Menopause Awareness Month offers an important opportunity to broaden the conversation about what women experience during this stage of life, particularly in the workplace. For many women, menopause often coincides with some of the busiest and most challenging years of working life, alongside demanding jobs, family responsibilities, and increasing financial pressures.
At the same time, alcohol is often placed centre stage in many workplace cultures from celebrations and networking events to after-work drinks and is widely used as a go-to for unwinding and dealing with stress. Despite this, we rarely talk about how these experiences can overlap at work.
Women can experience perimenopause and menopause in very different ways. For some, symptoms can significantly affect everyday life but research shows that lifestyle changes can considerably improve symptoms. Poor sleep, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, anxiety and low mood can all affect our experience and performance at work, and alcohol can sometimes complicate the issue.
Alcohol may help us fall asleep more quickly but it can disrupt sleep later in the night, particularly REM sleep, which we need to feel nourished by our time in bed. So if someone is already experiencing disturbed sleep because of menopause and stress, using alcohol to help may leave them feeling more tired the following day. A drink to relax after a difficult day can become a regular coping strategy, potentially affecting mood and wellbeing too. This doesn't mean that everyone who drinks during menopause has a problem with alcohol. But it’s worth taking a thoughtful approach to the impact that alcohol may have on women’s wellbeing.
This is particularly relevant in workplaces where alcohol is the default way to socialise, relax or reward people. For those trying to change their drinking habits, it can create extra pressure. For those who don't drink, it can feel excluding. For those experiencing menopause, it could be exacerbating their challenges.
By thinking more carefully about the role alcohol plays in our workplaces, we can better understand how it’s shaping our experiences and make changes to ensure it’s not the only way we connect, network, or celebrate at work.
This conversation is timely. The Employment Rights Act 2025 has created a framework for equality action plans for employers with 250 or more employees. Government guidance says these plans are expected to become mandatory from spring 2027, subject to secondary legislation. Among the requirements will be an action supporting employees experiencing menopause.
This places menopause within the wider conversation about workplace gender equality and gives employers an opportunity to think more broadly, going beyond individual adjustments and making it easier for women to make informed choices about alcohol and seek support if they want it.
For employers, that means thinking about the environment in which those choices are made. The types of things to consider are: whether alcohol-free drinks are being made widely available at workplace events; whether there are some social events in place that don’t revolve around drinking; and whether someone can easily decline an alcoholic drink without being made to feel awkward, uncomfortable, or as though they’ve done something wrong. It’s also important to ensure that managers know how to have a supportive conversation when they are concerned about someone's wellbeing, and that workplace policies provide guidance on this.
Here’s a checklist of six simple actions your workplace can take:
- Offer good-quality alcohol-free drinks alongside alcoholic options without making people ask or explain why they aren't drinking.
- Consider whether networking, entertaining and team-building always involve alcohol, and provide alternatives. With the festive season just around the corner, now is an excellent time to start planning celebrations that put connection rather than alcohol at the heart of celebrating.
- Make sure menopause, wellbeing, alcohol and equality policies work together. Sense-check how policies are implemented and ensure there’s guidance on where to access help if needed.
- Equip your managers with the skills and confidence to notice difficulties, raise concerns sensitively and signpost to support.
- Check whether people feel able to opt out of drinking without pressure or embarrassment.
- Include alcohol in your equality action planning. Consider whether your workplace drinking culture could support or undermine your menopause objectives.
This isn’t about blame or judgement, or about telling women what to do. It's about recognising how menopause, work, stress and alcohol can interlink and creating workplace cultures that feel accessible, inclusive, and supportive.
I've worked with organisations on alcohol and workplace wellbeing for more than 20 years, and one thing I've learned is that alcohol rarely exists in isolation. It can impact sleep, stress, mental health, relationships, safety and workplace culture. Menopause can impact many of those things too, so perhaps it's time to stop treating them as separate conversations. A menopause-supportive workplace doesn't need to be an alcohol-free workplace but an alcohol-aware workplace helps connect the dots between the alcohol and wider wellbeing factors like the menopause.
As employers prepare for the changes expected in 2027, there is an opportunity to take a broader view of workplace wellbeing. If menopause is part of your equality agenda, alcohol and workplace drinking culture should be part of the conversation too. Let's create workplaces where people can talk about menopause without embarrassment, make choices about alcohol without pressure and ask for support without fear of judgement, because sometimes the most useful thing an employer can do isn't to create another policy, it's to make it easier to have a conversation.
Lauren Booker is the author of Alcohol at Work: Tackling Workplace Drinking to Improve Wellbeing and an Associate for Alcohol Change UK’s Training and Consultancy service.
