From April 2026, employers with 250 or more employees will have the option to publish a voluntary action plan alongside their gender pay gap data.
These action plans are designed to show what steps the organisation is taking to reduce its gender pay gap and support employees experiencing menopause.
That is the key point for employers this April. This is not yet a legal requirement to publish a plan. But it is now a live expectation, backed by official guidance, and it is clearly heading in one direction.
What are gender equality action plans?
In simple terms, these are structured, evidence-based plans that sit alongside existing gender pay gap reporting. Large employers already have to publish their pay gap data. What is changing now is that the government wants employers to go a step further and explain what they are actually doing about it.
Under the new guidance, action plans should cover two areas. First, they should set out at least one action to help reduce the organisation’s gender pay gap.
Second, they should include at least one action to support employees experiencing menopause, including perimenopause and postmenopause. Employers can also highlight work they are already doing to improve gender equality in the workplace.
So this is not just about reporting figures. It is about showing a plan.
Why menopause support is included
This is the part that will stand out to a lot of employers.
The government has linked pay gap and menopause support because women’s health, progression and retention are all part of the wider picture of workplace equality.
Official guidance says employers must choose at least one action that supports employees experiencing menopause, and it encourages employers to think about workplace adjustments, manager confidence, and how support may need to reflect different employee backgrounds and roles.
That matters because menopause can affect attendance, confidence, concentration and retention. It can also overlap with legal risk.
Menopause is not itself a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, but symptoms may in some cases link to sex, age or disability discrimination, depending on the circumstances.
The new action plan approach is clearly designed to push employers towards a more practical and preventative response.
In plain English, the government is saying this now belongs in workforce planning, not just in a quiet HR conversation when somebody is already struggling.
Who needs to pay attention now?
The immediate focus is on employers with 250 or more employees, because they are the ones covered by the new voluntary reporting route from April 2026 through the gender pay gap reporting service.
The government says no employers are required to publish an action plan during the 2026 to 2027 reporting year, but it is encouraging organisations to use this year as a practice run before the requirement becomes mandatory in 2027. Smaller employers are also encouraged to use the guidance where helpful.
That means large employers should already be thinking about this now, especially if they do not want to be building a public-facing plan at the last minute next year.
What has to go into the plan?
The official guidance says employers must choose at least one action related to the gender pay gap and at least one action related to menopause support.
It also encourages employers to go further where possible. The government has published a list of recommended actions covering areas such as recruitment, progression, transparency and supporting employees experiencing menopause.
There is also separate guidance on practical options such as offering workplace adjustments, reviewing policies, and carrying out a menopause risk assessment.
Menopause
The guidance also says employers should use workforce evidence where possible and consider how different groups of employees may experience disadvantage differently, including by ethnicity, disability status or socioeconomic background.
It stops short of mandating detailed intersectional reporting, but the direction of travel is pretty clear: employers are expected to think beyond a generic statement and produce something grounded in real organisational data.
That is the bit employers should not miss. A vague paragraph about “supporting women at work” is unlikely to cut it.
What should employers do now?
The first job is to get clear on whether your organisation is in scope. If you already report gender pay gap data, this is relevant now.
If you have 250 or more employees, the voluntary publication route is open from April 2026 and the reporting deadlines for the first voluntary year are 30 March 2027 for most public authority employers and 4 April 2027 for private, voluntary and other public authority employers.
The second job is to get honest about what is already in place. Do you have useful gender pay gap data beyond the headline number?
Do you understand what is driving it in your organisation? Are there existing menopause policies, manager guidance or support routes that actually work in practice? Or are you starting from scratch?
The third job is leadership. The government guidance stresses the importance of senior leader buy-in, manager training and employee input.
That makes sense. A published plan is not much use if leadership has not signed off resources, line managers are not confident applying it, or staff do not believe the document reflects reality.
The fourth job is to avoid overclaiming. These plans will be public. They will sit alongside your reporting. So if you say you offer strong menopause support, people will expect to see it in real life. If you say you are tackling the pay gap, people will expect to understand how.
This is one of those areas where sounding polished is less important than being credible.
The bottom line
The issue for employers is from this April, large employers are being asked to show not just their gender pay gap data, but what they are doing about it and how they are supporting employees through menopause.
The plans are voluntary in 2026 and expected to become mandatory in 2027. For HR teams and business owners, the sensible approach is not to panic and not to park it either.
Use this year to get the basics right. Understand your data. Review existing support. Pick actions you can actually deliver. Make sure managers are not guessing. And treat this as part of a wider equality and retention conversation, not a one-off compliance task.
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