Menopause Action Plans: five leadership decisions to capture today

By Sam Blevins, Health and Wellbeing Engagement and Delivery Manager, Spire Occupational Health

The mandatory requirement to publish a Menopause Action Plan is now firmly on the horizon. By April 2027, UK employers with 250 employees or more must outline the practical steps and evidence-based actions they’re taking to support employees experiencing menopause, alongside their gender pay gap.

This addition to the Employment Rights Act 2025 marks a really distinct and important shift in expectations, which will move employers beyond simply needing to demonstrate what support they have in place, toward showing what they’re actively doing to make a difference.

And there’s a compelling reason why that distinction matters. Research by the CIPD into employees’ experiences of menopause found that 73% had experienced symptoms associated with the menopause transition. Of those, 67% reported that their symptoms had a mostly negative effect at work, while 53% recalled a time when symptoms had prevented them from attending work.

Having a policy is one thing; ensuring people feel able to access meaningful support is quite another.

Many employers have not prepared to publish a Menopause Action Plan

One of the issues is that, despite being just months away, many employers are still unclear about what their new responsibilities will mean in practice. And some, concerningly, are not yet aware of the requirement.

For leaders across HR who are already juggling a pile of competing priorities, the prospect of developing another workplace plan can feel daunting – and that’s understandable. What appears to be happening is that with a looming deadline, it can be tempting to jump straight into drafting new policies, commissioning training or building a long list of ‘all-singing, all-dancing’ commitments.

But this risks getting the process backwards. Before deciding what to do, employers need to establish what they want to achieve, why it matters and how they will demonstrate progress.

Five leadership decisions to capture today

For those who’ve yet to get started, it can be useful to think of what remains of 2026 as a time for readiness – an opportunity to understand what’s needed, agree priorities and put the foundations in place well ahead of the anticipated requirements. Don’t wait until spring 2027 to get started. When employers submit their action plans, they will also need to be able to demonstrate progress and show how their commitments are translating into meaningful change.

As with any workplace initiative, the real test is not whether a policy exists, but whether it makes a difference to people’s working lives. The aim should be continuous improvement: starting with realistic, achievable actions and developing the support available over time.

For leaders who are unsure of what to start, my advice is to capture five key decisions. This is where initial conversations and good intentions begin to translate into a tangible, actionable roadmap.

1. Scope and route: Establish what the plan needs to cover

A natural starting point is to confirm whether your organisation or team is in scope, and agree who the plan will cover. Also consider how menopause support connects with existing policies on health and wellbeing like equality, flexible working and workplace adjustments. Leaders should also decide how the organisation’s plan will be developed, published and communicated. There are a number of questions you could reflect on to help form what this looks like: Will it build on existing commitments, or is a more fundamental review needed? How will employees and managers contribute to its development? Where will employees be able to access the plan? One of the key aspects here is to ensure menopause support is connected to the wider employee experience, rather than treating it as an initiative in isolation.

2. Accountability: decide who will make things happen

A plan can lay out all the right intentions and still achieve very little if the responsibility for who will deliver it is unclear. Leaders need to identify who’ll own the plan’s delivery, who will sponsor it at senior level, and which teams need to contribute.

These decisions do not translate to needing an elaborate governance structure. But it does mean ensuring someone is accountable for progress, within an agreed forum for reviewing actions and resolving barriers.

Having commitment from leadership is especially important because menopause support should not only be determined by the confidence, knowledge or personal attitude of a manager. It’s the role of senior leaders to set the expectation that menopause is a legitimate workplace health and inclusion issue, while HR, occupational health, line managers and other important teams translate that expectation into practice.

As with most measures, policy alone does not create change, people do. Ensuring accountability is absolutely essential to turning good intentions into action.

3. Priority areas: choose where to make a difference first

Where Menopause Action Plans can fall flat is in trying to tackle everything, all at once. There may be opportunities identified to improve guidance, train managers, review

adjustments, raise awareness and expand access to support – all of which are worthwhile. However, attempting to deliver everything immediately can leave teams feeling overstretched and, ultimately, progress difficult to demonstrate.

What I suggest instead is to identify one to three priority areas where action could make the biggest difference in your organisation. The right choices here will depend on the organisation’s circumstances and employees’ experience.

For one employer, for example, the priority might be equipping managers in responding confidently to conversations with employees about symptoms and adjustments. For another, it might include improving awareness of existing occupational health services or addressing inconsistencies in how support is accessed across different sites.

Start with the barrier to progress that matters the most, and choose a proportionate response. This focused approach, alongside achievable commitments, is much more useful than a long list of initiatives that, realistically, the organisation may not be able to deliver on.

4. Evidence: Understand what employees need

Before committing valuable resources, you need to understand what’s already working, where support is falling short, and what it is that employees actually need.

Evidence doesn’t need to mean commissioning new research. The answers may already exist in employee feedback, engagement surveys, absence patterns, retention information, and exit interviews – these all make for an already rich bank of information. Then consider conversations with employees and managers, which can help to identify practical barriers that workforce data alone might miss.

The aim for you here is to connect each priority to a clear rationale. If employees are unaware of available support, for example, then measures to improve the way you communicate this may be the answer. Or if experiences of employees vary significantly between teams, the issue might be manager capability, or inconsistent application or workplace adjustments.

Employers should also think about whose experience may be missing from the available evidence and ensure the plan reflects different menopause experiences and needs. Support should always be accessible and consistent, rather than determined by an employee’s location, role, or relationship with their manager.

Consider also that where evidence is limited, identifying that gap is in itself a useful first step.

5. Measures: decide how progress will be demonstrated

Leaders will need to agree how they will know whether the plan is making a difference. To do this effectively, there’ll need to be clear ownership, delivery dates, progress measures and a review point before the plan is approved.

The key word here is ‘meaningful’ progress. Counting new policies, training sessions or communications may show that activities have taken place, but it does not necessarily demonstrate improved support. So it’s really important that employers consider what meaningful progress looks like.

It’s also worth managing expectations because not every change will produce an immediate measurable improvement in, for example, retention or absence, so employers should avoid promising outcomes they cannot confidently attribute to a single intervention.

Scheduling regular reviews would help leaders to understand what’s working, identify where further action’s needed, and refine the approach over time.

Start by building the foundations

The countdown to April should not be seen as a race to produce the most ambitious document. For employers, the immediate opportunity is to establish a credible, evidence-led approach that connects commitments to delivery.

Getting prepared now is essential – deciding who’s responsible, understanding employees’ needs, selecting realistic priorities and agreeing how progress will be reviewed. These are the foundations that’ll help you move beyond policies and guidance towards more consistent, effective support.

It can be beneficial to think of it this way: the goal is continuous improvement, not perfection from day one. A practical plan that has clear ownership, measurable actions and regular reviews is far more likely to make a difference than a long list of wildly ambitious goals ever would.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Well Crowd. This content is for information and discussion purposes only and should not be taken as medical, health, or professional advice.