Menopause Action Plans Are Coming. Let's Make Sure We Get Them Right.

Menopause Action Plans are a good idea. I want to start there, because I do think it matters that employers are being encouraged to take menopause seriously and think more deliberately about how they support women at work.

For years, those of us working in women’s health have been making the case that menopause can have a very real impact on working life. Some women experience significant symptoms, some need treatment or adjustments, some lose confidence, and some reach a point where staying in work starts to feel too difficult. Managers can also feel unsure about what to say or how to help, which means women are often left to work things out for themselves.

So the fact that menopause has moved firmly onto the workplace agenda is progress.

At the same time, I think we need to be a little more thoughtful about what happens next.

From 2026, employers with 250 or more employees can voluntarily publish an action plan alongside their gender pay gap data, setting out what they are doing to support employees experiencing menopause, and subject to legislation these plans are expected to become mandatory from spring 2027. The government guidance recommends a range of actions, including manager training, occupational health support, workplace adjustments, support networks, risk assessment and policy review.

All of that makes sense.

My concern is not that organisations are being asked to do something. It is that, in the rush to demonstrate action, menopause support could very quickly become another compliance exercise.

The danger of doing the “bare minimum”

I have already had conversations with people inside organisations who are hearing questions along the lines of, “What is the bare minimum we need to do?”

I understand why organisations ask that. HR teams are stretched, businesses have competing priorities and any new reporting expectation naturally creates questions about what is required. But that wording tells us something important, because once the conversation becomes about what needs to go into the plan rather than what women in that organisation are actually experiencing, we are already at risk of missing the point.

A policy can be written. A webinar can be booked. A menopause champion can be appointed. A document can be uploaded.

And technically, the organisation has done something.

But none of those things necessarily tell us whether life at work has improved for the woman who has not slept properly for three nights, the employee who is dealing with debilitating symptoms, the senior leader whose confidence has taken a hit, or the person who still does not feel able to tell her manager what is going on.

That distinction matters.

An action is not the same thing as an outcome.

We need to be careful about the story we tell about menopause

For me, this is where we need much more nuance in the conversation.

One of the risks with workplace menopause support is that we can become so focused on proving that menopause is serious that we accidentally create a new stereotype around it. There has been a completely understandable push over the last few years to make employers recognise that menopause can have a substantial impact on some women. That message has been necessary because women’s experiences were dismissed for a very long time.

But there is another side to this.

Not every woman has a difficult menopause. Not every woman wants or needs workplace support. Not every woman wants to identify herself through menopause at work. And not every woman in midlife is struggling.

That matters because women in their 40s, 50s and beyond are often at the height of their experience, confidence, expertise and leadership potential. They may be running teams, leading organisations, making major decisions and contributing some of their most valuable work.

If we are not careful, the very initiatives designed to support women could contribute to a new unconscious narrative in which a woman of a certain age is automatically seen as a potential health problem, a retention risk or someone who might not be able to cope.

That would be a pretty serious unintended consequence.

The recent BMJ discussion on workplace support through menopause is important for exactly this reason. It asks us to think beyond the assumption that more intervention is automatically better and to consider how menopause is framed, how women are positioned and what workplace initiatives may unintentionally reinforce.

The government’s own evidence review also raises this issue. It notes that the evidence base around workplace interventions is still developing and that women’s experiences are shaped by social and cultural context. It also highlights concern that workplace initiatives could potentially increase stigma or discrimination towards older women if they are not designed carefully.

That is the kind of nuance I think we need much more of.

We can take menopause seriously without catastrophising it. We can make support available without defining women by their symptoms. And we can ask employers to act without frightening them into submission.

Please do not scare employers into action

That last point is particularly important to me because Menopause Action Plans are, inevitably, creating a new commercial market. Whenever a new workplace requirement appears, a whole ecosystem of products, programmes, accreditations, training packages and consultancy quickly follows.

Some of that support will be excellent and genuinely useful.

But there is also a temptation to sell through fear.

Employers are told they are at risk, their managers might say the wrong thing, they could lose talented women, they could face a discrimination claim, they need a policy, they need training, they need a badge, they need to act now.

Fear gets attention, but I am not convinced it creates the best organisational change.

From an organisational psychology perspective, compliance can be very effective at getting people to complete an action. It is much less reliable when it comes to changing culture, behaviour, trust or psychological safety.

If managers are made to feel that menopause is a legal minefield, they may become more nervous rather than more confident. Instead of thinking, “How can I support this person?”, they start wondering whether they are allowed to ask a question at all.

That is not the outcome we want.

We want menopause conversations to become more normal, more human and easier to navigate, not something managers approach with fear.

Start with diagnosis, not solutions

This is also why I think Menopause Action Plans should start with diagnosis rather than solutions.

Before deciding what should go into the plan, organisations need to understand what is actually happening in their own workplace.

Do women feel comfortable raising health issues with their managers? Are there differences between office-based and frontline staff? Is flexible working technically available but culturally discouraged? Are absence processes creating unnecessary difficulties for people with fluctuating health conditions? Do managers feel confident having these conversations? Are there barriers in the physical working environment? Do women feel their health is taken seriously?

