Menopause action plan: the complete guide for UK employers
A menopause action plan is a short public document in which an employer with 250 or more employees sets out the actions it will take to support employees experiencing menopause. It is published on the government’s gender pay gap service, alongside the employer’s pay gap data. Publishing one has been voluntary since 6 April 2026 and is expected to become mandatory from spring 2027, subject to legislation.
This guide is written from the government guidance and checked to source. Every figure carries its publisher, its year and a link. Where the guidance is unclear, or a widely repeated number does not hold up, the page says so.
What a menopause action plan is
It is one half of an equality action plan. The other half addresses the gender pay gap. The two are submitted together on the gender pay gap service, published there, and sit next to the employer’s pay gap figures where anyone can read them: employees, candidates, journalists, and the solicitor acting for a former employee.
The requirement comes from the Employment Rights Act 2025 and the guidance published on GOV.UK on 4 March 2026. It applies to employers with 250 or more employees in England, Scotland and Wales, with different rules for some public authorities in Scotland and Wales.
Source: GOV.UK, Creating an action plan: guidance for employers, overview, updated 13 May 2026
Who has to publish one, and when
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 6 April 2026 | Publishing an action plan becomes voluntary. The guidance, the list of actions and the submission service are live. |
| 30 March 2027 | Deadline to publish voluntarily for the 2026 to 2027 reporting year, most public authority employers. |
| 4 April 2027 | Deadline to publish voluntarily for the 2026 to 2027 reporting year, private, voluntary and all other public authority employers. |
| Spring 2027 | Publishing is expected to become mandatory, subject to legislation. |
| April 2028 | First expected deadline once publishing is mandatory, covering the 2027 to 2028 reporting year. Expected, not confirmed, and not stated on GOV.UK. |
The 2027 dates are widely described as the first mandatory deadlines. They are not. GOV.UK calls them the deadlines for publishing voluntarily during the 2026 to 2027 reporting year, and says separately that plans will become mandatory from spring 2027. Employment lawyers read that as the duty commencing against the April 2027 snapshot, with the first mandatory plans due by April 2028.
The threshold is counted per legal entity, on the same snapshot date as gender pay gap reporting. A group with several entities above 250 employees publishes one plan for each. That is the requirement most often missed inside a group structure, and the readiness check asks about it for exactly that reason.
What the plan has to contain
- At least 2 actions from the government’s list of 18: at least 1 addressing the gender pay gap and at least 1 supporting employees experiencing menopause. The guidance encourages more where possible.
- At least 2 of the actions marked as new or in progress. A plan made only of embedded actions does not meet the requirement.
- For each action, up to 100 words of supporting text: why you chose it and how you will track it for new actions, or how you implemented it and what the results have been for embedded ones.
- An overall supporting narrative of up to 200 words, published beside your gender pay gap figures.
- No files and no links inside the text fields. The service asks separately for a link to the page on your own website where the plan lives.
- A named responsible person, usually a director, partner or senior officer, who confirms the submission is accurate. Required in the private and voluntary sectors. Most public authorities do not currently need one.
Source: GOV.UK, Step 3: write a supporting narrative, and the overview
That is the whole of the format. Nothing in it requires evidence, a survey, a response rate or a baseline. A plan with two actions and a hundred words under each is compliant. Whether it is any good is a separate question, and the government answers that one too, in the guidance on what to do before you choose.
