Menopause at work: what small employers actually need to do

Support from your local HR consultant in Thanet to help you manage menopause in the workplace, protect your team and reduce your legal risk.

You might assume menopause is a personal health matter that doesn't really involve you as an employer.

That assumption could cost you a valued employee and an uncapped discrimination award.

Tribunal claims linked to menopause have jumped from 64 in 2022 to over 200 in 2024. The Equality and Human Rights Commission issued employer-specific guidance last year, and tribunals are watching closely.

Here's what you need to know and what you can do about it.

Simple adjustments that actually prevent problems

Let's start with the practical side, because that's usually what matters most to a busy business owner.

The adjustments that keep you out of trouble are rarely expensive. Most cost nothing at all. What counts is that you respond when someone tells you they're struggling.

Here are some common examples:

• Offering flexible start and finish times so someone dealing with fatigue or broken sleep can manage their day better
• Providing access to a fan or moving them to a cooler part of the building if hot flushes are an issue
• Allowing more frequent breaks or adjusting when breaks are taken
• Temporarily reducing workload or performance targets during periods when symptoms are severe

None of that requires a policy overhaul or a big spend. It does require managers who feel confident enough to have the conversation.

What happens when managers don't know what to say

I see this one a lot. An employee plucks up the courage to raise the subject, and the manager doesn't know how to respond. The conversation goes nowhere. The employee feels ignored.

From there, performance often dips. Morale drops. Eventually, the person either leaves or raises a formal grievance. That pattern appears again and again in tribunal decisions.

Training your managers to handle these conversations with sensitivity isn't a luxury. It's a basic safeguard for your business.

Myth: menopause isn't covered by discrimination law

There's a common belief that because menopause doesn't have its own protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, employers aren't really exposed.

That's wrong.

Where menopause symptoms are substantial and long-term, they can meet the legal definition of disability. Once that threshold is met, you have a duty to make reasonable adjustments. Failing to do so opens the door to a disability discrimination claim.

But it doesn't stop there. Claims can also be brought on the grounds of sex discrimination or age discrimination, because menopause is directly connected to both.

And if an employee feels she had no option but to resign because her symptoms weren't properly accommodated, you could face a constructive dismissal claim too.

Discrimination awards have no cap. In the 2023 case of Lynskey v Direct Line, a tribunal awarded over £64,000 after the employer failed to adjust performance targets for someone affected by severe symptoms. The tribunal specifically criticised the company's lack of compassion.

That was one case. The numbers are growing fast.

Myth: your sickness absence policy treats everyone fairly

Your absence management process might feel consistent and fair. But if it's triggering warnings based on a fixed number of sick days, and menopause-related absence is lumped in with everything else, you could have a problem.

Counting menopause absence the same way you count a cold or a stomach bug is potentially discriminatory. You need to think about whether those absences should be recorded separately and whether your trigger points need adjusting for this specific situation.

This is one of the most common areas where employers get caught out. It's also one of the easiest to fix once you're aware of it. A review of your HR consultancy services in Thanet provider or your internal policies can sort this quickly.

The commercial cost of doing nothing

Women between 45 and 55 are the fastest-growing group in the UK workforce. Many hold experienced or senior positions.

One in ten women have left a job because of menopause symptoms. If that person is someone who holds knowledge, relationships and expertise that took years to build, the cost of losing them is significant.

Replacing an experienced employee can run to two or three times their annual salary once you account for recruitment costs and lost institutional knowledge. Compare that to the cost of a fan, a flexible start time or a conversation handled well.

The maths speaks for itself.

Questions worth asking yourself

If you're not sure where your business stands, here are a few things to think about:

• Do your managers know what to do if someone raises menopause as an issue affecting their work?
• Could your sickness absence triggers inadvertently penalise someone for menopause-related absence?
• Have you got any kind of written approach or policy that covers this?
• If an employee left tomorrow and cited lack of support, would you be confident in your position?

If the answer to any of those is "no" or "I'm not sure", it's worth having a conversation sooner rather than later.

How I can help

I can help you put a menopause policy in place that works for your business.

And I'll review your absence management triggers to make sure they're not creating risk you haven't spotted.

As an outsourced HR consultant in Thanet, I work with small businesses to deal with exactly these kinds of issues before they become expensive problems.

If you'd like to have a practical chat about where you stand, get in touch and let's book a discovery call.