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Picture this a team member you've worked with for years she used to be unflappable. She used to be the one who could juggle five things at once and still smile. Lately she's not herself. She's hot, not just warm. Stripped down to her vest, opening the window in February hot. She's not sleeping. She's been making mistakes she would never have made two years ago. She had a row with a colleague last month over something genuinely tiny. You've thought about asking. You've thought about saying something supportive. You haven't.

When A Star Performer Struggles

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Because you don't quite know what to say. You don't want to sound assuming. You don't want to be patronizing. You don't want to put your foot in it. So you've left it. And every week she gets a little more brittle, a little less confident, a little more convinced that she's losing her edge. She's not losing her edge. She is almost certainly in perimenopause. Her HRT prescription was changed six months ago. Her sleep collapsed. Her concentration went with it. She's been working through it without telling anyone, including you, because nobody at work has ever made it feel safe to. This week, meaningfully, the law is changing on this. The Employment Rights Act 2025 is making menopause support a clear legal expectation. The detail is still bedding in. The principle is settled. This is no longer a nice to have. It is becoming, for every employer, a baseline. Today's episode cuts through the discomfort. What reasonable adjustments actually look like. How managers handle disclosures? And why getting this right is also, frankly, just good people management. The Welcome to the Hive. Hey there, welcome back to Buzzing About HR, the podcast for small business owners and HR professionals who want straight talking, plain English advice. I'm Kate, your host, HR Queen Bee, and someone who has had more menopause conversations in the last 18 months than in the previous 18 years. With me as ever, Biologically Uninvolved, is Hazel, our well-being officer. She is currently lying directly on top of a heat vent and looks confused that anyone might find this temperature uncomfortable. This episode is about menopause at work. I'm aware some of you are listening on a Tuesday morning,

Menopause Support Becomes A Baseline

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slightly nervous about whether this episode is going to make you feel awkward. It might. A bit. That's the point. We've been awkward about menopause for 50 years and it has done absolutely no good for anyone, staff, businesses, or the long-term experience of work for half the population. Time to be slightly less awkward. Kettle on. Let's go. The buzz. What menopause at work actually means. Quick reset. Menopause is a normal life stage. Perimenopause, the lead-up, typically starts in the 40s, sometimes earlier. Symptoms can last for several years, sometimes for over a decade. Symptoms include hot flushes, night sweats, sleep disturbance, brain fog, anxiety, mood changes, joint pain, weight changes, skin changes, and a host of other things people often don't realise are connected.

Why We Avoid The Conversation

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Around 13 million women in the UK are currently peri- or post-menopausal. That is not a niche group. That is a vast, working, contributing chunk of the workforce. The legal position has tightened significantly in the last few years. Discrimination because of menopause-related symptoms has been successfully argued in tribunals as age, sex, and disability discrimination. Multiple cases. The EHRC's 2024 Guidance on Menopause was clear. Employers have duties under the Equality Act, 2010, to make reasonable adjustments, prevent harassment and avoid detriment. The Employment Rights Act 2025 then went further, moving menopause from good employer behaviour to expected employer behaviour. The detail of mandatory action plans for larger employers is still being finalised at the time of recording. But the direction of travel is clear, and the smart move for SMEs is to get ahead of it now. Crucially, menopause at work is not just about how you handle Susan in accounts. It is about your culture, your policies, and your default response. The hive check. The numbers. The numbers because they should galvanize you. A 2024 Forsyth Society survey found 44% of women said menopause symptoms had affected their ability to do their job. 10% had left a job because of menopause symptoms. 14% had reduced their hours. Of those who tried to talk to their employer, only 30% felt the response was genuinely supportive. Now think about that. If 10% of menopausal women have left a job because of how their symptoms were handled, and you've got five women in their 40s and 50s in your team, statistically you are losing one of them to this in the next few years if nothing changes. In an SME, that one departure can mean an enormous capability and institutional knowledge loss. The economic argument is also clear. The cost of replacing one experienced senior employee in the UK is now estimated at over £30,000 by the time you factor in recruitment, onboarding, and lost productivity. A few hundred quid spent on adjustments, training, and a decent policy looks like an absolute bargain. The Sting. Why small businesses don't do anything on this? Three reasons. One, discomfort. Most managers have never been trained to talk about menopause. Many have never said the word at work. So they avoid it, they route around it, they hope it will sort itself out. It won't. Two, assumption that we don't have a menopause