The six menopause actions on the government list
The list of 18 recommended actions sits in five categories. Twelve address the gender pay gap. These are the six under Supporting employees experiencing menopause, with what each action page says to measure, shortened. The full measurement list is in the metrics guide linked below.
| Action | What GOV.UK says to track |
|---|---|
| Train managers to support employees experiencing menopause | Managers finishing the training, manager surveys before and after, what employees say in staff surveys, and absence and retention for women in the relevant age groups. |
| Offer occupational health advice for employees experiencing menopause | Awareness and understanding of the offer, use by age and sex, absence and retention particularly for women aged 40 to 60, and satisfaction from anonymous surveys or exit interviews. |
| Set up menopause support groups and networks | How many people join, regular feedback from them, whether employees are happy with the support, and absence and retention for women aged 40 to 60. |
| Offer workplace adjustments for employees experiencing menopause | The proportion using adjustments by age and sex, absence and retention by age and sex, and feedback on how effective the adjustments are. |
| Conduct a menopause risk assessment for your workplace | How many people use the assessments, anonymous surveys on satisfaction with the process and the changes made, and absence and retention. |
| Review policies and procedures to meet the needs of employees experiencing menopause | Absence and retention by age and sex, use of flexible working and adjustments by age and sex, use of the updated policies among women aged 40 to 60, satisfaction surveys, and exit interviews. |
Source: GOV.UK, Action plans: list of actions, the six menopause action pages, 4 March 2026
Most published plans pick the two cheapest actions on the list, usually a policy review and manager training, because both can be completed without finding out what the workforce needs. A plan reads very differently when the action chosen is the one most of your own people asked for, and the plan says how many asked.
What the guidance says to do first
Analysis gives you the evidence you need to choose the right actions for your organisation.
Step 1 then lists nine things to analyse: the split of men and women at each pay level, recruitment by gender, starting salaries and bonuses, performance scores, promotion rates, where people get stuck, flexible working use, leaving rates by gender, and the results of past actions. All nine are gender pay gap measures. Menopause appears once on the page, as an instruction to engage with employees to understand how they may be affected at work, with no data item attached to it.
So the pay gap half of the plan has a prescribed baseline and the menopause half, on the face of Step 1, does not. The measurement job is specified all the same. It sits one level down, on each of the six action pages, and every one of them opens its tracking section with the same sentence.
You should gather data before you start this action. This can help you monitor any changes for your target group, such as women aged 40 to 60 years.
Read across the six pages, the instruction is specific. Use anonymous surveys. Find out whether employees know about the support you already provide, and whether they use it. Track absence and retention for women aged 40 to 60. Take the baseline before the action starts, and measure the same way again afterwards. And because some of what you collect is likely to be special category personal data, get advice and approval from your privacy or data protection expert before you start.
What a published menopause action plan looks like
The gender pay gap service is public, so published plans can be read by anyone. One example from the 2026 to 2027 reporting year, from a community interest company, runs to about 1,900 words in four parts: an introduction, planned actions, embedded actions, and a note about the organisation. It lists four planned actions and six embedded ones. Menopause actions appear in both lists, including occupational health advice and a menopause risk assessment.
It is competent, readable and compliant. It also cites no survey, no response rate, no figure about its own workforce and no research. Nothing in the format asked it to. A named senior leader is responsible for delivery and for reviewing progress annually alongside the gender pay gap report.
Source: POSSABILITIES C.I.C., action plan for the 2026 to 2027 reporting year, gender pay gap service
That is the honest starting position for anyone writing one. Any competent HR generalist can produce a compliant plan by reading a published example. The difference between a plan that reads as a serious piece of work and one that reads as the minimum is entirely in the evidence section, and the evidence section is the one part that cannot be written from the inside.
How ready UK employers are
The figures below are the ones that survived a trace to their primary source. Where the sample is small, self-selecting or commissioned by an organisation with a commercial interest in the result, that is printed beside the number.
3%
of HR, health and safety and compliance professionals said their organisation already publishes a menopause action plan annually. 29% had committed to publishing in 2026 or 2027.
VinciWorks, menopause compliance research, February 2026, 276 respondents
Commissioned by a compliance training provider. Small, self-selecting sample, not restricted to employers with 250 or more employees.
92%
of HR decision makers believe their organisation is meeting the needs of staff going through menopause.
Benenden Health, Missing in the Workplace, January 2026, 500 HR decision makers
Commissioned by a healthcare provider. The 92% and the 40% below come from two separate samples, so read them as two findings rather than one comparison.
