There is a growing body of evidence that workplaces ignoring menstrual health are paying a steep price for it. Not in bad press or social media backlash, but in something far more concrete: staff walking out the door and output quietly declining month after month. In 2025, the organisations that chose to address this gap did not just improve morale. They moved the needle on retention and productivity in ways that showed up in quarterly reports.
The numbers behind this shift are hard to dismiss. An NHS Confederation analysis estimated that absenteeism linked to period pain, endometriosis, fibroids and ovarian cysts costs the UK economy nearly £11 billion every year. That figure only accounts for days missed entirely. It does not capture the far larger problem of presenteeism, where people show up to work but operate at a fraction of their usual capacity because they are managing pain, fatigue, or cognitive fog tied to their menstrual cycle phases.
When employers fail to acknowledge that reality, the consequences compound.
The Retention Problem Nobody Was Talking About
Retention has dominated HR conversations for years. Organisations have invested heavily in salary benchmarking, career development pathways, and culture surveys. But one factor kept flying under the radar: the role that unsupported health needs play in pushing menstruators out of the workforce altogether.
A survey of 2,000 women by AXA Health and CEBR found that 48% believed they would be forced to resign due to health issues, with 36% specifically citing conditions related to menstruation, fertility, or menopause. Meanwhile, 22% reported having already missed a promotion, and 20% had settled for lower pay because of inadequate support. The economic modelling behind the same study suggested that neglecting women’s health at work costs the UK economy approximately £20.2 billion per year.
These are not hypothetical losses. They represent real people making real career compromises because their workplace offered no meaningful support for something as fundamental as a monthly hormonal cycle.
The organisations that broke this pattern in 2025 did so by recognising that retention strategies ring hollow when they overlook the physical realities affecting a significant portion of the team. Flexible scheduling, remote work options during high-symptom days, and access to education about hormonal shifts and emotional wellbeing became part of the package. And the results followed.
What the Data Reveals About Support and Productivity
It is one thing to argue that menstrual health matters in theory. It is another to watch the productivity data back it up.
Deloitte’s 2025 Women @ Work report, surveying 7,500 women across 15 countries, found that 24% of respondents experienced health challenges related to menstruation, menopause, or fertility. For many of them, the default response was to push through pain without taking time off. Of those who did take leave, a large proportion did not feel comfortable disclosing the real reason. Perhaps most telling: only about one in ten women believed their manager would even know how to respond if they raised the topic.
That last figure is where the productivity conversation begins. When employers and managers lack basic literacy around how the menstrual cycle works, employees are left to manage symptoms alone. The result is a workforce that appears present but is quietly underperforming for days at a time, every single menstrual cycle.
Period-positive workplaces tackled this by investing in a few key areas:
- Menstrual health education for employers and managers, so conversations about symptoms and scheduling adjustments become normal rather than awkward
- Flexible work arrangements that account for cyclical energy patterns, not just childcare or commute logistics
- Access to wellness resources that go beyond generic offerings and actually address hormonal balance and self-care
None of this required enormous budgets. What it required was specificity and follow-through.
Why Menstruators Started Choosing Employers Differently
The talent market in 2025 gave employees more leverage to evaluate prospective employers on health support, not just salary and perks. And the data suggests menstruators were paying close attention.
A Deloitte UK survey found that 60% of women said they are more attracted to companies that invest in women’s health benefits, with the figure rising to 67% among those aged 18 to 44. For employers competing for younger talent in particular, this signals a shift that cannot be addressed with a ping-pong table and a fruit bowl.
This is where period-positive policies become a genuine competitive advantage. When an organisation demonstrates that it understands the lived experience of cyclical health, it communicates something larger about its values. It tells prospective employees that health support is not limited to what fits neatly into traditional benefit categories.
The companies that got this right in 2025 shared a few common traits:
- They treated menstrual health as a workplace wellness issue, not a personal problem employees should handle quietly
- They ensured that policies were backed by genuine education, not just a line item in the employee handbook
- They brought in coaches or facilitators trained in cyclical health to run workshops and ongoing support programmes
That third point matters more than it might seem. Generic wellness initiatives often fail because they are too broad. A programme specifically designed around the menstrual cycle gives employees something targeted and actionable, which increases engagement and follow-through.
Building the Business Case, One Cycle at a Time
For sceptics who still see menstrual health as a niche concern, the maths is worth revisiting. Consider a mid-sized company with 300 menstruating employees. If even a portion of them experience the kind of productivity dip and absenteeism the research describes, the cumulative cost runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Set that against the relatively modest cost of education, flexible scheduling, and a few targeted wellness resources, and the return becomes obvious.
Period-positive policies are not a soft benefit. They are an operational strategy. The organisations that understood this in 2025 saw measurable improvements in retention, with fewer menstruators citing health as a reason for leaving. They saw productivity stabilise across the month rather than dipping predictably during the luteal and menstrual phases. And they saw engagement scores improve, because employees who feel seen and supported tend to invest more deeply in their work.
This is also an area where trained coaches and educators play an increasingly important role. Organisations looking to build lasting change benefit from working with professionals who specialise in cyclical health and period education. Internal HR teams rarely have this expertise, and outsourcing it to people who do makes the whole initiative more credible and effective.
The Trajectory for 2026 and Beyond
If 2025 was the year period-positive workplaces proved their value, 2026 is shaping up to be the year more organisations follow suit. The conversation has moved past whether menstrual health belongs in the workplace. It now sits firmly within the broader rethinking of what employee wellbeing actually means and what it costs when it is ignored.
Retention is not just about salaries. Productivity is not just about tools and training. Both are deeply connected to whether employees can bring their whole selves to work, including the parts of their biology that have been treated as taboo for far too long.
The evidence from 2025 makes the path forward clear. Menstrual health support is not a fringe benefit or a progressive gesture. It is a practical, data-backed investment in the people who keep organisations running. The only question left is how quickly the rest of the market catches up.
