Workplace Wellbeing for Women Is Not a Perk. It Is Infrastructure.

Workplace wellbeing is often framed as something soft, optional, or nice to have. Yet when we look at how women actually experience work, that framing no longer holds.

Women spend a significant portion of their lives at work. However, women’s health is still widely treated as separate from productivity, performance, and organisational success. Why does this disconnect persist, when the evidence tells a very different story?

The most important truth is this. Work does not happen in spreadsheets or job descriptions. It happens in bodies. Bodies that experience pain, fatigue, hormonal shifts, sleep disruption, and chronic stress. When organisations ignore that reality, performance does not remain unaffected. It simply suffers quietly.

Why This Conversation Keeps Reappearing in Professional Spaces

Workplace wellbeing keeps resurfacing because current performance models are under strain. Employees are not suddenly more sensitive. They are responding to environments that demand sustained output without sufficient recovery.

UK research provides strong evidence that wellbeing and productivity are directly linked. A large study found that a one-point increase in employee happiness was associated with a 12 percent increase in productivity (Bellet, De Neve and Ward, 2024). If wellbeing were truly fluffy, would the productivity signal be this clear?

Besides that, ongoing uncertainty, restructuring, and workload intensity have become normalised. How long can people realistically function under constant pressure before performance declines?

These conversations keep emerging because organisations are reaching the limits of what people can absorb.

What People Are Responding To When Wellbeing Is Questioned

When wellbeing is dismissed, people react because they recognise the gap between lived experience and organisational language. Psychological safety, fairness, and trust are not abstract concepts. They shape how people think, focus, and perform.

A major meta-analysis found that psychological safety is strongly associated with task performance, engagement, and learning behaviours (Frazier et al., 2017). What happens to performance when people do not feel safe enough to speak, disclose difficulties, or ask for support?

Creating psychologically safe environments is not easy. It requires consistent leadership behaviour, not one-off initiatives. Professionals understand this complexity, which is why wellbeing framed as infrastructure resonates far more than wellbeing framed as a perk.

The Hidden Cost of Ignoring How Work Is Experienced in the Body

Work is not experienced purely cognitively. It is experienced physically and emotionally, day after day.

Fatigue, untreated pain, sleep disruption, hormonal fluctuations, iron, Vitamin D deficiency, and chronic stress do not stay at home when a woman comes to work. They come with her quietly. How often do organisations assume full capacity when the body is already compensating?

Research consistently shows that presenteeism costs more than absenteeism. A critical review of the literature found strong evidence that mental health difficulties are associated with significant productivity loss, primarily through people working while unwell rather than taking time off (de Oliveira et al., 2023).

What does this mean in practice? People are present, but not functioning at their best.

When Symptoms Are Normalised, Performance Suffers

Severe period pain, heavy bleeding, hormonal disruption, and emotional exhaustion are still widely labelled as normal. Yet normal does not mean harmless.

A nationwide study of 32,748 women found that menstruation-related symptoms led to substantial productivity loss, with presenteeism accounting for most of the impact (Schoep et al., 2019). Women often continue working despite pain, brain fog, and reduced concentration. How visible is that cost to managers?

More recent research shows that many women work through dysmenorrhea even when symptoms significantly affect focus and energy (Cook and van den Hoek, 2023). The issue is not resilience. It is the absence of supportive structures.

When organisations normalise pushing through, performance declines quietly and predictably.

Why Traditional Wellbeing Approaches Fall Short

Many wellbeing strategies fail not because they are well-intentioned, but because they address symptoms rather than systems.

Yoga sessions, resilience workshops, or wellbeing apps are often added on top of already demanding workloads. Is it realistic to expect recovery without changing the conditions that cause strain?

Systematic reviews show that workplace wellbeing interventions can improve outcomes, but effects are often modest and short-lived when they are not embedded into organisational culture (Shiri et al., 2023). Screening alone does not improve outcomes unless it is linked to meaningful support pathways (Strudwick et al., 2023).

The problem is not effort. The problem is design.

Wellbeing as Infrastructure, Not Intervention

Infrastructure shapes behaviour even when no one is watching. Policies, workload expectations, leadership responses, and cultural norms all send powerful signals.

