Menopause and mental health at work are far more closely linked than many employers realise. During Mental Health Awareness Week, we hosted a webinar bringing together a menopause specialist and a workplace mental health consultant to unpack exactly how the two connect, and what HR teams and managers can do about it. This blog pulls together the key takeaways.
One statistic set the tone for the whole session: research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that the most commonly reported menopause symptoms among working women are psychological rather than physical, covering things like mood changes, anxiety, memory problems and a loss of confidence, affecting around two-thirds of those surveyed. If you’re building or refreshing your wellbeing strategy, menopause can’t sit outside your mental health conversation. It needs to sit right in the middle of it.
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What Is the Link Between Menopause and Mental Health at Work?
To understand the link between menopause and mental health at work, it helps to get the basics right first, because our panel found a lot of confusion out there.
Perimenopause is the run-up to the ovaries switching off. As egg supply runs low, the brain tries to compensate by producing more hormones, creating the hormonal rollercoaster most people associate with “menopause”.
Menopause, technically, is a single point in time: the day marking 12 months since a woman’s last period. Everything after that is sometimes called post-menopause, though our panel noted this term can be misleading, since once menopausal, symptoms and hormone changes don’t simply switch off.
Three hormones are involved, not just one: oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone. All three act as neurotransmitters in the brain, so when levels fluctuate, cognitive and emotional function fluctuate with them. That’s the direct biological link between menopause and mental health at work: it isn’t “in someone’s head” in the dismissive sense, it’s a hormonal and neurological process that genuinely changes how the brain functions day to day.
The Mental Health Symptoms of Menopause at Work
Anxiety and Low Mood
Progesterone tends to drop first, and our panel described this as often triggering a sense of “not feeling like myself.” Anxiety, particularly social anxiety, was flagged as one of the most common and most misunderstood symptoms. Someone who was previously sociable and engaged at work can become withdrawn and quiet, not because they’ve disengaged, but because their hormones have shifted.
There’s also a well-documented overlap between menopause symptoms and depression, which can make things confusing for both employees and their GPs. Fatigue, low mood and a lack of enjoyment in things can point to either cause, or both. Our panel’s advice was consistent: encourage employees to log the full picture of their symptoms, including physical ones like sleep disruption, hot flushes or joint pain, so healthcare professionals have the context they need to reach the right diagnosis.
Brain Fog and Cognitive Change
Brain fog came up repeatedly, and for good reason. Walking into a room and forgetting why, losing a familiar word mid-sentence, struggling to concentrate – these were described as daily occurrences for some employees, lasting anywhere from two to ten years, and in some cases up to 15. For someone in a senior or client-facing role, that’s a real and understandable source of anxiety about job performance, on top of the symptom itself.
Andropause and Mental Health
While the bulk of the session focused on menopause and mental health at work, our panel did take a moment to highlight the change that takes place in men, as they experience a hormonal shift too.
Andropause is a gradual decline in testosterone that typically begins around age 30 to 35, and it can bring similar cognitive and emotional symptoms: reduced focus, low mood and irritability. It’s often written off as a “midlife crisis” rather than recognised as a hormonal health issue, which means men going through it are even less likely to get support at work.
The Menopause and Neurodivergence Connection
One of the more overlooked points from our panel was that hormonal changes during perimenopause and menopause can intensify existing neurodivergent traits, which is why some women receive an ADHD or autism diagnosis later in life, in their 40s or 50s, for the first time. If you’re already running neurodiversity awareness training, it’s worth building in a note about this crossover, since the practical adjustments (quiet spaces, flexibility, reduced sensory load) can actually help both groups.
Why This Matters for Your Business
The scale here is significant. Two-thirds (67%) of women with experience of menopausal symptoms say the condition has had a mostly negative effect on them at work, with 79% saying they feel less able to concentrate and 68% reporting increased stress, according to CIPD, Menopause in the Workplace: Employee Experiences in 2023, the most recent UK-wide data available on this.
