Last year, a report by the Women and Equalities Committee cited research that three in five menopausal women were negatively affected by the condition at work, with thousands of women leaving their jobs due to menopausal symptoms every year.

This means many women are leaving employment at a point in their career when they are perhaps at the peak of their experience and ability, thus reducing the number of women in the workforce, especially those in leadership roles, and thus reducing diversity at executive levels.

This is of particular importance in education - a sector where, according to Department for Education data, female teachers make up a high proportion of the workforce, but are less represented in leadership positions.

In primary schools in 2020, for example, female teachers made up 85 per cent of the workforce compared with 74 per cent of headteachers; in secondary schools, female teachers made up 63 per cent of the workforce compared with 40 per cent of headteachers.

Time to change

As CEO of Liberty Academy Trust, I found this dispiriting and I realised that if we were to avoid missing out on talented female teachers and staff leaving our trust due to this issue, we had to put actions in place to help counter the issues menopause can cause.

This meant ensuring staff felt supported and barriers the menopause can create were removed.

A first step was, as part of our equality, diversity and inclusion policy, signing up to the Workplace Menopause Pledge and, with a new trust menopause ambassador in place, surveying staff about their experience of menopause.

Importantly, we wanted this to be a forum where all staff could express views - recognising that menopause is something that can affect family members and colleagues.

Indeed, it was clear that raising awareness and understanding of menopause was important to a range of staff, not just women.

Colleagues wanted to know more about possible symptoms and their impact, to be supported and to know how to support, and to have guidance on what this might look like. From this, we decided to develop our first menopause policy.

Developing a menopause policy

It was important we considered feedback from staff and created a policy that was practical and could be applied within the context of education settings - where, for example, hybrid working is generally not appropriate.

So we gathered input from school leaders, front-line staff and HR to develop a balanced set of proposals, which took account of employees’ needs, as well as the expectations and requirements of our setting - for example, to have appropriate ratios of staff to pupils and the need for high-quality in-person teaching.

We decided to launch the policy today, on World Menopause Day, for maximum impact - and to send a clear message that we want to support our colleagues undergoing perimenopause or menopause.

The new policy entitles employees to a conversation with their line manager, commits the trust to making reasonable adjustments wherever possible, and sets out a range of flexible approaches that employees and managers can discuss.

Workplace adaptations

While not contractual, these aim to set out how we normally deal with menopause in the workplace. The kinds of adaptations colleagues can discuss include:

• Changing start times
• Providing more breaks
• Working from home
• Making sure there is access to cold water while working
• Making sure there is easy access to toilet facilities
• Making sure the temperature is comfortable, providing a fan or access to fresh air
• Adjusting workwear requirements
• Providing somewhere to store extra clothes or change clothes during the day
• Providing time off to attend medical appointments

It is really important for employers, and particularly education providers - where the statistics for female leaders are poor, and the working environment is not always conducive to working from home - to understand that menopause is not a one-off event but a stage of a person’s life and should not be a taboo.

By launching our policy, and having supportive schemes like the menopause ambassador, we aim to create an environment in which colleagues can, if they want, have open conversations about menopause; and where everyone is expected to be supportive of colleagues who may be affected by menopause in the workplace. Just as they would maternity, or other important life stages a person may normally encounter within their career.

Dr Nic Crossley is the CEO of Liberty Academy Trust. She tweets @Nic_Crossley1

Liberty Academy Trust welcomes opportunities to discuss how they can work with colleagues in the sector to share resources and address issues caused by menopause, please get in touch with the trust’s menopause ambassador, Lisa Thompson