The Quiet Struggle: Supporting Staff Through Menopause in Your Setting
With 97% of the early years workforce being female, menopause is already present in most childcare teams. Most employers just don't know it yet.
One of your most experienced practitioners has been with your setting for eight years. She knows every child, every parent, every difficult pick-up and tricky morning routine. Lately, though, she’s been struggling: exhausted despite sleeping, too warm when everyone else finds the room comfortable, losing confidence in herself in ways she can’t quite name.
She hasn’t mentioned it to anyone, because she doesn’t know if she can. That is menopause. And in most childcare settings, it’s playing out right now, in silence.
Around 6 million people in the UK workforce are currently experiencing menopause, and the early years sector is 97% female, so several people in your team are almost certainly among them. Yet 70% of those going through menopause say their employer offers no meaningful support.
For a sector already stretched by recruitment and retention pressures, supporting staff through menopause is not a nice-to-have. It’s part of keeping your team together.
Why Childcare Makes This Harder
Menopause affects people differently, but the nature of early years work makes its symptoms harder to manage than in many other professions. Your practitioners spend the full day on their feet, in warm rooms, lifting children, navigating noise, and holding emotional space for the families in your care.
A hot flush in a busy baby room is not a minor inconvenience, and brain fog, when you are responsible for the welfare of young children, can shake a practitioner’s confidence in ways that linger long after the symptom passes.
3 in 4 people going through menopause experience symptoms. For 1 in 4, those symptoms are severe: hot flushes, fatigue, anxiety, and disrupted sleep, night after night.
UK businesses lose an estimated £191 million a year to menopause-related absenteeism and presenteeism, and around 10% of employees leave their jobs altogether when symptoms go unmanaged. In early years, where losing one experienced practitioner costs weeks of recruitment and months of onboarding, that loss goes deeper than any figure captures.
It’s the trust built slowly between a key worker and a child. It’s the institutional knowledge that leaves with them.
What the Law Now Requires
Menopause isn’t a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, but that doesn’t mean employers face no legal exposure. Where symptoms are severe and persistent enough to affect a person’s ability to do their job, they may qualify as a disability - and at that point, making reasonable adjustments becomes a legal duty, not a choice employers can opt out of.
Employment tribunal claims citing menopause tripled in recent years, with payouts frequently exceeding £60,000. The Employment Rights Act, which received Royal Assent in December 2025, adds further pressure: employers with 250 or more staff must produce Equality Action Plans that explicitly address menopause support, with the requirement becoming mandatory from spring 2027.
Smaller settings are exempt from that reporting obligation, but the underlying legal duties apply to every employer, whatever the headcount.
What Good Support Actually Looks Like
You don’t need a large HR function or a complex policy to make a real difference - the most effective changes tend to be simple ones, done consistently - and the first is making it safe to talk.
Many women wait months before telling anyone at work about their menopause, worried their manager will see them differently or assume they are winding down their career. Managers don’t need to become experts in the topic; they just need to be approachable.
A line as simple as “I want you to know we’re supportive if you’re going through any health changes” opens the door. Most practitioners aren’t looking for a formal process - they're looking for permission to have the conversation.
From there, flexible working is one of the most practical tools available. Since April 2024, all employees have had the right to request it from day one of employment. For someone managing night sweats and broken sleep, an adjusted start time or a shift swap can make a measurable difference to how they function across the day.
Childcare ratios and rotas limit how much flexibility is possible, of course - that’s a genuine constraint - but where adjusted hours are offered, and where requests are handled with care rather than dismissed, staff take notice. It tells them something important about where they work.
Environmental adjustments often cost almost nothing: a desk fan, access to a cooler room for a short break, a uniform policy that allows breathable fabrics, and separate recording of menopause-related absence so that practitioners don’t unfairly reach disciplinary trigger points during a difficult few months.
All of these are practical tools for supporting staff through menopause in the day-to-day reality of an early years setting. The Equality and Human Rights Commission publishes clear, free guidance on workplace adjustments - worth having to hand when you sit down with an individual team member to agree a plan.
Finally, a written policy changes the conversation before it even starts: only 24% of UK employers have a stated menopause policy. A single plain-English page - stating your commitment, naming available adjustments, and telling people who to speak to in confidence - signals that this is a setting where staff can ask for help.
The UK government’s guidance on workplace adjustments for menopause at gov.uk is a practical starting point.
October Is a Good Moment to Start
World Menopause Month runs throughout October, with World Menopause Day falling on the 18th. It’s worth remembering, though, that you don’t need to overhaul your HR approach overnight.
Try committing to one thing: a team conversation, a policy review, or a change to how you record menopause-related absence. Each step builds a workplace where your most experienced practitioners feel able to stay.
Building a culture where people can talk openly about their health is part of building a setting where staff choose to work for the long term. Supporting staff through menopause is also an investment in the quality of care your setting delivers.
When your team feel supported, they stay longer, take fewer unplanned days off, and bring more to the workplace.
The practitioner who has been with you for eight years, who knows every child by name - she deserves that from you. And your setting needs her.
If you’d like to explore how our childcare training programmes can support your team’s development and well-being this Menopause Awareness Month, get in touch with our friendly team today. We’d love to help.
Join the conversation: does your setting have a menopause policy yet? Let us know in the comments what's worked well, or what support you wish you had.