And just as importantly, what is already working well?

This is basic organisational psychology.

You diagnose before you intervene.

Otherwise, every organisation ends up reaching for the same set of solutions whether or not they are relevant. A menopause café may be incredibly valuable in one organisation and virtually unused in another. A dedicated policy may provide clarity somewhere else and simply duplicate what already exists. Manager training may be the biggest priority in one workplace, while another may have excellent managers but rigid job design that makes symptom management almost impossible.

The action plan should not be built around what looks impressive.

It should be built around the problems that actually need solving.

Do not make women responsible for fixing the system

There is another unintended consequence I think employers need to watch carefully, which is placing even more responsibility on women themselves.

Workplace women’s health initiatives are often driven by the same women they are designed to support. A network is created, a champion is appointed, a café is launched, and suddenly a small group of passionate employees are organising events, sharing resources, educating colleagues and informally supporting other women alongside their actual jobs.

Sometimes they genuinely enjoy that role.

But organisations need to be careful not to outsource responsibility for systemic change to enthusiastic women.

Employee networks and champions can be incredibly valuable, but they need proper support, boundaries and resources. They should complement good management, fair policies and thoughtful job design, not compensate for the absence of them.

Create options, not assumptions

The same principle applies more broadly.

Good menopause support should create options rather than assumptions.

It should make flexible working available without assuming someone needs it. It should offer adjustments without forcing disclosure. It should educate managers without encouraging them to interpret every change in a midlife woman’s behaviour through the lens of menopause.

It should also recognise that women’s experiences are shaped by far more than hormones alone. Caring responsibilities, disability, work stress, mental health, ethnicity, socioeconomic circumstances and wider life events can all affect someone’s experience of midlife and work.

The answer is not to reduce every challenge a woman faces in her 40s or 50s to menopause.

It is to make workplaces responsive enough to support people as their needs change.

Measure experience, not activity

This is where measurement becomes really important too.

One of the easiest ways for Menopause Action Plans to become performative is to measure activity instead of impact.

We trained 300 managers. We launched a policy. We created a network. We ran four awareness sessions.

All of those things may be useful, but they tell us almost nothing about whether the employee experience improved.

A more meaningful set of questions would be whether women feel more comfortable asking for support, whether managers feel more confident having conversations, whether adjustments are being implemented effectively, whether employees know where to go for help, whether different groups of staff are experiencing support differently, and whether anything introduced has had an unintended negative effect.

Most importantly, organisations should ask women themselves what has changed.

That is where an action plan becomes useful.

Not because it proves something was done, but because it gives the organisation a structure for learning what is and is not working.

Keep menopause within the bigger picture

I also hope employers resist the temptation to create yet another silo around menopause.

Menopause matters, but it sits within a much bigger picture of women’s health, ageing, job design, leadership, flexibility, caring responsibilities, psychological safety and workplace culture.

Someone experiencing insomnia, anxiety or cognitive changes during perimenopause may need support, but so might somebody dealing with PMDD, endometriosis, PMOS, fertility treatment, pregnancy loss or another long-term health condition.

This is why I would like to see organisations use Menopause Action Plans as a starting point for a broader question about how well their workplace supports women across their working lives.

Rather than repeatedly creating a separate policy, network and initiative for every health issue, we should be asking whether the workplace itself is designed with enough flexibility, trust and humanity for people to manage changing health needs and still perform, progress and lead.

That feels much more ambitious than a menopause policy.

And much more useful.

The real test is whether women’s experience of work improves

I am glad employers are being asked to think about menopause. For too long, women’s hormonal health barely registered in conversations about work despite the impact it can have for some women, and that needed to change.

But more attention also brings responsibility.

We need to make sure we do not catastrophise menopause, reinforce stereotypes about older women or create programmes designed primarily to demonstrate compliance. We need to resist measuring success by how many policies, webinars or badges an organisation has accumulated, and keep asking a much more important question instead:

Has this actually made women’s experience of work better?

If Menopause Action Plans encourage organisations to listen to women, understand their workforce, train managers well, remove unnecessary barriers, build flexibility and create cultures where people can talk about their health without being judged, they could be an important step forward.

If they become another document uploaded once a year because somebody said we had to have one, we will have missed the point entirely.

The goal was never a Menopause Action Plan.

The goal was better workplaces for women.

Want to make sure your Menopause Action Plan actually makes a difference?

At See Her Thrive, we help organisations go beyond policies and tick-box activity to understand what women are actually experiencing at work, identify the barriers that matter most, and build practical, evidence-informed support that fits their culture and workforce.

Our approach is grounded in organisational psychology, women’s health expertise and real-world workplace experience, with a focus on meaningful change rather than simply demonstrating that something has been done.

Whether you are developing your first Menopause Action Plan, reviewing existing support or looking more broadly at women’s health across your organisation, we can help you take a thoughtful, strategic approach.

Explore our services or get in touch to talk about what would be most useful for your organisation.