely blind, part of that because of my lack of education about menstruation, about my cycle. And we're never encouraged to get to know that about ourselves and to understand that it's such a personal, individual thing and varies so incredibly. So I had to sort of learn that really from scratch at what, the age of 31, what my cycle was, what the role of hormones was, hormone health, the importance of that, and unlearn a lot of messaging that I learned at a very young age. When it comes to how quickly you can get pregnant, I think a lot of my education and a lot of the scaremongering at school was quickly you get pregnant and how that would be sort of the worst thing in the world at an early stage of life. And then you suddenly want to become pregnant and don't understand why your body's not complying or sort of doing the thing that you heard it was really easy to do. And then obviously, every period, every month, it's a reminder of not being pregnant. And sometimes that's at work, sometimes that's at home, but it just feels like a very long time. And I know that actually my personal experience wasn't that challenging, but fertility and infertility is a very, very challenging time for a lot of people. Of course it's going to impact your profess. I think it's inevitable, really. So, yeah, at the moment, kind of fertility was the biggest thing. And then I think, obviously, once you get pregnant, that first trimester, again, there's just so much, so much anxiety in that stage of pregnancy. Again, so much social conditioning around when you should tell people about your pregnancy, the fear of miscarriage and again, the risk of miscarriage as well. All of these things are really drummed into you. And especially in systems like the NHS as well, and sort of health systems, obviously, it's all about risk management. So, again, a lot of the messaging is about could go wrong and all the bad things that they're looking out for and doing that, it's quite a learning experience, I suppose, if you don't feel that you can share with colleagues or a manager at work, because you are at work so much of your life. And in the case of my first pregnancy, it was during COVID so family and friends weren't even kind of close to us either. So that was a very kind of challenging time and much more to talk about there, which I'm sure we'll get into.
Speaker B:I think the problem as well is that often there is this, like you said before, when should I tell them and when do I have to tell my employer? But I think the other thing as well is how comfortable am I about talking that we're trying without it being something that, you know, makes me too vulnerable? But then equally, I feel like, as a woman as well, there's often the question posed also, when are you becoming a parent? When I. When is it your time? And I feel like that puts women under a lot of pressure in. In many situations.
Speaker A:Absolutely. And I. A lot of what I was thinking about, again, as in sort of preparation for this conversation, was actually sort of the Macro context. So, you know, I know the one. I've done some research around unconscious bias. And when you think about it and when you pick up that unconscious bias, a lot of it is about a woman's want to have children, a woman's ability to have children, and then the default of women as primary carer once that child is born. And actually across the world, birth rate is declining and luckily in lots of, I guess, more developed parts of the world, there is more choice, there's more reproductive freedom, which is obviously a hugely positive thing. And so I think it's about how we can increase that choice but also reduce that bias by actually engaging with the data that social roles are changing and a lot of women, well, certainly fewer women are having children and women are having children later. And sometimes women aren't primary carers. And obviously you also have kind of same sex couples, which brings a whole host of complexity and sort of bias in itself. So I think a lot of that unconscious bias that we're trying to counter in the workplace is really deeply rooted in assumptions about women's roles and the choices that they want to make. So we definitely need to question that and definitely when it comes to childbearing, because as I said, I mean, that's a whole conversation in itself as well. You know, having fewer children, the want to have less children. It makes a lot of sense in the context of the world that we're in.
Speaker B:I can totally relate to that. Yeah, absolutely. So how aware do you think most workers are about women's health issues and what steps do you think they could take to become more informed?
