As a woman working at a senior level in business, how have you gone about having those conversations with the, and I'm sorry to stereotype them, we don't mean to, dear men on boards, but the middle-aged men on boards, how comfortable, how open do you think they are to those conversations?

I mean from my personal work experience because I've always worked in employee benefits it's a bit self-selecting because because the companies I work for tend to be kind of trailblazers and that sort of thing but I've definitely seen other companies struggle and the message to get across and a little bit of eye rolling and oh god but I think what I was saying earlier a lot of it is that snowball effect because there are the companies who'll get dragged up because their peers are doing it and actually if you're not looking after your top talent somebody else will and they'll leave so actually the companies which are looking really progressive and if you're early 40s and you're on the cusp of this and actually you read an article saying a competitor of yours really looks after this demographic and they've got this great stuff in place you might go hmm actually I don't feel like that there I might go and apply for a job and that is what companies don't want so there's obviously the soft bit around it and just being a nice place to work and big employer but But the reality is, is the retention piece is that people not leaving your business, especially with the menopause, but they're often at the senior level because they're older.

You don't want them to go.

Help them stay.

Help them work through this or give them the flexibility they need.

And then your competitor doesn't get.

There are two ways you can look at employee benefits.

i keep making wide eyes at katie's i'm like what who knew this makes me think there's also a question here about changing culture for men as well when i started work 20 years ago it was totally normal to make a oh she's on her period joke about somebody who had raised probably a quite practical point in a meeting but that was considered normal and I would have said it was considered rude maybe till only probably about 10 if that years ago and kind of unacceptable from that point but it also makes me think that we don't have any of that language around men's mental health men's hormonal health are we at risk here of creating a culture which just talks about this as a women