Guest blog by Emma Persand
This day is a great opportunity to reflect on progress in supporting women’s health in the workplace. Menopause has rightly gained attention as an important workplace issue. New Government guidance encourages employers to offer occupational health advice to employees experiencing menopause, recognising the valuable role occupational health (OH) professionals can play in helping employers understand how menopause may affect work and what support may be appropriate. In parallel, larger employers are expected to develop Menopause Action Plans. These developments represent an important cultural shift. However, organisations are asking: how should menopause be operationalised within workplace systems?
Awareness helps reduce stigma and enable more open conversations between employees and managers. However, awareness alone does not always provide organisations with the practical tools needed to manage situations where menopause may interact with work demands or workplace environments. Managers frequently ask questions such as:
- When should OH be involved?
- How should menopause be considered in workplace risk assessments?
- What constitutes a reasonable workplace adjustment?
- How can responses remain proportionate without medicalising menopause?
OH already provides frameworks for addressing situations where health factors interact with work. In many areas of OH professionals routinely assess how functional capacity interacts with job demands, workplace exposures and organisational systems. From this perspective, menopause can be understood not solely through the lens of symptoms, but also through how menopausal transition may influence functional work capacity in certain contexts.
For example, some individuals may experience changes affecting thermoregulation, sleep quality, fatigue tolerance, concentration or musculoskeletal comfort. In some work environments these factors may interact with workplace issues such as shift patterns, temperature exposure, workload pressures or safety-critical tasks. This does not mean menopause should be medicalised. Rather, it highlights that menopause may, in certain circumstances, intersect with workplace systems.
OH is uniquely positioned to support organisations in navigating these complexities. The recently published government guidance encouraging employers to offer OH advice to employees experiencing menopause reinforces the value of OH expertise in helping employers understand how health factors may interact with work. OH can support organisations in:
- Helping employers translate menopause awareness into practical workplace management processes - advising on how menopause considerations may fit within existing risk assessment systems, management procedures and OH referral pathways.
- Providing individual functional assessments where symptoms significantly affect work participation or where safety-critical roles are involved. OH advice can help identify appropriate workplace adjustments that support both employee wellbeing and organisational safety responsibilities.
- OH can contribute to organisational governance and monitoring. As employers develop menopause action plans, OH may help organisations review referral patterns, identify recurring workplace risk factors, and support evaluation of whether workplace systems are functioning effectively.
Menopause action plans represent an important step in embedding menopause considerations within organisational policies. Policies alone are unlikely to deliver meaningful change unless they are supported by clear operational pathways. Employers will need to ensure that managers understand:
- when workplace adjustments may be appropriate
- how menopause considerations fit within existing risk management processes
- when escalation to occupational health should occur
- how decisions should be documented and reviewed
OH can design and implement these processes, linking them with workplace risk assessment frameworks, so factors such as fatigue, thermal comfort, workload pressures and welfare access are appropriately considered. Escalation pathways to OH can ensure that more complex cases receive appropriate professional support while maintaining appropriate boundaries between managerial responsibilities and clinical care.
By documenting approaches, sharing case studies and contributing to professional discussion, OH can help shape how menopause is integrated into workplace governance in a way that supports both employee wellbeing and organisational effectiveness. By supporting employers to integrate menopause within existing OH systems, OH can help ensure that workplace responses are consistent, proportionate and grounded in good occupational health practice.
In doing so, OH can continue to contribute to creating workplaces where women are supported through every stage of their working lives.
Emma Persand RGN QN has been involved in national discussions on menopause and work and is developing the Menopause Workplace Governance Framework, which supports employers and occupational health professionals in translating menopause policies into practical workplace processes.