Free Menopause Action Plan Template for UK Employers
A ready-to-use Menopause Action Plan template covering all six government-recommended actions. Built by a CIPD-qualified HR consultant in Bolton. Updated for the Employment Rights Act 2025.
Built for Employers & Their Teams
CIPD Qualified
ERA 2025 Updated
Bolton, Manchester, North WestA Menopause Action Plan is a published document setting out the specific actions your business is taking to support employees through perimenopause and menopause. Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, employers with 250 or more employees can publish one voluntarily from April 2026, and must publish one from spring 2027. Our free UK template covers all six government-recommended actions.
Need your action plan written and implemented, not just downloaded? Book a free 30-minute consultation with DaisyHR on 07921 398359.
What Is a Menopause Action Plan and Why Is It Now Law?
A Menopause Action Plan is not a policy. It is a public commitment. You publish it alongside your gender pay gap data on the government's gender pay gap service, and it names the specific actions your organisation is taking to support employees experiencing menopause, including perimenopause and postmenopause.
The legal basis is the Employment Rights Act 2025, which became law on 18 December 2025. It introduced equality action plans for large employers: at least one action on your gender pay gap and at least one action on menopause support. The government published its employer guidance on 4 March 2026 through the Office for Equality and Opportunity.
Two things make this different from every other wellbeing initiative that has landed on your desk. First, it is published. Your staff, your competitors and every candidate you try to recruit can read it. Second, from spring 2027 it stops being optional for employers with 250 or more employees. A vague paragraph about “supporting our people” will not pass. The menopause action plan template below gives you the structure the government service expects, with every field pre-built.
What Does the Employment Rights Act 2025 Actually Require?
Who: employers with 250 or more employees, counted per legal entity. A group with three companies of 250+ staff each submits three separate plans.
What: at least two actions in total — a minimum of one to reduce your gender pay gap and a minimum of one to support employees experiencing menopause.
Where: created, submitted and published on the government’s gender pay gap service, publicly visible alongside your pay gap data.
Sign-off: private and voluntary sector employers must name a responsible person — usually a director, partner or senior officer — who confirms the information is accurate.
When: voluntary from April 2026. Publish during the 2026–27 reporting year by 30 March 2027 (most public authorities) or 4 April 2027 (private and voluntary sector). Mandatory from spring 2027, subject to secondary legislation.
Treat the voluntary year as a rehearsal with the audience watching. The government has said as much: 2026–27 is the practice run. The employers who publish a weak, copied plan in 2027 will be the ones who ignored 2026. Start with the template, put real names and real dates in it, and you are ahead of most of the market.
The 6 Menopause Actions the Government Wants to See
The government's guidance lists six evidence-informed menopause actions. Your action plan must include at least one. Our template covers all six, because picking one and ignoring five is a plan in name only — and it is the pattern a tribunal will notice if a claim ever lands.
Train managers to support employees experiencing menopause. Your managers are your biggest risk and your biggest asset. Most menopause tribunal claims start with one badly handled conversation. See our guide to menopause training for managers.
Offer occupational health advice for employees experiencing menopause. A referral route your managers actually know how to use, not a phone number buried in the handbook.
Set up menopause support groups and networks. Costs almost nothing. Signals a great deal — internally and on your published plan.
Offer workplace adjustments for employees experiencing menopause. Temperature, uniform, breaks, workload, hours. Many overlap with your duty to make disability reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010.
Conduct a menopause risk assessment for your workplace. Treat it like any other risk assessment: identify, record, act, review.
Review policies and procedures to meet the needs of employees experiencing menopause. Flexible working, absence triggers, performance management, leave. If your policies were written before 2023, they were written before any of this existed. Start with our free menopause policy template.
Download the Free Menopause Action Plan Template
The template is the document we use with our own North West clients, stripped of client detail and ready for your names and dates. Word and PDF, no watermarks.
