News UK - Why internal support groups matter

The Fertility Podcast

Welcome to another episode of The F Word at Work. This is our penultimate series and we'd love to hear more of your feedback, so please do leave a review in the app you are listening to - it's possible in Apple & Spotify. Now, as we head towards the end of the series, we're once again sharing an example of Best Practice from one of our members News UK and we're delighted to be joined by Hannah Spencer Head of Finance Transformation. Hannah joined our launch event which we helf for the organisation in July 2022 and has been doing incredible work within a working group to support HR in it's policy development and also to offer that essential peers support which you will hear her explain more about. Hannah also recently joined us to speak on a panel discussing fertility issues at work, with This Can Happen

*Trigger warning* we talk about pregnancy loss and trauma in this episode.

What we discussed:

• Hannah's ongoing fertility treatment journey.
• The struggle of going through treatment whilst in the workplace.
• Balancing work while going through treatment.
• When Hannah first spoke out about her fertility treatment
• The impact her treatment had on Hannah's career choices
• How Hannah's boss and teammates supported and encouraged her to accept opportunities that came her way.
• What pushed Hannah to share her story in the panel last July 2022
• Why people on the journey and going through treatment wouldn't want to talk openly about it
• Hannah's colleagues spoke about their personal journeys on the panel as well.
• The feedback after the panel and what  was been happening since
• How they're building fertility and infertility support groups at NewsUK
• How having peer support groups is key to becoming fertility-friendly
• The proactive side of what NewsUK has been doing with their support groups
• Ensuring managers know where to go and that there's a consistent approach to how people are looked after, despite everybody's experiences being different.
• Signposting managers to the right resources - creating a manager support pathway
• How resources are important to managers to identify and learn what the team needs if they are going through fertility/infertility treatment.
• Hannah's advice to anyone planning to start imposing the well-being agenda in the workplace
• Hannah's take on having boundaries whilst being a fertility advocate

Have a listen to our conversation with This Can Happen founder Zoe Sinclair here

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