Supporting employees through menopause before it costs you

Guidance from an HR consultant in Ipswich on how to handle menopause at work, protect your business from tribunal claims, and keep your best people.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission published new employer guidance on menopause in 2024.

Tribunals are already using it as a benchmark for how businesses should be responding.

Menopause-related claims have jumped from 64 in 2022 to over 200 in 2024. That's more than three times the number in just two years.

If you haven't looked at your policies recently, you're behind.

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 the fixes here are genuinely straightforward. Most of them cost little or nothing.

When someone tells you their menopause symptoms are affecting their work, the single most important thing is that you respond. You listen. You act.

The kinds of changes that make a real difference include:

• Allowing flexible start or finish times so someone dealing with broken sleep can manage their energy better

• Providing access to a fan or moving someone to a cooler part of the building

• Offering more frequent breaks during the day

• Temporarily adjusting targets or workload when symptoms are at their worst

None of those require a budget sign-off. They require a manager who's willing to have an honest conversation.

And that's where a lot of businesses fall down. Not because they don't care, but because the conversation feels awkward and nobody's been shown how to handle it properly.

Where the legal risk sits

Menopause isn't a standalone protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. But that doesn't mean it falls outside the law.

Where symptoms are substantial and long-term, they can meet the legal definition of disability. Once that threshold is crossed, you have a duty to make reasonable adjustments. If you don't, you're exposed to a disability discrimination claim.

There are other routes to a claim too. Because menopause is linked to both sex and age, an employee could also bring a case on either of those grounds.

Then there's constructive dismissal. If someone feels they had no option but to resign because their symptoms weren't accommodated, that's a potential claim as well.

One important detail: discrimination awards have no cap. In the 2023 case of Lynskey v Direct Line, a tribunal awarded over £64,000 after the employer didn't adjust performance targets for an employee with severe symptoms. The tribunal specifically criticised the lack of compassion shown. And that was a single case. The volume of claims is growing fast.

Your absence policy might be the biggest risk

I see this one regularly. A business has a sickness absence policy that triggers a formal warning after a set number of days off. Menopause-related absence gets lumped in with everything else.

That's potentially discriminatory.

You need to think about whether menopause-related absences should be recorded separately from general sickness. You also need to consider whether your trigger points should be adjusted for someone whose absence is connected to a condition that could qualify as a disability.

If your HR consultancy services in Ipswich haven't flagged this to you before, it's worth reviewing now. It's one of the most common ways employers get caught out at tribunal.

Managers who freeze up

The other pattern I see again and again is a manager who simply doesn't know what to say.

An employee raises the topic. The manager feels uncomfortable. The conversation goes nowhere. The employee walks away feeling unsupported, their performance drops, and eventually they either leave or raise a formal grievance.

Tribunals have seen this play out repeatedly. The issue isn't bad intent. It's a lack of preparation. Managers need to know how to respond with empathy and confidence, and most of them haven't been given any guidance on how to do that.

A short training session can change this entirely. It doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to happen.

The commercial argument you can't ignore

Women aged 45 to 55 are the fastest-growing group in the UK workforce. Many of them hold experienced or senior positions. They carry knowledge and capability that's hard to replace.

One in ten women have left a job because of menopause symptoms. That's a staggering number when you think about the cost of losing someone at that level.

Recruitment, onboarding, lost institutional knowledge. Replacing an experienced employee can cost two to three times their salary once you add all of that up.

Compare that to the cost of a fan, a flexible start time, or a conversation handled well. The maths is obvious.

Retaining your experienced people isn't just the right thing to do. It's the financially smart thing to do.

Questions worth asking yourself

Before you move on with your day, take a moment to consider:

• Does your sickness absence policy treat menopause-related absence differently from general sickness?

• Would your managers feel confident having a supportive conversation about menopause symptoms?

• Have you reviewed your policies since the EHRC published its 2024 guidance?

• Could an employee in your business feel they had no choice but to leave because their symptoms weren't taken seriously?

If any of those give you pause, it's worth getting some support.

How I can help

I can help you put together a menopause policy that's practical and clear.

I can also deliver manager training so your team knows how to handle these conversations with sensitivity and within the law.

And I'll review your absence triggers to make sure they're not accidentally putting you at risk of a discrimination claim.

As an outsourced HR consultant in Ipswich, I work with small businesses who want to get this right without overcomplicating things.

If you're unsure where you stand, let's have a conversation. No pressure, no jargon. Just a practical chat about what your business needs.

Get in touch and we'll find a time that works.