What Menopause Symptoms Look Like

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problem. Yes, you do. If you have any women in your business in their forties or fifties, you have menopausal employees. Even if no one has told you. Quiet menopause, like quiet quitting, is the dangerous version. 3. Fear of getting it wrong. Owners worry that if they put a policy in place, they'll be obliged to do something they can't deliver. Or they'll say something offensive, or they'll cause a row. The bigger risk is doing nothing. Tribunal claims related to menopause are increasing. So is media attention. So is staff awareness. If you have nothing in place when something happens, your defense is we hadn't really thought about it. That doesn't go well. The waggle dance. What to actually do. Five things practical, doable. One, write a one-page menopause aware policy, not a 12-page tone. One page. It says, we recognize menopause as a normal life stage that can affect work. We support team members through it. Adjustments may be available. Flexible hours, breaks, room temperature, uniform options, cooler clothing options, time off for medical appointments. Any team member is welcome to raise this with their manager or another senior person in confidence. That's it. One page. Have it. Two, give managers a script. Most managers can have this conversation if they have words to use. I've noticed in the last few months you've seemed a bit tired, slash less yourself, slash a bit different. I wanted to check in. I don't want to assume anything. I just wanted you to know that if anything's going on, we can talk about it, whatever it is. You do not need to say the M-word. You do need to make space for it. 3. Small adjustments, generously. Reasonable adjustments for menopause are often genuinely small. Working from home on bad days. A desk fan. A uniform with a thinner fabric. A windowless meeting room swapped for one with windows. Time for medical appointments without a fuss. A start time pushed by 30 minutes after a bad night. These cost almost nothing. They make an enormous difference. 4. Review your sickness policy. If your current sickness policy treats menopause-related absences as standard absences, you may be unintentionally penalising menopausal staff. A bad night absence rate that crosses a threshold and triggers a formal warning could turn into a discrimination claim very quickly. Look at how absences attract, what triggers what, and whether menopause-related absences can be flagged separately for support. 5. Train. Genuinely. A 30-minute video, a one-hour external session, a chat-around it team meeting. Pick one. Run it. The bar is low, the bar of doing nothing is lower. The swarm, mitebuster parade, myth one, menopause isn't a workplace issue. It is. The HSE recognizes it. The EHRC recognises it. The Employment Tribunal recognises it. The Employment Rights Act 2025 has codified the direction of travel. It is definitively a workplace issue. Myth two, only women are affected. Most women, yes. But the impact ripples. Partners,

The Legal Duties And New Direction

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colleagues, managers, customers. The workplace conversation matters for everyone. Myth three, adjustments are expensive, most are not. A fan, a flexible start time, a quieter room, a different uniform fabric. The most expensive adjustments are the ones triggered when you do nothing. High turnover, tribunal claims, lost institutional knowledge. Myth four. Only old companies have a menopause problem. Wrong. The fastest growing area for menopause-related complaints has been in younger, faster-moving SMEs, where the culture has prioritized energy and presenteism, and where menopausal staff feel particularly invisible. Doesn't matter how trendy your office is. If you don't have this dialed in, you have a problem. The Honeycomb, your quick action list, seven things. One, write your one-page menopause policy this month, steal a template, adapt it. Two, train your managers, even informally, on the conversation script. Three, review your sickness policy for unintended consequences. Make adjustments visible. Don't bury them in a handbook nobody reads. 5. Appoint a go-to person, owner, senior team member, external HR consultant for confidential conversations. 6. At your next team meeting, name menopause as a topic that's on the agenda, not a deep dive. Just a we recognize this matters and we want to support staff through it. 7. Read the EHRC guidance and ACAS material in the show notes. They're free, current, and good. Flying the hive, close, right. Before I go. Menopause at work is no longer optional. Not legally, not culturally, not commercially. The good news, getting this right does not require deep budget, deep training, or HR specialists. It requires you to stop pretending it isn't happening. It requires a one-page policy, a few honest conversations, a willingness to make small adjustments, and managers who don't run away from the word. The other good news, once you start doing this, it's not hard. The hard part is starting. This week is your week. Take one of the seven actions in the honeycomb. The smallest one. The one that doesn't make you feel sick. That counts. If this episode helped, share it with another small business owner, especially the ones who haven't done anything on this yet. They probably mean to. They probably just haven't. Find me at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk or email buzz at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk.

The Numbers Driving Real Change

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