It comes with a laugh.
“My husband did send me a message today and said, ‘Are you going to be the new face of menopause?’" says Air New Zealand Lounge Leader Lucy Hegarty.
Lucy is open about her journey, that she hasn’t reached her perimenopause or menopause journey yet. But she is adamant about one thing.
“I do not want to be blindsided.”
As co-lead of Air New Zealand’s women’s network, Lucy is a champion of early conversations about menopause — and that includes for herself, too.
“I am a huge advocate for learning ahead of time, being prepared and just actually understanding that it's not an age conversation, it's actually just a biological conversation.”
“I don't want that, ‘Oh, surprise!’ I actually want to know, okay, this is what's happening to my body. This is how I can manage it best."
Christina Kennedy, who holds the People Lead Operations function, talks about her personal journey converging with Air New Zealand’s aim to make menopause work.
“I'd recently stepped into a senior leadership role myself, and at that point in time I started experiencing quite obvious physical symptoms relating to my menopause journey.”
“What I really want for people here at Air New Zealand that are going through menopause and perimenopause is to know that they can show up and be who they are, regardless of what they're experiencing or what they are dealing with on any given day, to realise that that's okay. That there are people here that they can talk to, there are people here that are very willing to listen, and that we want them to turn up and just be themselves.”
Taking flight on the menopause journey
Air New Zealand is a few years into this work, and it started with conversations within the women’s network.
The group decided to hold an online event for staff on World Menopause Day, led by a menopause expert. It was called Let’s Talk About Menopause.
“The response we got to that was crazy. There were people that said thank you for actually talking about it,” says Lucy.
Christina points to other initiatives, like using various speakers to help lift education levels of Air New Zealand employees — including people in leadership roles.
Christina highlights an internal survey the company conducted.
She says it found that people who experience severe menopause symptoms often consider leaving the workplace. This is because they feel unable to manage their symptoms and they don't feel like the support is in place.
Christina saw an opportunity: “It was important for us to provide that support so that, quite frankly, women weren't faced with that decision of leaving the organisation.”
Menopause guides for employees and for leaders have become key support tools. One aspect is helping leaders have healthy conversations, in the right ways at the right times.
“As a leader, it can be really hard to know ‘how do I broach this conversation with my direct report? What shall I say? What shall I ask? And how much shall I ask?’”
Doug Grant is a leader with passion for helping others – he’s been at Air New Zealand for 30 years; 20 was spent in the skies as cabin crew.
“The vast majority of cabin crew are women in Air New Zealand. And so through that, I kind of grew up around women. It's made me a far more empathetic leader.”
Doug is now in Senior Manager Enablement & Engagement, Cabin Crew.
“For anyone who does things like shift work, we have pilots, cabin crew, and some of our engineering team who are our women. They have a number of things that can put pressure on their work environment.”
“When you layer on top of that some of the challenges around menopause, it becomes all the more important for all leaders to make sure that we are leading and supporting where we can.”
A uniform with options, a quiz for public awareness
Air New Zealand’s rolling out a new uniform, and Christina says “ensuring that the uniform is fit for people at different stages of their life is really important.”
Apparel Manager Karen Shierlaw is tasked with helping uniformed Air New Zealanders look and feel the part — and women’s health is on her mind.
“This time around, it's about fit and function and making all our staff, but particularly our women, feel comfortable and smart and proud in the uniform,” says Karen as she clasps the new material.
“Light and breezy. We've got short sleeve options, long sleeve options. And also on the dress, you can see we've got tabs. So, you start off with it tighter during the day and then you can loosen it out if you're flying or just having a bad day on the ground. Women always like to have options when it comes to how we feel when we're working.”
Wearer trials are underway, so some employees have an opportunity to try the uniform and provide feedback.
Air New Zealand has also leaned into public awareness about the menopause journey, through its online quiz.
“We had a really great opportunity to raise awareness across the New Zealand population through having some questions on our in-flight quiz, which many people look at on any given day. So, we took that opportunity to really raise that awareness through those questions.”
Start the journey; make progress
Christina Kennedy takes a chance reflect on Air New Zealand’s progress on this work, and what the future looks like.
“The journey absolutely needs to continue. We're at quite early stages. We've got a long, long way to go, but I'm super proud of the progress that we've made to date.”
“My message to other businesses would be, just start the conversation. It doesn't have to have a whole lot of money thrown at it. It doesn't have to take a whole lot of resource. It's just about some people being willing to open up the conversation and also to listen to your people.”