Speaker A:I think it's really important to think about the context. Again, sort of quite a global or at least national context. There has not been enough investment in women's health as a sector. And so if the health system is sort of not fit for purpose, specifically when thinking about women's health issues, then it's kind of no surprise that our places of work aren't fit for purpose when it comes to women's health either. We've heard so much about the gender pay gap. There is also a huge gender health gap, and that includes kind of persistent data gaps as well and huge under diagnosis as well when it comes to certain conditions. And that's both female specific conditions, but also conditions that present across men and women, but might present differently. So for example, endometriosis, so that affects 10% of women and girls of a reproductive age. But in the US only 2 out of 10 case endometriosis are actually diagnosed. And it can take on average 7 years to diagnose it. So I think this is something that we'll touch on quite a few times, both in the context of fertility, but also broader women's health issues. The knowledge and research isn't great in lots of cases and so the diagnosis is very slow. And I think the consequence of that is that women live with poor health a lot of the time and sort of have to suffer in silence. And that's a huge problem, especially when it comes to productivity and people being well and doing their best work in the workplace. I read that women spend 25% more of their lives in debilitating health than men. And obviously my recent background is innovation and in terms of R and D, so research and development. In 2020, only 1% of healthcare research and innovation was invested in female specific conditions, which is quite wild when you think about it. One of my favorite books, Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, she cites kind of broad health conditions and shows the discrepancy between research around how those issues present in women and how they present men. She looks at congestive heart failure and I think men outnumbered in three to one in medical trials. Again, there's just a huge gender health gap and we need to be mindful of that. And maybe a bit sympathetic to businesses because everyone's playing catch up to these issues, not just businesses. I think in business specifically, though historically the focus, understandably, maybe has been maternity and pregnancy. They're probably the most obvious, uniquely female health issues. And obviously more recently there's been so much more awareness built around menopause and perimenopause, which again is fantastic that that conversation is much more out in the open and all that's enabling in terms of people getting access to the right support and health and time. Obviously there's more women in the workplace as well than ever before. So it hasn't been so much of a priority maybe. And now obviously that's shifting more in some sectors than others, which again, I'm sure we'll talk about. But now there is a material shift and workplaces needed to now design for that diversity. I think there's been a lot around driving increased diversity. It looks in a couple of sectors, including utility, that getting better, attracting more women, but maybe not retaining them. And I wonder whether policy, process and culture and part of that being, you know, health, which when health goes wrong is sort of all encompassing, isn't it? And of course stops you doing your best work. It feels like definitely the right time to be talking about those things. And I think you ask, you know, what steps can be taken to become more informed. I mean, there's not enough time in my day to listen to, you know, the book, the podcast, the opinion pieces that, I mean, I would like cite a few that I kind of listen to and a few books that have informed my thinking. I guess it's about getting curious, you know, like starting to listen and learn and sort of understand more, both about sort of the lived experience of women in different stages and dealing with different challenges. When it comes to the health, though, Nell Frazelle's the Panic Years was a really, like, formative book for me. She talks about this kind of period of motherhood or not motherhood as a sort of a huge stage in a woman's life and similar to something like puberty, where, you know, this. This kind of. This time frame is dictated. You have decisions to make whether you want to become a mum or not. And I think there's so much in that lived experience that opens your eyes to the sort of emotional pull and also the physical toll that this period of life can take. And then Period Power by Maisie Hill is just all about the cycle, how it behaves, the hormones, how they change. They were incredibly formative for me. I've talked about Invisible women, which, I mean, drives this message around data gaps and the gender health gap. An amazing evolutionary scientist called Lucy Cook, who wrote a book called *****, which is all about gender bias, kind of cross evolution and sort how we understand evolution and how that's been affected by perspective. I think part of it is sort of understanding the limitations of the current systems and the science that we know because it is evolving and changing so much and trying to stay a little bit, I guess, at the cutting edge, which is where podcasts have been really helpful for me. So the health tech podcast, there's a. An accelerator in London called Femtech Lab, and they've got a podcast called Mother, where they interview amazing people doing some amazing work. In femtech, the woman's wellness show, there's really just. I mean, take your pick. There's just so much information out there about the changing state of women's health. And then, I guess as a business, reflecting on what, you know, like, what do we do, what do we think our role is in supporting the women that work in our business?
Speaker B:And I think that's really the key point here because like you said before, over the years, a lot of businesses have started things like Menopause Awareness Week or they've started a role in the utility sector, there's a lot of bigger companies with their own women network. And they touch on topics how to balance work, life and probably things as probably based on parental leave and being a parent. But I think it's raising that conversation and opening the doors to have the conversation because it all affects us very differently. I think that's the main thing to keep in mind. Just because one person might struggle to have a child, the other person might also struggle. But it doesn't have to be the same struggle. And I think that's very important that just because it can sometimes maybe understand, we don't fully understand. And I think that's where the conversation really, when the person wants to have a conversation, can help and can open up, because then you can make accommodations, can support the person, you can support your member of staff. And I think what's important to say as well is, and that's something that I'm seeing more and more, it's also the partner, because going through losing a child, not becoming pregnant, it's also very daunting for the other person in a relationship because there is that mental load. There is, you know, there is pressure not just felt on the woman, but also on the potential partner. So I think it's important to also make that point. There should be something that just supports both in going through that decision.
