Free Menopause Policy Template for UK Employers
A complete menopause policy pack: the policy itself, a manager guidance note and a one-page employee guide. Written 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 policy sets out how your business supports employees through perimenopause and menopause: the adjustments you will consider, how absence is handled, and what managers must do. No UK law names a menopause policy as mandatory, but from spring 2027 large employers must publish menopause support actions, and tribunals already expect to see one. Download our free template pack below.
Policy question on your desk right now? Book a free 30-minute consultation with DaisyHR on 07921 398359.
Why Does Your Business Need a Menopause Policy in 2026?
Because right now, most employers do not have one — and the gap is about to become visible. In a Serenova survey of 1,000 UK women published in May 2026, only 18% said their workplace has a menopause policy, and 37% said their employer offers no menopause support at all. CIPD research in 2023 put the figure at around a quarter. Whichever number you take, a business with a proper menopause policy is still the exception. That is an advantage you can buy with an afternoon's work.
The legal direction is one-way. The Employment Rights Act 2025 requires employers with 250 or more employees to publish menopause support actions — voluntary from April 2026, mandatory from spring 2027. One of the government's six recommended actions is, verbatim, to review policies and procedures to meet the needs of employees experiencing menopause. If you are anywhere near 250 staff, the policy is no longer optional homework. See the full picture in our guide to menopause employer obligations in 2027.
The tribunal direction is one-way too. Cases referencing menopause more than tripled in two years — 204 in 2024, up from 64 in 2022 — and menopause symptoms can amount to a disability under the Equality Act 2010, where compensation is uncapped. In Lynskey v Direct Line, one employer paid £64,645 for performance-managing symptoms it should have adjusted for. When a tribunal asks what support was in place, “nothing written down” is the worst answer available. A dated, communicated menopause policy is the first exhibit in your defence.
Tribunal cases referencing menopause more than tripled in two years — 204 in 2024, up from 64 in 2022. Compensation for disability discrimination is uncapped.
What Should a Menopause Policy Include?
A menopause policy that says “we are supportive” and nothing else is decoration. Yours needs, at minimum:
- Scope: perimenopause, menopause and postmenopause, explicitly — and open to any employee affected, at any age.
- A named owner: the person accountable for the policy working, not a vacant “HR department”.
- Workplace adjustments: the kinds you will consider — temperature, uniform, breaks, workload, hours, location — and how an employee asks.
- Absence handling: whether menopause-related absence is recorded separately and how it interacts with your trigger points.
- Manager responsibilities: what a manager must do when an employee raises symptoms, and what they must never do (diagnose, dismiss the conversation, or park it in a performance review).
- Confidentiality: who is told, what is recorded, where it is stored.
- Links to related policies: flexible working, sickness absence, performance management, grievance.
- A review date: a policy last reviewed before the Employment Rights Act 2025 is out of date on its face.
Cross-refer to your duty to make reasonable adjustments for menopause where symptoms meet the disability threshold. Every item on that list is pre-built in the template pack below.
Download the Free Menopause Policy Template Pack
One download, three documents — because a policy nobody explains to managers is a policy in a drawer.
The Menopause Policy
The full template, every section above pre-written and editable, ERA 2025-ready. Word and PDF.
Manager Guidance Note
Two pages telling your managers exactly how to handle the conversation, what to record and when to escalate.
Employee Guide
A one-page summary you can share with staff, so the policy is used rather than merely filed.
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The 5 Mistakes Employers Make With Menopause Policies
Downloading a policy and never adapting it. A policy that names no owner, no referral route and no review date is visibly a download. Tribunals notice. So do employees.
Contradicting the absence procedure. The menopause policy promises understanding; the absence procedure fires triggers at three occurrences. Nobody reconciled them. The inconsistency becomes the claimant’s best exhibit.
Skipping the managers. The policy lives on the intranet; the manager has never read it and handles the first disclosure badly. Most menopause claims are not about the policy — they are about one conversation. That is why the pack includes the manager note, and why we built menopause training for managers around it.
Treating it as a women-over-50 document. Perimenopause can start years earlier, and government guidance is explicit that support should be accessible at any age. Scope it narrowly and you exclude the people most likely to be struggling silently.
Writing it and never mentioning it again. No launch, no line in induction, no annual reminder. When a dispute arrives, the employee credibly says they never knew it existed — and the policy’s protective value evaporates.
When the Template Isn't Enough: The Bespoke Option
When the Template Fits
The template pack will serve most small and medium employers as written. It will not fit everyone. Shift work, uniformed roles, high-heat environments, client-facing rotas and multi-site operations all change what “reasonable” looks like — a menopause policy for a Wigan food manufacturer should not read like one for a Manchester design agency.
When You Need Bespoke
DaisyHR writes bespoke menopause policies as part of our HR policies and documentation service: policy, manager guidance, employee communication and the absence-procedure reconciliation most employers miss. If the free template genuinely covers you, we will say so — we will tell you honestly if you do not need us.
Menopause and the Law: The Dates That Matter
The Employment Rights Act 2025 becomes law, including equality action plans for large employers.
Government guidance published: reviewing policies and procedures is one of the six recommended menopause actions.
Voluntary publication of menopause action plans opens for employers with 250 or more employees.
Publication becomes mandatory for 250+ employers, subject to secondary legislation. Your policy is the evidence behind the plan you publish.
Frequently Asked Questions
No law says “you must have a menopause policy”. But from spring 2027, employers with 250 or more employees must publish menopause support actions under the Employment Rights Act 2025, and reviewing your policies is one of the government’s six recommended actions. For smaller employers, the policy is your practical defence to Equality Act claims — which apply from employee one.
The policy is your internal rulebook: adjustments, absence, manager duties. The action plan is a short public document of committed actions, published on the government's gender pay gap service. The policy is evidence the plan is real. Get both — the free menopause action plan template is the companion to this pack.
It can be. Where symptoms have a substantial, long-term effect on day-to-day activities, tribunals have treated them as a disability — Lynskey v Direct Line is the standard warning, at £64,645. That triggers the duty to make reasonable adjustments, and compensation for getting it wrong is uncapped.
Yes, and arguably more than a large one. A big employer can absorb a £64,645 award; a 20-person North West firm cannot. The policy costs an afternoon, sets manager expectations before the first difficult conversation, and reads well at tribunal. There is no version of this where having it written down makes things worse.
Your policy should say how menopause-related absence interacts with trigger points — many employers record it separately or discount it from triggers, because applying standard triggers to a fluctuating long-term condition is exactly the pattern that produced the Lynskey award. Decide the rule, write it down, apply it consistently.
Annually, and immediately on any legal change or any menopause-related grievance. Anything last reviewed before the Employment Rights Act 2025 became law on 18 December 2025 needs reviewing now.
Get Menopause Policy Advice From a North West HR Consultant
Book a free 30-minute consultation. We will look at what you have, tell you whether the free template covers it, and quote for bespoke work only if you genuinely need it. 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