What's inside
- A one-page statement of commitment, pre-written and editable
- A selected-actions table with owner, deadline and success-metric columns
- All six government menopause actions pre-loaded with implementation notes
- A communication plan for staff, managers and recruitment
- A 12-month review schedule
- A responsible person sign-off block, matching what the gender pay gap service asks for
Get your free copy
Instant download. No spam, ever.
Under 250 Employees? You Still Need a Plan. Here's Why
The 2027 mandate only bites employers with 250 or more employees, and most North West businesses we work with are nowhere near that. Download the template anyway. Here is the arithmetic.
Employment tribunal cases referencing menopause more than tripled in two years: 204 in 2024, up from 64 in 2022. Menopause symptoms can amount to a disability under the Equality Act 2010, and disability discrimination compensation is uncapped. In Lynskey v Direct Line Insurance Services, the tribunal awarded £64,645 to one employee after her employer performance-managed her instead of adjusting for her symptoms. That employer had resources most SMEs do not. The award would hurt a 30-person Bolton firm considerably more than it hurt Direct Line.
An action plan built now, at your size, costs you an afternoon. The same document assembled in a panic, after a grievance names menopause, costs you a settlement.
How DaisyHR Builds and Implements Menopause Action Plans
Free consultation and gap review.
Thirty minutes. We look at what you already have — policies, training records, absence data — and tell you what the gap is between that and a publishable plan.
We draft your plan and the documents behind it.
The action plan itself, plus the policy, manager guidance and adjustment records that make it true. A published plan your paperwork cannot back up is worse than no plan.
We train your managers and set the review cycle.
The plan names actions; managers deliver them. We train them, then diarise the 12-month review so the plan stays current instead of quietly expiring.
If the template is genuinely all you need, we will tell you. Some businesses can do this themselves. We will be honest about whether yours is one of them.
Menopause Action Plans: The Dates That Matter
The Employment Rights Act 2025 becomes law, including equality action plans for large employers.
The government publishes its action plan guidance and the list of six recommended menopause actions.
Voluntary publication opens for employers with 250 or more employees, via the gender pay gap service.
Deadlines to publish a voluntary plan for the 2026–27 reporting year (public sector / private and voluntary sector).
Publication becomes mandatory, subject to secondary legislation. On the standard reporting cycle, the first mandatory plans are expected to fall due by April 2028.
Frequently Asked Questions
From spring 2027, yes — for employers with 250 or more employees, subject to secondary legislation under the Employment Rights Act 2025. From April 2026 publication is voluntary. Employers under 250 staff have no publication duty, but the Equality Act 2010 risk around menopause applies to every employer from employee one.
The action plan is a short published document: named actions, owners, deadlines, submitted through the gender pay gap service. The policy is your internal rulebook covering adjustments, absence and manager responsibilities. You need both, and they need to agree with each other. Download our free menopause policy template alongside this one.
You can. We would not. Menopause tribunal cases more than tripled between 2022 and 2024, disability discrimination awards are uncapped, and the Lynskey case put a £64,645 price on getting it wrong. The template takes an afternoon. A tribunal claim takes a year.
At minimum, one action supporting employees experiencing menopause (alongside at least one gender pay gap action), chosen from or consistent with the government’s list of six: manager training, occupational health advice, support networks, workplace adjustments, a menopause risk assessment, and a review of policies and procedures.
On the government’s gender pay gap service, alongside your pay gap data. It is public. Staff, journalists, competitors and candidates can all read it — which is exactly why a thin plan is a liability.
Yes. The government guidance explicitly covers perimenopause and postmenopause, and notes that support should be accessible to employees of any age. Plans that only mention “menopause” in the narrow sense are already behind the guidance.
Get Menopause Action Plan Advice From a North West HR Consultant
Book a free 30-minute consultation. We will review what you have, tell you what the gap looks like and what it will take to close it before the 2027 deadline. No charge. No obligation.
Serving employers across Bolton, Manchester, Salford, Stockport, Wigan, Warrington, Bury, Rochdale, Preston, Lancaster and Chester.
Written by Samantha Boyle MCIPD, Fractional HR Director, Bolton & North West. · Last reviewed: July 2026