Speaker A:I could not agree more. Absolutely. And I think whole other podcast topic could be sort of about that partner. And again, sort of in a heterosexual couple, male partner, it is to sort of the. The woman or the mother. And again, looking at fertility or infertility, which is on the rise. It is for men too, though. Sperm count is down. There was a study in 2017 and sperm counts in men from Western countries, including the UK had dropped by more than 50% between 1973 and 2011. And apparently approximately one third of infertility cases are caused by male infertility. So I think in a lot of the conversations that are focused on gender equality and providing more freedom and choice for women, you have to think about the partner in that situation, because there are two sides of the coin. No matter again, sort of what the makeup of that family is or that partnership is. I think recent history has been how women can do more. My personal experience, I know I'm not alone, is sometimes more is just more, and it's exhausting. So I know people say it, but maybe you can have it all, but not at the same time, because there's just not enough time in the hours in the day and especially like We've said if you are dealing with health challenges, it's not sort of a straightforward process. It can be years, years of transition, years of trying and failing, years of huge highs and huge lows. And everyone needs support for that. Exactly, as you say.
Speaker B:I think the question is then, we think that women feel a bit uncomfortable sometimes addressing these health issues at work. How can we overcome that uncomfortability? But then also, what are maybe limitations that you have experienced, specifically in the.
Speaker A:Utility industry, there was a survey by women's rights charity the Fawcett Society and a healthcare provider called Beneden Health, and it says that one in four women feel that their career progression has been halted by a lack of support for women's health at work and that 12% of businesses had a culture where women's health issues could be discussed. And then it concluded that the UK is losing about 150 million working days each year because of this. When as many as 42% of women heard derogatory comments about women employees health in the workplace, 70% have found it challenging dealing with periods at work. All of that resonates with me, absolutely. But equally, I understand that it's a very personal thing how much you divulge at work, how much you share at work about very, very personal experiences. Don't think that should be necessary. I think what we're looking for, though, is to increase access and support for the people that need it most. Right. And sometimes the first step is about making someone aware that you need that support in order to gain the access to it. So I'll definitely kind of zoom in on fertility when it comes to that as well, because I think again, when we're talking about that unconscious bias sort of gender discrimination in the workplace, I would feel incredibly nervous telling an employer that I was trying for a baby or suggesting that I was trying for a baby. And I remember being in an interview years ago when I had just got engaged to my now husband and I remember trying to hide my engagement ring. And this wasn't a conscious thing, it was really subconscious, but I was hiding my engagement ring because I thought, huh, ow. I know who then became my employer. And they were fantastic people. So it was completely unfounded. But, you know, it was a panel of male bosses and I was hiding my engagement ring. So I thought, well, basically my engagement ring, they'll know that I'm about to get married. If I'm about to get married, they will probably think I'm about to try having children. And if they think I'm starting Trying to start a family. What does that mean for my prospects working here? That going to be a problem when trying to get a job? Obviously it didn't. I did get the role, so it was fine. But isn't that interesting that that was even my thought process and I was even thinking about that at that stage. And again, I know that's not uncommon, but again, sort of. There was a lot in a recent white paper by the Workplace Fertility Campaign group about disclosing fertility treatment news and that less than half of those who are going through fertility treatment feel confident revealing it to their boss. And that was with Pregnant Then Screwed, which is an amazing charity that is all about kind of maternity discrimination and legal support. But again, that really resonates. It's a very personal experience. And as you said, Delia, even in my friendship group, the variety of experiences when it comes to trying for children is absolutely huge. At different ages, different stages of health, of course, some have gone through ivf, some have needed a lot of fertility support that can be for years. You know, like the average cycle time, I think is four to six weeks. Thousands of pounds. It's an incredibly stressful experience. So to your point, I think it's how do we design systems that allow people to make that known so that they can access support, so that they can access resources that hopefully would be supplied by that kind of business or employer? And to what extent is that necessary because it is such a personal experience?
Speaker B:It might be also something about signposting to the right charities and to the right organizations where you, as a line manager, as the HR department, you don't need to be the expert, you cannot be a scientist who works with that topic in and out because you have other tasks. But it's about being the facilitator to get help and to potentially know where could we ask for help or where could we ask for what could be accommodations in certain situations, how could we make life easier? And then maybe sometimes just also having a logical mind of, well, what could we do on a site in our industry, for example, or in an office to make life easier for someone that is potentially undergoing IVF because they might need a separate room, they might need a fridge close to their office space. But I think it's sometimes just thinking a bit and opening up to that potential of what could we do alongside with for specific cases, where could we get them? Or where could we signpost you to get support?
