What does menopause awareness training cover?
Six topics in 45 minutes: what menopause and perimenopause are, the symptoms that affect people at work, the protections in UK equality law, how to make reasonable adjustments, how to hold a supportive conversation, and what a menopause-friendly workplace looks like in practice.
The focus is on what a manager or colleague can actually do. Medical treatment is not part of the course.
Is menopause a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010?
Menopause is not a protected characteristic in its own right. Claims are brought under the age, sex and disability provisions of the Equality Act 2010 instead, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guidance for employers, published in February 2024, confirms that symptoms with a long-term and substantial effect on day-to-day activities can meet the legal definition of disability.
Once that threshold is met, the duty to make reasonable adjustments applies in the same way it would for any other disability.
What adjustments help someone going through menopause?
Adjustments are usually small and cheap. Control over local temperature, a desk fan, moving a workstation away from direct heat, a lighter or more breathable uniform option, easy access to cold water and toilets, flexible start times where sleep is disrupted, and a quiet space to use during a bad hot flush all appear regularly in workplace policies.
Employers also have duties under the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 covering temperature, ventilation and welfare facilities, which is often the simplest route to fixing a physical problem without needing a formal request.
Do managers need menopause training?
Managers, HR professionals and team leaders benefit most, because they are the people who receive the disclosure and then decide whether anything changes. A line manager who handles that first conversation badly rarely gets a second one, and the employee is left managing symptoms and a rota that ignores them.
Colleagues at any level can take it too. Much of the difficulty at work comes from other people misreading fatigue, brain fog or irritability as a performance or attitude problem.
How do you start a supportive conversation about menopause?
Ask about the effect on work rather than the medical detail. Something like “what would make the next few weeks easier” gets further than a question about symptoms, keeps the employee in control of what they share, and produces an adjustment you can actually put in place.
Agree what is recorded, who else needs to know, and a date to review it. The related equality and diversity course covers the discrimination law underneath these conversations in more depth.
