Menopause in the Workplace

Part 1   >

Executive Summary

2019 saw an increasing media and political focus on supporting menopausal individuals in the workplace, including Labour pledging to make menopause policies obligatory. 

In April 2019, research commissioned by Health & Her revealed that 14 million working days were lost annually due to menopause symptoms with a further 370,000 menopausal people reporting that they considered resigning. 

Given that the symptoms of menopause often result in misdiagnosis, the figures are likely to be much higher.

If talent is lost at the latter stage of an individual’s career, this will also likely increase an organisation’s gender pay gap at a time when the majority of businesses are working hard to close the gap. 

Recognising workplace retention in the age category who are likely to suffer menopause symptoms (45-55) is a business imperative. We hosted a series of roundtable discussions to explore how best to tackle the problem. The results were fascinating. 

The purpose of this paper is to share these findings with you, which we hope will assist you in devising your own workplace strategy. 

Several key themes emerged from the roundtables:

• raising awareness among all staff of the potential symptoms and effects of the menopause was considered the most effective way to support women, trans and non-binary individuals and normalise menopause discussions in the workplace;
• a preference towards raising menopause awareness and support as part of a wider wellbeing initiative, rather than a specific diversity and/or inclusion initiative; and
• general workplace policies, such as agile and flexible working, could greatly assist menopausal individuals without singling out that they were going through the menopause. 

Part 1   >