Speaker A:I do think oftentimes there is too much onus placed upon a manager. And I think I read that 80% of people that leave a business do so because of their direct line manager. There's a lot of pressure and dependency on that one relationship. And if you've got a great line manager, fantastic. And that you feel comfortable enough to share that with them, then they could help you access, you know, the right resources and support, then that's amazing. But I do think businesses need to design systems and processes that don't depend so heavily on that relationship, because sometimes it's not great and sometimes that's not the person you want to talk to, especially about something as deeply personal and intimate as trying to become a parent and challenges that you might be facing in that space. So I do think, yes, like managers being aware, managers understanding how to signpost resources that the business is providing. But how also, in the case of a person that doesn't have that relationship, how do they access it? What routes can they take? How do they feel very safe in disclosing that information? Information that there will be no consequence to disclosing that information which you can design for. But I think when you ask specifically about utilities, the challenge, I think, in utilities is a gender imbalance, quite frankly, and it's 26% of the workforce, I think in the UK energy and utility sector is female. And I think representation and diversity is so important because it drives more change when it comes to policy and process in favour of these sorts of experiences. You've had that direct experience yourself, when you've lived through those things yourself, it does make a difference and it does raise the importance of these issues and make it more of a priority for that leader to make change and support people going through the same situation. So I think that's one of the key challenges that utilities has, is, again, I was reminding myself the stats, but 24% of women are in senior roles in the UK water industry, so quarter. And that's important. And I think that's important for, again, just attracting women, but retaining them and supporting them through some of these really tricky challenges and stages of life, because it's so beneficial for businesses to have that diversity in order to deliver growth and sort of good service from that business. I do think that it's not unique to utilities, but it is one of the things that is presenting more of a challenge, I think.
Speaker B:I think it's important as well to have that representation, because if I start a new career as a. As a young person, without my career, then I want to see what's possible and if I see that representation in different fields, not just in higher Positions, but different fields and among the company or levels, then I can believe I can do it as well. For me, that's the key point. Why? I think the more diverse we are in an organization, the more diverse talent we also attract because people see it as an option. People don't just, oh, well, not for me, I wouldn't fit in here. But people actually just go for it and actually try it out. And that brings in the talent that we're trying to recruit so heavily into the industry at the moment.
Speaker A:Exactly. And it's interesting, there is sort of specific cost to businesses as well around things like not supporting periods like fertility or sort of the time in which you want to become a parent. So nearly one in five people leave their jobs because of the impact of fertility treatment. So the stress and the, again, emotional physical impacts of treatments like IVF can cause people to leave their jobs. And 43% of millennials survey said that they're likely to consider leaving or changing their current job within the next year due to a lack of workplace fertility or baby loss. I think there's just so much more awareness around these issues now, especially things like baby loss as well, which is fantastic. But with that awareness, we now need to again, design better processes and design more supportive systems to support and give more access. And again, especially in the context where the national health system at the moment is not providing the support that a lot of women need.
Speaker B:And how do you then think specifically on the topic with fertility and struggles with fertility, how can organisations support women?