When wellbeing is treated as infrastructure, organisations design systems that reduce unnecessary strain before burnout occurs. This approach aligns with evidence linking wellbeing to sustained performance and retention.

UK research demonstrates that organisations with higher employee wellbeing show stronger productivity outcomes over time (Bellet, De Neve and Ward, 2024). If wellbeing influences output this directly, can it really be considered optional?

What a Cycle-Aware Approach Changes at Organisational Level

A cycle-aware approach recognises that energy, concentration, and resilience fluctuate across the menstrual cycle, perimenopause, and menopause. This is biology, not weakness.

Research shows that menstrual pain-related presenteeism is strongly linked to symptom severity and disclosure context (Cook and van den Hoek, 2023). Menopause research similarly shows that unmanaged symptoms negatively affect performance, confidence, and career progression (O’Neill et al., 2023).

Supporting women’s health at work does not mean diagnosing employees. It means anticipating variation rather than penalising it. How different would performance conversations look if fluctuation were expected rather than judged?

Support Does Not Start and End at the Office Door

Sustainable performance is shaped by what happens both inside and outside work. Education, early support, and access to evidence-informed resources reduce long-term strain.

This is also why I work both with organisations and directly with women. Workplace culture and personal health are interconnected systems, not separate silos.

What This Means for Leaders and HR Right Now

Leaders are not expected to become medical experts. However, they are responsible for creating conditions where people can perform sustainably.

Evidence shows that training managers to support mental health improves knowledge, attitudes, and supportive behaviours (Gayed et al., 2018). More recent research links line manager training to improved retention and reduced long-term sickness absence (Hassard et al., 2024).

Ask yourself:

• Do our policies reflect how work is actually experienced?
• Are managers confident responding to health-related disclosures?
• Where might hidden presenteeism be costing us more than we realise?

Practical Steps Organisations Can Take Today

• Review absence and wellbeing policies through a women’s health lens
• Train managers to respond appropriately to menstrual and menopause-related disclosures
• Normalise conversations about energy, recovery, and workload capacity
• Integrate cycle-aware thinking into wellbeing strategies

👉 Download the Women’s Workplace Audit for HR to identify hidden risks and opportunities.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will talking about women’s health reduce productivity?
Evidence suggests the opposite. When symptoms are acknowledged and supported, presenteeism and disengagement decrease.

Is this relevant in male-dominated workplaces?
Yes. Mixed-gender teams benefit through improved retention, morale, and team performance.

Does this require medical data from employees?
No. Effective support focuses on education, flexibility, and culture, not diagnosis.

Building Resilient Workplaces Starts with Reality

Healthy women build resilient workplaces. Productivity improves not by pushing harder, but by caring better.

When organisations treat wellbeing as infrastructure, they reduce risk, retain talent, and create cultures where people can perform without burning out. The question is no longer whether this matters. It is whether organisations are ready to respond.

References

Bellet, C.S., De Neve, J.E. and Ward, G. (2024) Does employee happiness have an impact on productivity? Management Science, 70(3), pp. 1656–1679. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4766

Cook, A., Smith, J. et al. (2023) Period pain presenteeism: investigating associations of working while experiencing dysmenorrhea. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0167482X.2023.2236294

de Oliveira, C., Saka, M., Bone, L. and Jacobs, R. (2023) The role of mental health on workplace productivity: a critical review of the literature. Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 21(2), pp. 167–193. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36376610/

Frazier, M.L., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R.L., Pezeshkan, A. and Vracheva, V. (2017) Psychological safety: a meta-analytic review and extension. Personnel Psychology, 70(1), pp. 113–165. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305488140_Psychological_Safety_A_Meta-Analytic_Review_And_Extension

O’Neill, M.T., Jones, V. and Reid, A. (2023) Impact of menopausal symptoms on work and careers: a cross-sectional study. Occupational Medicine, 73(6), pp. 332–338. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10540666/

Schoep, M.E., Adang, E.M.M., Maas, J.W.M., De Bie, B., Aarts, J.W.M. and Nieboer, T.E. (2019) Productivity loss due to menstruation-related symptoms: a nationwide cross-sectional survey among 32,748 women. BMJ Open, 9(6), e026186. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/6/e026186