Your Menopause Action Plan is more than 100 words in a Government portal

How to turn the new Equality Action Plan requirement into something that actually improves retention, absence and productivity

The Employment Rights Act 2025 has attracted plenty of criticism from employers and business groups concerned about cost, complexity and the potential impact of wider employment reforms on growth and recruitment. In May, the Institute of Directors reported that 86% of the business leaders it surveyed believed the Act would have a negative impact on UK economic growth.

Those concerns should not simply be dismissed, but I think there is an important distinction to make when we look specifically at the menopause element of the new Equality Action Plans. Done badly, it could become another compliance exercise. Something else for an already stretched HR team to complete, publish and move on from.

Done properly, it is an opportunity to tackle something that is already costing organisations through absence, presenteeism, reduced performance and the loss of experienced people from the workforce and that is why I would encourage employers not to start with the Government portal.

First, understand what is actually being asked

Employers with 250 or more employees can already voluntarily publish an Equality Action Plan alongside their gender pay gap information. Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, these plans are due to become mandatory from spring 2027, subject to the secondary legislation completing the process. The plans are intended to show what an organisation is doing both to address its gender pay gap and to support employees experiencing menopause.

The current Government process asks employers to select at least two actions. At least one must address the gender pay gap and at least one must support employees experiencing menopause. For each new or progressing action, employers can provide up to 100 words explaining why they have chosen it and how they will understand whether it is making a difference. There is also an overall supporting narrative of up to 200 words.

And this is where I think organisations could make their first mistake.

You can technically write 100 words about your menopause action.

But 100 words are not a Menopause Action Plan.

Those 100 words should be the visible output of a much bigger piece of thinking. They should summarise an action you have chosen because you understand your workforce, know where your gaps are, have established what is already working, know what needs to improve and have decided how you will tell whether the action has changed anything.

In fact, the Government's own guidance starts in exactly that place. Step one is to understand the issues in your organisation. Employers are encouraged to analyse what is happening, engage employees, involve managers, senior leaders, networks and other stakeholders, and repeat that analysis so progress can be compared over time.

In other words, the important work happens before you start typing into the box.

Start by finding out where you really are

Many organisations I speak to already have something.

They may have a menopause policy or guidance. There might be an employee network. Occupational health may provide support. Managers may have attended an awareness session. Flexible working exists. Someone has created an intranet page. There may even be a menopause risk assessment or workplace adjustment process.

That is all positive.

But the question I ask is not simply: what have you got?

The more useful questions are: who knows about it? Who uses it? How consistently is it applied? Do managers know what to do when somebody asks for help? Do employees feel confident asking? Can you demonstrate that the support is making a difference?

That is the gap between provision existing and provision being embedded and that is important because effective menopause support rarely sits neatly inside one policy. It touches leadership, manager capability, workplace adjustments, occupational health, policies and guidance, communication, employee voice, culture and measurement.

Looking at each element separately can create a very different picture from simply asking whether the organisation has a menopause policy.

Do not choose an action just because it is easy to publish

This is where some form of gap analysis becomes particularly useful. If your organisation already has excellent occupational health provision, a well-used employee network and effective workplace adjustments, it makes little sense to pour resource into reinventing those things simply because they appear on a recommended list.

Equally, describing something as embedded because a policy exists somewhere on the intranet can create a false sense of security.

Your starting point should help you distinguish between what genuinely works, what exists but needs strengthening and what is missing. Then you can prioritise.

You might discover that your biggest issue is manager confidence. Perhaps employees simply do not know what support is available. Maybe different policies contradict one another. You could have brilliant resources that very few people access. Or perhaps you are doing a considerable amount already but have no baseline data to demonstrate whether it is influencing absence, retention, confidence or employee experience.

Each of those organisations needs a different plan.

That is why I would approach the menopause element of the Equality Action Plan as a workforce strategy, not a template-completion exercise.

What has any of this got to do with productivity?

Quite a lot.

There has been considerable debate about whether the wider Employment Rights Act will help or hinder UK productivity. But when it comes specifically to menopause support, I think employers should turn the productivity question around.

What is the productivity cost of not getting this right?

The Government's 2025 Menopause in the Workplace Literature Review found that the available economic evidence, while still limited, estimated an annual impact of approximately £1.5 billion from menopause-related unemployment, £191 million from absence associated with severe perimenopause and menopause symptoms and a further £22.4 million from presenteeism.

The NHS Confederation (NHS Alliance UK) research behind some of those estimates calculated that approximately 60,000 women in the UK were not in employment because of menopause symptoms. Those are big national numbers, but what matters to an individual employer is what sits behind them.

Someone struggling with disrupted sleep, anxiety, migraines, cognitive changes, fatigue or temperature regulation may not immediately resign. Before that happens there may be months of struggling to perform as they normally would, increased absence, reduced confidence, stepping away from progression or simply trying to cope silently.