Speaker A:So one of the things that comes up time and time again, and I feel like it's a really sticky subject for lots of reasons, is flexible working. So I know that Mother Pucker and other sort of influencers are really trying to shift policy and kind of legislation in this space. And obviously with COVID one of the benefits, if you can call it that, was complete transition. Culturally, when it comes to remote working and flexible working, and very close to home with my husband and of our friends, many companies are obviously quite clearly going back on that flexible working and wanting to remove those rights. They're seeing impacts on culture, on relationships and on productivity, which they are then linking with that change in flexibility. Flexible working, but basically younger employees, LGBTQ employees and women specifically, are much more affected by the lack of flexible working. The opportunity that flexible working gives women is huge. Not only because we are, I think, in 80% of cases, the primary carer for children, but for exactly as we're talking about sort of those health issues as well. So if you Suffer heavy periods doesn't mean you can't work, but it might mean that you need to be closer to a toilet and you might need to access that toilet more frequently, maybe for the first couple of days of your period. Doing that in an office environment, I can tell you, is not a particularly enjoyable experience. Again, especially when it's a very male dominated environment, making excuses cannot be that easy. But in more, I guess severe and sort of dramatic cases like ivf, exactly as you say. I have friends going through IVF at the moment. Flexible working is essential. You literally can't access that treatment unless you can access the provider of that treatment. And that is not in the place of work. So flexible working, I think it's one of those issues that there are so many angles to that topic, so many unintended consequences, I think of removing flexible working rights. So when I've looked at again sort of that impact of particular challenge in the workplace white paper, they do give sort of very specific recommendations and one of them is flexible working. So giving the right for employees to request flexible working, including working adjustments so that they can attend appointments, that actually that permission is there for pregnancy. So if ever you have scans, you have the right to go and attend those scans in person. I don't know why it should be any different for people trying to get pregnant. And arguably it's if not as much more of a, an emotional toll that that experience takes too. So paid time off to attend appointments, an understanding for manager special leave, flexible working hours, options to work from home if needed, and I suppose incredibly importantly, protection from discrimination as much as legally possible. Again, when you're pregnant you have specific legal rights, which is incredibly important. And going through the process of trying to get pregnant, I think the same same sorts of rights should be in place, not least because it can be years of a process. Again, it can take people and often takes people years to conceive and to have children. So I think a lot of it is about flexibility and is about the ability to juggle work with very changing personal health circumstances as much as physically possible. To me that's the basics. It feels quite obvious and not that difficult to do, quite frankly. So I don't think it's hard to think about more ambitious ways or sort of more of a gesture, I suppose that you could actually make to your female employees. So getting access to information, knowledge like subsidising subscriptions or paying for services, giving access to funding for certain things, stress and mental health provisions, as they're going through this, I think really Is, you know, the sky's the limit. Like, how much support do you want to offer your employees to make them well, to make them happy, to help them thrive in their work?
Speaker B:And I think the question here as well is how much is it really going to cost you? Because, for example, if you say mental health support, many of the bigger companies, they have an employee assistance program, they have maybe someone on site, if they're big enough, you know, that looks after mental health and any kind of topics where you might want someone professional to talk about, so you're not having a massive amount of extra cost by providing access to this service. And then what I think is important when you mentioned flexible working, is not questioning why flexible working, because for one, it could be looking after the child, for the other one, it could be looking after an elderly parent or relative, and for the next person, it could be going through fertility treatments or supporting their partner going through fertility treatment. So for me, it's. It's really that, no questions asked, flexible time. It shouldn't be something that is just, oh, we know that you're going through this now, so we'll give you flexible time, but basically everyone in the office will know, because normally we don't do flexible time here.
Speaker A:Absolutely could not agree more. And I think more and more, as especially the femtech and women's health sectors are growing and that growth is set to be increasing over the next couple of years and I guess onwards, there are so many new services, new B2B suppliers and businesses that are there to support and who are experts in these fields. So businesses like Hotelity, which is an amazing biotech firm, they are now working more with B2B to help businesses help their staff when it comes to their hormone health, understanding their hormone health, helping improve it, and for whatever reason, doesn't need to be just about having children, but it's about all that hormones do to a woman's body and trying to optimize your health again so that you can be your best self when you're at work and do the best work that you can possibly do. So it doesn't have to be the businesses, each business becoming an expert in all of women's health, it's almost virtually impossible and it's not your job. And sometimes a little information is a dangerous thing, isn't it, that there are so many new businesses that are acknowledging that maybe businesses are the route to delivering better healthcare for women when, again, some of the NHS is under such strain. So think again. It's about doing your research and Sort of talking to those suppliers and thinking about to what extent businesses want to support their female staff.
Speaker B:And for me, that comes with two different benefits as well for the employer. Number one, you will create better knowledge, because ultimately, I've got a friend going through IVF soon. She's talking super openly about it, but that basically leads to me being more educated. So if you have someone that's going through something or is getting support on whatever issue that will lead to, most likely not in every incident, obviously, but most likely it would lead to further education of the people around them. And the second thing for me as well is offering the support. If we go back to the fertility topic that you've addressed, offering the support will make employees more loyal to the company, will help with your retention rate. And I think, especially nowadays, that we're looking into the next couple of years of attracting the best workforce, especially for the utility sector with Ampeg coming up. We are aware that we need people desperately in the industry, good people. So I think being able to offer this will be a huge, huge benefit for companies to kind of retain and attract new talent, because as you said before, the numbers are declining in terms of people having children. Equally, infertility is also something that growing up. So if you can offer the support, that might be sometimes a decisive factor, because pay and the job could be similar in different companies. But if you support everything around what employee kind of goes through in their life, I think that makes a huge, huge benefit.