The career impact is measurable too. Over a quarter of women (27%) aged 40 to 60 in the UK, currently employed and who have experienced menopause symptoms, say menopause has negatively affected their career progression – an estimated 1.2 million women nationally, according to CIPD, 2023. And at the sharpest end, one government estimate puts the annual cost to the UK economy at 14 million lost working days a year, according to GOV.UK, Shattering the Silence about Menopause: 12-Month Progress Report.
For HR and wellbeing leads, this isn’t a niche issue affecting a small pocket of staff. It’s a retention, productivity and talent risk sitting inside your existing mental health strategy, whether you’ve labelled it that way yet or not.
Practical Ways to Support Menopause and Mental Health at Work
Train Managers to Have Supportive Conversations
The single biggest theme from our panel was confidence, or the lack of it, among line managers. Common fears included “what if I say something wrong” or “what if I break employment law by asking.” The reassurance from both panellists was clear – you are not diagnosing anyone, and you are not breaking any law by asking a colleague if they’re okay.
What managers need instead is a simple mental health framework: notice a change in behaviour, ask an open question, listen without trying to fix it, and signpost to support (an EAP, occupational health, or simply “have you spoken to your GP”). These are a set of skills that can be trained.
Build an Inclusive Physical Environment
Rather than creating a separate adjustment for every condition, our panel recommended thinking about inclusion as a whole. A quiet room or pod, for example, helps someone experiencing menopausal brain fog or anxiety, but it also benefits colleagues with ADHD, autism, or anyone who’s simply having an overstimulated day in a busy open-plan office. One sensible change can support several groups at once.
Address Sleep and Lifestyle Factors
Sleep disruption was flagged as a major amplifier of other symptoms. Employees who sleep poorly during perimenopause and menopause tend to report worse cognitive and emotional symptoms overall, so flexibility around start times, or a quiet space to recover after a bad night, can have a disproportionate impact on how well someone copes.
Be Wary of Unregulated Supplements and Quick Fixes
Our panel was candid about the amount of unregulated, unevidenced “menopause” marketing aimed at women who are, understandably, looking for anything that helps. Their advice for anyone signposting employees to support was to point them towards a registered nutritionist or their GP for anything supplement- or nutrition-related, rather than a product with “menopause” stamped on the label and little else behind it.
New Legislation: Menopause Action Plans for UK Employers
If you employ 250 or more people, there’s a compliance deadline worth getting ahead of. From April 2026, employers with 250 or more employees have the option to produce and publish a voluntary action plan alongside their gender pay gap data, setting out the steps they’re taking to support employees experiencing menopause. This becomes mandatory from spring 2027, subject to secondary legislation, according to GOV.UK, Creating an Action Plan: Guidance for Employers.
What Your Menopause Action Plan Should Include
Government guidance points employers towards a risk-assessment-led approach:
- Assess your organisation first. Where are the pinch points for your industry and working pattern? A remote workforce and a manufacturing site will need different plans.
- Choose at least one menopause action and one gender pay gap action from the government’s recommended list, though most organisations will end up implementing more than the legal minimum once the risk assessment is done.
- Make it new, not existing practice. The action plan needs to demonstrate genuinely new steps, not simply document what you already do.
It’s also worth noting that menopause isn’t a protected characteristic in its own right, but symptoms can fall under the Equality Act 2010 via sex, age or disability discrimination, and separately, the Health and Safety at Work Act (which applies from five employees upwards, not just 250+) already requires you to manage risks to staff welfare and wellbeing. In other words, the legal case for action exists well before your organisation hits the 250-employee threshold.
Building Your Menopause and Mental Health Strategy
The clearest message from our panel was this: menopause and mental health at work are not two separate conversations. Supporting one means supporting the other, and the organisations getting ahead of the upcoming legislation are the ones already treating menopause as a mainstream part of their mental health and wellbeing strategy, not a bolt-on policy.
If you missed the live session and are interested in learning more about how to support menopause and mental health at work, you can watch the full video below, or head to our webinar hub to see our full range of webinars and to register for future sessions.
