Case study - supporting colleagues experiencing menopause

In recent years, the need to better support employees experiencing the menopause has been highlighted. In RoS, around 12% of our workforce are women of the age most likely to experience the menopause. Given these demographics, we made this a focus over the last two years. Our Trade Union (PCS) fully endorse this focus.

We focussed on awareness and creating a supportive environment for colleagues. We wanted them to feel confident discussing their symptoms and asking for support and reasonable adjustments.

On World Menopause Day in 2021, we launched our Menopause Awareness Guidance for managers and colleagues, based on external guidance. This is available on our intranet for colleagues at any time. It has been accessed over 200 times since it was created.

We also ran Menopause Awareness workshops in 2021, delivered by external providers. We continued this activity in 2022, linking to International Women’s Day. We ran further workshops on menopause awareness. This included a specific session for men who wanted to learn more and to support male managers who had team members experiencing menopause. In total 151 colleagues attended workshops.

We will continue to focus on menopause in RoS and look for new ways to support our colleagues. Recently, we advertised the Peppy Menopause App which is available to all Civil Servants via the Charity for Civil Servants. Following this app being available 15 colleagues signed up to use the app within the first month.

Our Colleague Experience team lead on this work and continue to develop the support available at RoS. They are supported by Internal Communications team, PCS and other areas of HROD.

We have seen positive engagement from colleagues on our workshops and guidance. Findings from our recent colleague wellbeing survey highlighted that those experiencing the menopause in RoS were reporting equitable levels of wellbeing at work, compared to our colleagues overall.