Guest blog by Amy McKeown, Workplace Health Strategy Consultant
The RSM and SOM conference, Women’s health at work: Policy, progress and public perception, took place in May at a significant moment for women’s health policy and workplace practice. Designed primarily for occupational health practitioners, and also relevant to HR professionals and managers, the event examined how women’s health, employment rights, policy change, and public expectations are reshaping responsibilities at work, and how occupational health can help employers respond in a clinically grounded and practical way. The programme included sessions on strategic context, legal change, research gaps, specific women’s health issues, and practical workplace support. It also included Professor Ira Madan’s Apothecaries Lecture, The price of labour: Work and women’s health through the evidence lens, and the presentation of the Apothecaries Medal by the Master Apothecary.
A recurring theme was that women’s health at work often falls between systems. Symptoms may be treated as a private medical matter by one part of the system, a performance issue by another, and a policy matter by HR. Menopause was one clear example. Presentations highlighted the risk that anxiety, low mood, sleep disruption, or cognitive symptoms may be managed through a mental health or performance lens before anyone has considered whether hormonal change, work design or workplace conditions are contributing factors.
This is precisely where occupational health has an important role. It is one of the few disciplines designed to consider health, work, risk, function, safety, and organisational context together. That matters because good support for women’s health at work cannot depend only on awareness, goodwill, or policy wording. It needs professional judgement about how symptoms interact with the demands of a particular job, what adjustments may be reasonable, and how risk can be reduced for both the individual and the organisation.
The wider policy context is also changing. The renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England, published in April 2026, gives this discussion a broader NHS frame. It sets out a ten-year approach and is aligned with the NHS 10 Year Health Plan and its three major shifts: from sickness to prevention, from hospital to community, and from analogue to digital. For women’s health, this means earlier intervention, more care closer to home, better use of digital tools, and redesigned pathways for issues such as heavy periods, menopause, and gynaecology. The strategy recognises the scale of the challenge: women in England spend more of their lives in poor health than men, gynaecology waits have risen to an average of 15 weeks, and the average time to diagnosis for endometriosis is around nine years and four months.
The strategy also includes specific investment and commitments. It includes up to £259 million over three years to expand WorkWell, providing early integrated health and work support for people with health conditions, including women’s health conditions, so they can get into work and stay in work.
For occupational health, the important point is that women’s health is not only a healthcare issue. Women experience heavy periods, endometriosis, menopause, pregnancy loss, fertility treatment, mental health symptoms, and caring responsibilities while also managing shift patterns, uniforms, absence policies, performance expectations, and return-to-work conversations. If the NHS is moving towards prevention and more integrated neighbourhood-based care, workplaces should be recognised as one of the settings where prevention and early support can happen. Occupational health is a practical route into that setting.
Employer expectations are moving too. Employers with 250 or more employees now have the option to publish voluntary action plans alongside their gender pay gap data. Subject to legislation, these are expected to become mandatory from spring 2027. The plans are intended to show the steps employers are taking to improve workplace gender equality, including action to address the gender pay gap and support employees experiencing menopause. Employers must choose at least one action to address their gender pay gap and one action to support employees experiencing menopause.
This is an important opportunity for occupational health to be involved at the design stage; not simply once individual cases have become complex. A credible menopause action plan should be informed by an understanding of health, work, risk, and reasonable adjustments. It should ask whether experienced women are leaving at higher rates, whether absence data shows patterns worth exploring, whether cognitive symptoms are being misread as performance concerns, whether managers know when to seek occupational health advice, and whether women in uniforms, PPE, hot environments, shift work or safety-critical roles are being properly considered.
Practical support does not need to be complicated, but it does need to be appropriate to the person and the role. It may include temperature control, uniform flexibility, access to toilets and washing facilities, adjustments to shifts, flexibility for appointments, temporary workload changes, support after disrupted sleep, and planned review before performance concerns escalate. The value of occupational health is in helping employers assess which adjustments are clinically informed, proportionate, safe, and likely to be effective.
The same principle applies beyond menopause. Pregnancy loss leave is important but leave alone does not answer the return-to-work question. Occupational health can help define what “fit to return” means in practice, including timing, phased return, workload, psychological impact, manager communication and whether further clinical support is needed. Menstrual health, endometriosis, pelvic floor symptoms, gynaecological waiting times, perimenopause, mental health, and caring responsibilities all interact with work in ways that are still poorly understood and inconsistently managed.
A strong theme from the day was the need for gender-sensitive risk assessment. This should not be misread as a women-only framework. It is better risk assessment. It asks whether standard approaches are missing relevant factors: thermal environment, night work, fatigue, cognitive load, ergonomic design, lone working, regular attendance requirements, caring responsibilities, and patterns of exposure that may affect men and women differently. Occupational health should be central to shaping these questions where health, symptoms, exposure, recovery, fatigue, reproductive health, or mental health are involved.
Good practice also needs to be robust in the real world. Reasonable adjustments are not a peripheral issue in women’s health at work; they are often the practical mechanism through which employers meet both health needs and legal duties. Occupational health has a central role in advising on adjustments that are clinically informed, proportionate, safe, and relevant to the demands of the job. The earlier occupational health is involved, the more likely it is that issues can be managed constructively before they escalate into absence, performance concerns, grievances, or legal risk. This reduces risk for women and for organisations.
The conference also pointed to research gaps that occupational health should help close. These include pregnancy loss and return to work, menopause and mental health screening, gynaecological conditions and work, intersectionality in occupational health access and outcomes, and whether menopause action plans are improving retention, reducing absence, and supporting experienced women to remain in work.
The next stage is now implementation. Employers need practical, proportionate, and evidence-informed support. Occupational health is well placed to provide it, bringing together clinical judgement, workplace understanding, legal awareness and expertise in reasonable adjustments. Involving occupational health early is one of the clearest ways to turn policy into safe, fair, and effective practice in real organisations.