Speaker A:I know it does, yeah. Having lived through it and again, seeing other kind of friends who have literally stayed in jobs because of the maternity policy, because it offers that security, again, when statutory doesn't cover anything, really, it doesn't cover any financial costs, especially when you have an additional little person in your life. So I think completely agree with you, Julia. I think one of the important things, though, is going back to my experience in innovation, is need to test and measure what impacts your policies are actually having, because there are often some really lovely ideas from a policy perspective that actually drive a very different behavior to what was intended. So, as an example, there's obviously shared parental leave in the uk, but it's a different system to that in the north of Europe, where for paternity leave to be extended, the dad basically has to take from the mum's maternity leave. So it's not a use it or lose it system, which exists in places like Sweden or Denmark, where there is an allocation of paternity leave that is for dad, and if he doesn't use it, it gets Lost. And then it's separate and sort of ring fenced from Mun's maternity leave, obviously, again, talking very heteronormatively about a heterosexual couple here. So the UK system where dad has to take from mum in order to extend beyond two weeks of statutory paternity leave, which is incredibly low, the uptake of that is 3%. In the UK, though, 3% of dads are taking advantage of that system, which means that system does not work. It is doing no good, really. And one of my team a couple of years ago did actually access shared parental leave. And I mean, definitely part of the problem is the design of it and how inaccessible it was, how complex it was to do between couples, you know, different employers. And I think with every policy, again, it's sort of what behaviour are we trying to drive here, what change are we trying to make? What do we think will make that change? And so doing the research of what already works in different countries and different businesses is obviously the first place to start. But then how are we measuring the impact and benefit of that policy? And the Behavioural Insights team is a team that we've worked with at Southern Water before. Obviously it's about behavior change, behavioural science and applying that. And they've done some lovely studies about how to improve gender equality in the workplace, which is very evidence based and sort of can give you very clear pointers as to what works, what we think works, There's a bit of evidence for it, but not loads. And what actually doesn't work in terms of policy change. So testing, learning, measuring impact, they seem really obvious things, but I know for certain that that doesn't always happen.
Speaker B:And do you think there's any other accommodations or any other support that a workplace can offer to manage women's health issues more effectively? Because it also heavily obviously affects productivity. If I'm not feeling my best due to whatever reason, I won't be performing my best.
Speaker A:Does that make sense? I guess a lot of the obvious that might not already be in place, like mentoring and sponsorship and exactly as we were talking about earlier sort of networks inside of businesses and I think I was saying to you before the podcast, I'm so sad that I found the one kind of a bit later in my time in water industry, because while these networks make a difference and that support is sort of really invaluable, so I think it's. It is kind of making those safe spaces inside the business, but also networks outside of the business kind of cultivating that. I guess the more we can offer support that is easy to access, that you may be able to access anonymously or discreetly. I do think that's really important when it comes to such sensitive topics such as women's health. And again, when we know that there continues to be sort of gender discrimination and unconscious bias in the workplace, you do still need that, I think almost like mental sense of security, that you can disclose it in order to get help, in order to feel better and get better or sort of achieve you want to with your health without there being consequences. Because it's always the consequences that play out, I think in your imagination before you those conversations.
Speaker B:Yeah. You basically want to ensure that a member of staff gets the support, no matter who that member of staff is.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's right. But as you said as well, you know, again, the flexible working, it really can't be underestimated, sort of how important that is not. And again, this is not about being a parent and sort of care, but obviously that there's a huge advantage for that too. It's a huge advantage for that with dads and having flexible working for dads to be more involved in care as well. But certainly when it comes to health and not just fertility, but like you say, anything to do with menstruation, anything to do with endometriosis, pcos. So polycystic ovary syndrome, there's so many complications that women are sort of struggling with that are invisible to them, that are taking years to be diagnosed. So being able to work at home when you need to because your body and your comfort of being in an office is just inconsistent day to day and through the month, it really, I think is incredibly valuable and a bit of a safety net for a lot of women, I think.
