Menopause in the Workplace: A Practical Guide for Employers

Talking Menopause aims to help organisations ensure they are confidently talking about menopause. Educating their workforce, especially the managers, is one of the best ways to do this. No matter how large or small your organisation is, your employees will, in some way, be affected by menopause either directly or indirectly. Taking steps to avoid reduced productivity, absenteeism, and poor staff retention by raising awareness and developing menopause confidence across your organisation can make a massive difference.

Be Supportive

Around 1 in 4 menopausal individuals will experience debilitating symptoms such as hot flushes, night sweats, brain fog, anxiety, low moods, headaches, fatigue, palpitations and more. For many, this will affect their job performance, so organisations should recognise when support is needed, and managers should be able to discuss support options with their employees.

Being empathetic and supportive can be incredibly helpful to someone suffering from menopause or any other health condition. If a leader or manager thinks someone is suffering from a health condition, asking an open question such as “how are you doing at the moment, is everything okay?” can open a discussion and make a big difference.

Educate the Workforce

Raising awareness of the symptoms and effects of menopause can help people going through the experience feel more comfortable if they are struggling with symptoms and need support. It can be daunting for an employee to talk about menopause with their manager – from our Talking Menopause surveys only 10% do - so if managers are educated and supportive, this can make it much easier for team members to discuss.

At Talking Menopause, we provide consulting services to help achieve appropriate visibility within organisational context and configuration to help support a cultural shift towards normalising menopause in the workplace. We have various solutions, including webinars, targeted workshops, and wellbeing campaigns. We can deliver our programmes in multiple ways, such as full-day courses, comprehensive sessions targeted to specific employee groups, team coaching, online learning, and one-to-one sessions.

Allowance for Menopause

Guidelines for sickness should be updated to include menopause symptoms, and organisations should try to be as flexible as possible to the needs of their employees. This might mean allowing ad hoc flexible working to ensure those going through menopause can still perform at a high standard and be as engaged and productive as possible.

Risk Assessments and Adjustments

As part of an employer’s legal duty to carry out workplace assessments to ensure the health and safety of their employees, employers should be willing to make any necessary adjustments for menopausal employees to allow them to carry out their jobs to the best of their ability.

Organisations should carry out risk assessments for the specific needs of menopausal employees where necessary. The checks can include temperature and ventilation in the workplace, workplace uniforms and PPE, access to toilets, cold water and much more.

If you want to learn more about how Talking Menopause can help your business become more menopause confident, our team are here to help. Contact us by calling 0844 995 0090, emailing hello@talkingmenopause.co.uk or filling in our online contact form, and someone will be in touch as soon as possible.