40%
of working women aged 40 to 65 say they are unaware of any menopause policies in their workplace. Only 45% feel comfortable raising symptoms with their manager.
Benenden Health, Missing in the Workplace, January 2026, 2,000 working women
Commissioned by a healthcare provider.
24%
of employed women aged 40 to 60 say their organisation has a stated menopause policy or other support measures in place. Around a third do not know whether one exists.
CIPD, Menopause in the workplace: employee experiences, October 2023, over 2,000 women
19%
of women who responded to a large survey knew about the support offered in their workplace. This figure is cited by GOV.UK inside the action guidance itself.
54.1%
of women members surveyed by a retail union did not feel able to approach their manager if they experienced menopause symptoms at work.
Usdaw survey 2018, reported by the TUC in Menopause and the workplace
44%
of police officers and staff who had taken sickness absence because of menopause had not told their manager the real reason.
Police Federation of England and Wales with UNISON, 2018, reported by the TUC
64 to 204
employment tribunal claims citing menopause, 2022 compared with 2024, from HM Courts and Tribunals Service data.
Nockolds analysis, reported by Personnel Today, February 2025
Earlier published series used a different, undisclosed counting method. Do not chain them together.
Put the first pair beside the rest. Almost nobody is publishing yet, and the great majority of HR decision makers believe they are already meeting the need. Meanwhile the women the plans are for report not knowing what exists, not feeling able to raise it, and not giving the real reason for time off. The gap between those two pictures is the gap a plan built on internal data will inherit, because internal data can only contain what people were willing to tell their employer.
How to build one, in the order that works
- Confirm your scope. Count employees per legal entity on the snapshot date, and count how many entities are at 250 or more. That is how many plans you need.
- Brief your privacy lead before anything is collected. GOV.UK asks for advice and approval from your data protection expert before you start. A design with nothing identifiable in it makes that a short conversation.
- Gather data before you choose. An anonymous survey sent to everyone, collected by someone who is not the employer. Absence and retention for women aged 40 to 60 from your HR system. Occupational health use by age and sex from your provider. Date all of it.
- Run a menopause risk assessment per work area, not per site. A control room, a warehouse and a head office have almost nothing in common.
- Choose your actions by demand. At least two, at least one on each side, at least two marked new or in progress. Rank menopause actions by how many of your own people asked for the change each one addresses.
- Write the 100-word and 200-word text from the numbers. How you found out, how many answered, what they asked for, and what you will measure again.
- Name the responsible person, and put the plan on a page of your own website. The service asks for the link.
- Submit on the gender pay gap service by the deadline for your sector, and record the date.
- Measure again with identical questions in six to twelve months, so next year’s plan reports what changed rather than what you intended.
The template guide gives the full nine-section structure with what belongs in each. The evidence guide covers step three in detail, including what a usable response rate looks like and why the collector has to be neutral.
Numbers you will see elsewhere that we could not trace
Several figures circulate in this market on vendor pages and in law firm briefings. We looked for a primary source for each and could not find one that holds up, so we do not use them, and we would suggest not putting them in a published plan either.
| Claim | What we found |
|---|---|
| A multi-billion pound annual cost of menopause absenteeism | Quoted with no attribution, and different vendors give figures that differ by a factor of seven for what appears to be the same thing. No traceable source. |
| 14 million working days lost a year | Traceable, and it fails on quality: a 2019 survey of 1,000 women over 50, commissioned by a commercial brand, extrapolated across the whole female workforce. |
| 13 million women in the UK are peri- or post-menopausal | Attributed to a charity with no year and no method anywhere it appears. |
| 8 in 10 employers have done nothing | A misreading of the Fawcett Society’s 2022 survey, which measured what women reported about their employer, not employer behaviour. |
| Tribunal claims have quadrupled since 2019 | Not reconcilable with any of the three published tribunal series, which count differently. The clean comparison is 64 in 2022 to 204 in 2024, above. |
| Over £30,000 to replace one woman who leaves | Real, and we use it, but it is an Oxford Economics estimate from 2014 as cited in the 2022 Women and Equalities Committee report. It is not inflation adjusted, and it should be dated wherever it is quoted. |
Questions employers ask
Is a menopause action plan mandatory in the UK?