Speaker B:Interestingly, I've seen a couple of studies recently on the effect of periods on performance of athletes. Yeah, high performing athletes. And I thought that was really, really interesting because some, whether that's team sports or individual sports, they've really managed to kind of tailor the training of female athletes around their period and around that cycle in terms of when they can do very much powering out themselves kind of in like heavy training phase and then something that's more a bit of recovering but kind of staying on the same level when they introduce new things into the training when maybe you can't really double your strength in this week. And I thought it was really, really interesting to see how once it's recognized it helped them to perform even better.
Speaker A:Absolutely. And I think that has really been sort of the revolution, I guess in my life Sort of understanding cycle, understanding hormones. There's still lots for me to learn. There's lots that I still don't know. But I get so excited thinking about my daughter, who is turning 4 in August, and just how much knowledge she will be empowered with about her body. And again, it's sort of evidenced in so much of Invisible Women is sort of this perception that through history, women's bodies have just been seen as like small versions of men's bodies because they're complicated and so, I guess, inconvenient. But when you understand, when you get closer to that information and understand the impact of hormones on everything, on cognition, on energy, on. On everything, so much of it makes sense. But you also give yourself different permissions. You can structure, in some cases, you can structure certain tasks, certain types of work, certain parts of your cycle, and you will really nail that type of work. Or maybe that is just the part of your cycle when you are more social and you should go to more events and imagine a world where you could sort of take control of your time and design your schedule your month around how you're feeling, because literally your biology has changed that. There's so much, I think, to be excited about. Our conversation has been how do businesses keep up and how do they help women and my generation. We're kind of catching up a lot on all this knowledge and I think reframing a lot of the way that we see our bodies, what they can do and how we can best work with them to achieve all that we want to in our careers.
Speaker B:My side, I think what's important to mention as well is if we have a chance to kind of organize ourselves, you know, what we talked about before, the flexible working that allows us then to structure our work once we get to know us and time of the month are you, in what time of the cycle are you. How does it affect if your general kind of style of working in that specific time then allows you then to kind of organize yourself without having to justify it? It doesn't need the, oh, this is what I'm going through at the moment, but just that flexibility to then rearrange how you want to do something.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely. And I think again, with leadership as a leader, it's impossible for you to have experienced everything that you're team or your workforce has experience. And obviously specifically in this case for male leaders, obviously they won't have experience periods in most cases, not directly. And I think humility is very important for me when it comes to leadership. And again, the importance of listening and all that we've talked about in terms of the assumptions made around the lived experience of women because it is so varied and I think you made this point earlier, Julia. It's so individual though. Yes. Arm yourself with knowledge. And obviously the science of things loosely applies across all women how each woman experiences like their period or those panic years between 25 and you know, 45. It is so individual and so not assuming anything about that woman. What she wants, what she is able to do alone, what she might have to access in order to do the things that she wants in terms of family. Just as leaders. Noting when you're making assumptions and making sure that you're challenging those assumptions in yourself is so crucial because then you, I think you then continue to listen and you continue to adapt your workplace as those circumstances change.
Speaker B:And I think the unconscious bias comes in here as well. Again, because when we talk about something really, really obvious in the past, maybe about oh, you know, hiring someone that has little children, the question was always will that person be able to give what it takes? Rather than person is so much more structured and organized than someone without kids. Maybe because they have to work around two level children that could want anything at any time in the day, could come home from school, kindergarten and be ill and you have to look after them. People still manage to someh deliver what they need to do at work. So I think it's, it's reframing our thoughts and seeing not just one site, but seeing both sites or more sites than one.
Speaker A:Absolutely, yeah. And I haven't read the whole of Sapiens, I must admit, but what I have read of Sapiens, which talks about, you know, all the systems that we have designed as people. Businesses have been designed a certain way for a certain type of workforce. That workforce is materially changing. So we need to redesign things because we now know that the benefits of that diversity and again the importance of including that diversity, which again, I can't remember who said it, but you know, I should actually become come before D. If you don't include the diversity, the diversity is kind of pointless really. I think we're at that sort of tipping point when it comes to women's health. We're much more aware of it. We need to now again sort of design our businesses or redesign parts of our businesses in order to make it work for more diverse people and more diverse circumstances. And none of that is impossible.
Speaker B:Lars, it was super interesting talking to you today. I hope that our listeners have also found the conversation interesting and can take away some ideas maybe for their own businesses or their teams. Thank you very much for coming on this one podcast.
Speaker A:Oh, such a pleasure, Julia. I always love our conversation, so thank you so much for having me.