Episode 162

full
Published on:

9th Sep 2025

The Menopause Maze: Making Midlife Leadership a Strategic L&D Priority with Fiona McKay

This episode is sponsored by Deel.

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Menopause at work is not a policy box to tick. 


In this HR L&D episode, Nick Day sits down with Fiona McKay, founder of The Menopause Maze, to unpack how menopause affects leadership performance, talent pipelines, and boardroom readiness. You will learn why a symptom-only lens misses the real career impacts, how the “invisible filter” quietly shapes who gets promoted, and what HR and L&D can do to turn menopause into a leadership advantage. 


We cover data-driven diagnostics, the No Pause Scorecard, manager upskilling, and confidential coaching routes that protect privacy while improving performance and retention. 


Watch to move from awareness to action and build an inclusive, high-performance culture that keeps your best women.


Connect with Fiona: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fionamckay/

The Menopause Maze Website: https://www.themenopausemaze.com/

Workplace Scorecard: https://www.themenopausemaze.com/menopause-at-work-scorecard-for-workplaces


Nick Day’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickday/


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(00:00) Preview and intro 

(02:25) Who Fiona McKay is and her mission (The Menopause Maze)

(04:07) Menopause as an overlooked strategic blind spot

(06:49) Why HR/L&D must lead or risk stall and attrition

(11:06) Myths, symptom distribution, and the “invisible filter”

(14:01) Equipping senior women for boardroom performance

(16:02) Succession planning when symptoms peak

(18:02) Data point: 73% would move for a menopause career coach

(20:27) No Pause Scorecard and data diagnostic explained

(23:07) Confidential coaching routes for leaders (B2B and direct)

(26:19) Designing lifecycle-aware leadership development

(28:25) Talent attraction and Gen Alpha expectations

(29:42) Practical L&D actions: on-demand learning and manager support

(31:50) Four immediate actions for organisations

(33:46) Culture, inclusion, and the ripple effect beyond work

(37:00) HR L&D Vault: resource, lesson, and future advice

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About the Podcast

The HR L&D Podcast
Leadership, recruitment, culture. Conversations with HR's best
HR gets handed the problems nobody else wants to own. The restructure, the grievance, the engagement survey that came back badly. And then gets asked why people are leaving.

I'm Nick Day. I run an HR recruitment agency, which means I spend most of my week on the phone to HR directors, HR leaders and people leaders talking about what the job is actually like rather than what's written on the job spec. This HR Podcast came out of those calls. I kept hearing things worth repeating, and nobody was repeating them.

Every week I sit down with HR leaders, chief people officers, L&D specialists and the occasional academic who has changed how I think about work and people engagement. We get into leadership, and what happens when someone brilliant at the technical side gets promoted into managing humans.

Employee engagement past the survey score. Diversity, equity and inclusion in a climate where saying those words out loud has become a decision in itself. Pay transparency, talent management, reducing bias in hiring, HR digital transformation and the HCM systems everyone is being sold. And of course we cannot forget HR AI tools and platforms that are flooding the landscape as AI in HR becomes a hot topic every people leader is keen to understand and leverage.

Wellbeing comes up constantly, and it usually turns into the same question. Who looks after the HR team.

I'm not an HR practitioner and I don't pretend to be. I'm the person who hires them, which puts me in a useful position. I get to ask the obvious question that everyone in the room already knows the answer to and nobody says.

No script and no polite version. Mostly it's the conversation you'd have with someone doing your job at a different company, if you ever got the chance to sit down with them.

If you work in HR, people management or L&D, or you're building a career in it, start by subscribing to The HR L&D Podcast. We have had guests including Stephen Covey, Alan Stein Jnr, Andrea Wareham and Dr. Thom Mayer among other HR Leaders who are shaping the future of work and leadership.

Need HR staff? I run JGA Recruitment, an HR and payroll recruitment agency. www.jgarecruitment.com or info@jgarecruitment.com

Want to be on the show? Nick@jgadigital.com

If payroll is closer to your world, I also host The Payroll Podcast, the most listened to payroll show in the world.

Topics include HR leadership, workplace culture, retention, people management, employee engagement, diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI strategy, AI for HR, AI recruitment tools, talent management, HR digital transformation, HCM, staff wellbeing, pay transparency, reducing bias, L&D and HR recruitment.

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Nick Day