Not yet. Publishing one is voluntary from 6 April 2026 and, subject to legislation, is expected to become mandatory from spring 2027 for employers with 250 or more employees. The first mandatory plans are expected to be due in April 2028, covering the 2027 to 2028 reporting year.
What is the deadline for a menopause action plan?
For the 2026 to 2027 reporting year, the deadlines to publish voluntarily are 30 March 2027 for most public authority employers and 4 April 2027 for everyone else. Those are the voluntary deadlines. The first expected mandatory deadline is a year later, in April 2028.
Which employers have to publish a menopause action plan?
Employers with 250 or more employees in England, Scotland and Wales, counted per legal entity on the gender pay gap snapshot date. A group publishes one plan for each entity at or above the threshold. Employers below 250 can publish voluntarily, and the health and safety and Equality Act duties behind the plan apply at any size.
What must a menopause action plan include?
At least two actions from the government’s list of 18, with at least one addressing the gender pay gap and at least one supporting employees experiencing menopause, and at least two marked as new or in progress. Each action carries up to 100 words on why it was chosen and how it will be tracked. An overall narrative of up to 200 words is published beside your gender pay gap figures. Private and voluntary sector employers name a responsible person.
What are the six menopause actions on the government list?
Train managers to support employees experiencing menopause. Offer occupational health advice. Set up menopause support groups and networks. Offer workplace adjustments. Conduct a menopause risk assessment for your workplace. Review policies and procedures to meet the needs of employees experiencing menopause.
Where is a menopause action plan published?
On the government’s gender pay gap service, alongside the employer’s gender pay gap data, and on a page of the employer’s own website that the service links to. Published plans are public and can be read by anyone.
Do we need to collect health data about individual employees?
No. Nothing in the requirement asks you to know who in your workforce has menopause symptoms. GOV.UK warns that equality information you collect is likely to be special category personal data and tells you to get approval from your privacy expert before you start. The safer design asks about work impact rather than health, identifies nobody, and reports nothing for groups smaller than ten.
What does “gather data before you start” mean in practice?
Every menopause action page on GOV.UK says to gather data before the action begins so you can monitor changes for the target group, such as women aged 40 to 60. In practice that means an anonymous survey of the whole workforce, figures for awareness and use of the support you already fund, and absence and retention rates for women aged 40 to 60, all dated before the action starts and measured the same way again afterwards.
Is a menopause action plan the same as a menopause policy?
No. A policy states what the organisation intends and is one of the six recommended actions. An action plan names the specific actions being taken, who owns them, how they will be tracked, and is published on a government service. You can have a policy without a plan, and a plan can commit to reviewing a policy.
What happens if we do not publish one?
While publishing is voluntary, nothing. Once it is mandatory, enforcement is expected to follow the gender pay gap model, where the Equality and Human Rights Commission can act against non-compliant employers. The sharper risk in practice is a missing or thin plan becoming evidence in a tribunal claim brought by an employee, where the question is what the employer knew and what it did.
How does Summ Base help with a menopause action plan?
Summ Base collects the evidence the guidance says to gather first: an anonymous survey your people answer without telling their employer anything, results ranked by how many asked for each change, and whether the support you already fund is known and used. The portal then composes the action plan, risk assessment, policy draft and submission pack from those numbers. We are not a menopause provider and take no commission from any provider we measure. You publish the plan yourself.
Go deeper
Each guide below takes one part of the job and goes into it properly. They are free, ungated, and checked to source in the same way as this page.