That is where a relatively straightforward intervention can sometimes make an enormous difference.

A manager who knows how to have the conversation. An adjustment that actually meets the person's needs. Clear guidance. Access to appropriate support. Confidence that asking for help will not damage their career.

The Government's own guidance recognises that personalised workplace adjustments can support both wellbeing and an employee's ability to work.

So this is not simply a women's wellbeing initiative. It is about retaining capability, experience and knowledge. It is about keeping people productive and it is about intervening before somebody decides that leaving is their only remaining option.

“A Menopause Action Plan should not be the story you tell the portal. It should be the strategy you can evidence in the workplace.”

Measurement is what turns activity into impact

This is probably the area where I think organisations have the greatest opportunity to improve.

Attendance is not impact. Read that again...

You can train 500 managers and report a fantastic number. But are those managers more confident having a menopause conversation afterwards?

You can launch new guidance. But do employees know it exists, understand it and use it?

You can introduce workplace adjustments. But are people accessing them and are they helping employees remain well and productive at work?

You can hold an awareness event and get wonderful feedback on the day. But six months later, has anything actually changed?

The Government guidance is quite clear about the importance of establishing baseline measures before an action begins and then tracking the same measures afterwards. It recommends using relevant existing workforce data where possible and looking at whether actions are producing the intended outcomes over time.

This is the shift I would like to see organisations make as they prepare for 2027.

Move from asking what can we say we have done?

To asking what outcome are we trying to change and how will we know whether we have changed it?

That single shift changes the quality of the plan enormously.

The organisations that start now have an advantage

There is a very practical reason not to leave this until the reporting deadline.

Building a useful baseline takes time. Consulting employees takes time. Reviewing policies, testing manager confidence, understanding occupational health provision, looking at workplace adjustments, involving employee networks and gaining senior sponsorship all take time.

And the challenge for many HR, EDI and wellbeing teams will not be willingness.

It will be capacity.

More importantly, demonstrating improvement takes time.

If an organisation starts now, it can understand its current position, strengthen what is already good, identify a small number of meaningful priorities and begin collecting evidence.

By the time it needs to publish its Equality Action Plan, it is not scrambling around looking for something credible to put into 100 words. It has a story of action, evidence and progress and that is where I believe the menopause element of the Employment Rights Act can become something much more valuable than another regulatory requirement.

It can help organisations retain experienced people, reduce avoidable absence and presenteeism, improve manager capability and create workplaces where people ask for support before they reach the point of leaving.

That is not a tick-box exercise.

That is good workforce strategy.

But where do you start when you already have too much to do?

For many HR, EDI and wellbeing teams, this may be the real question.

Where do you start? What should you review? Who needs to be involved? What evidence do you need? Which actions should make it into the plan? What should you measure? How do you establish a useful baseline? And how do you turn all of that information into a credible plan that people can actually implement?

You can work all of that out internally.

But you do not necessarily need to.

There is little value in using already stretched internal resource to design a methodology from scratch, spend weeks working through Government guidance and then still wonder whether you have looked at the right things, involved the right people or chosen measures that will actually tell you anything useful.

That is exactly why I developed my approach to Menopause Action Planning.

I use a structured, evidence-informed process to take an organisation from the blank page, through understanding its current provision and gaps, to prioritising action and building a practical, measurable Menopause Action Plan.

The purpose is not to create another big project for HR.

It is to take the heavy lifting away.

I work intensively with the people who know your organisation best to understand what is already there, identify what is genuinely working, uncover the gaps and agree the priorities. I can then take that information away and do the work of shaping it into a coherent plan, proposed actions and meaningful measures.

You bring the organisational knowledge. I bring the menopause workplace expertise, structure and process. Together, we get to the plan much faster.

For many organisations, that concentrated work with me can happen in a day.

You do not need to allocate someone internally to spend weeks becoming your resident menopause action planning expert. You need the right people in the room, focused conversations and enough evidence to make good decisions.

Then I do the rest.

And there is another advantage to starting early.

The sooner you understand your baseline and agree what needs to change, the more opportunity you have to demonstrate distance travelled by the time mandatory reporting begins. Instead of reporting what you intend to do, you can begin showing what you have already changed.

Your first step is free

If you are responsible for HR, wellbeing, EDI, organisational development or your organisation's Equality Action Plan and are now wondering what exactly do we need to do?, start with my free webinar:

Menopause and Gender Equality Action Plans: The Clock is Ticking

Wednesday 9 September 2026 at 11am

I will walk through what the menopause requirement means in practice, what employers should be thinking about now and some of the common mistakes I believe organisations need to avoid.

My aim is that you leave with clarity about the requirement and a much better idea of what your organisation needs to do next.

Then, if you understand what needs to happen but realise that you simply do not have the time, capacity or specialist expertise to build the strategy from scratch, that is where I can help.