Reasonable adjustments for menopause at work
Menopause is not itself a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. That is what leads some employers to conclude the adjustment duty does not apply. It frequently does.
Where symptoms are long term and have a substantial adverse effect on day-to-day activities, they can meet the Act’s definition of a disability, and the duty to make reasonable adjustments follows. Claims also arise under sex and age discrimination. This page covers when the duty bites, what people actually ask for, and how to find out which of it your own workforce needs.
When the duty applies
Sections 20 and 21 of the Equality Act 2010 require an employer to take reasonable steps to remove a substantial disadvantage caused by a provision, criterion or practice, a physical feature, or the absence of an auxiliary aid. The duty is triggered by the effect on the individual, not by a diagnosis and not by a label.
Two practical consequences follow. First, an employee does not have to use the word disability, or agree that she is disabled, for the duty to exist. Second, the employer only has to know, or reasonably be expected to know, about the disadvantage. A manager who has been told about the symptoms cannot later say nobody raised it.
Source: Equality Act 2010, sections 20 to 21. Employment tribunal award in Lynskey v Direct Line Insurance Services, judgment 2023.
What people actually ask for
The list is shorter and cheaper than most employers expect. In workplace surveys the same handful of requests comes back, and almost none of them is a capital project.
| What is asked for | What it usually means in practice |
|---|---|
| Temperature or ventilation control | A desk fan, a window that opens, a move away from a heat source, a say in the thermostat. |
| Flexible start or finish times | A later start after a bad night, rather than a formal flexible working change. |
| Uniform or dress code changes | Breathable fabric, an extra set, permission to remove a layer. |
| Easier access to toilets or rest areas | Position on a shift pattern, or a break that does not need asking for each time. |
| Somewhere private to step away | Ten minutes in a room with a door, without explaining why. |
| Changes to workload timing or shift patterns | Demanding work scheduled away from the worst hours, or fewer consecutive nights. |
Cost is rarely the obstacle. The obstacle is that nobody asks, because asking means explaining why, and explaining why means disclosing to the person who writes your appraisal.
What "reasonable" actually means
There is no statutory definition. In practice a tribunal weighs how effective the step would be, how practical it is, the cost and disruption, and the size and resources of the employer. A large employer refusing a desk fan is in a much worse position than a small one refusing a building change.
- Consider each request on its own facts. A blanket policy of refusing a category of adjustment is the opposite of the duty.
- Write down what you considered and why, at the time. Reconstructing the reasoning afterwards is the weakest evidence there is.
- Trial it. A four-week trial is a reasonable step in itself, and it converts an argument about likelihood into a fact.
- If you refuse, say why in writing, and say what you would consider instead.
How to find out which ones your workforce needs
Guessing produces the wrong list. So does an internal survey: disclosing a health issue to the organisation that decides your promotion is a career risk, so internal surveys read better than the situation is.
Anonymous, neutral collection produces a different answer, and a rankable one. Summ Base asks what would make the biggest difference, whether anyone has already asked for it, and if not, what stopped them. That last question is usually the most useful thing an employer learns, because it separates a provision problem from an awareness problem from a trust problem, and those three have completely different fixes.
Adjustments and your action plan
Ranked adjustment demand is the strongest evidence a menopause action plan can carry, because it is not an opinion about what your organisation needs. It is a count of how many of your own people asked for a specific thing, which is exactly what step one of the government guidance asks you to establish before selecting actions.
It also survives the obvious challenge. An action chosen because 18 people asked for it is defensible in a way that an action chosen from a list is not.