Reducing Hours During Perimenopause: When Part-Time Work Makes Sense
Considering reducing your working hours during perimenopause? This guide covers how to make the case, manage finances, and use recovered time well.
When Reduced Hours Become Worth Considering
Not every woman needs to reduce working hours during perimenopause, but for some, full-time work becomes genuinely unsustainable during the most acute phase of the transition. Severe fatigue, sleep disruption from night sweats, or concentration difficulties that make a demanding job feel impossible are real and legitimate reasons to consider a change in working pattern. Before concluding that you cannot cope, it is worth ruling out treatable causes. Many symptoms of perimenopause respond well to HRT or lifestyle changes, and addressing the underlying hormonal shifts can restore capacity without any change to your working hours. However, if symptoms remain significant even with appropriate management, reducing hours may genuinely protect both your health and your career in the longer term.
How to Approach the Conversation With Your Manager
Requesting reduced hours is easier than many women expect, partly because flexible working legislation in the UK gives employees the right to make a formal request after 26 weeks of employment. You do not need to explain your medical reasons in detail to make this request, though sharing some context can help a manager understand that this is a genuine health need rather than a lifestyle preference. Come to the conversation with a concrete proposal: which days you would work, how your responsibilities would be managed, and how the arrangement would be reviewed. Framing it around continuity and solutions rather than just your personal needs makes it easier for a manager to support. If your employer has an HR team, check whether there is a flexible working policy or an occupational health referral pathway that could support your request.
Financial Planning When Reducing Hours
A reduction in hours means a reduction in income, and this needs careful planning, particularly for women in their 40s and 50s who may be approaching peak pension contribution years. Before agreeing to any reduction, model your finances. What does a 20% reduction in salary actually mean monthly after tax? Can your household budget absorb this, and for how long? Check whether your pension contributions will be affected and whether you can maintain voluntary contributions to offset this. Some women find that a temporary reduction in hours, even for six to twelve months, is financially manageable and allows enough recovery to return to full-time work with sustained capacity later. Others discover that a permanent part-time arrangement is affordable and preferable long-term. Both are valid, and the decision works best when it is made with clear financial information.
Using Recovered Time for Health
The purpose of reducing hours is not simply to rest but to invest some of that recovered time into the things that support health during perimenopause. Regular exercise, particularly strength training and walking, has documented benefits for bone density, mood, sleep, and cardiovascular health during this transition. When working full-time through significant symptoms, exercise is often the first thing sacrificed. A change in working pattern creates space to be more consistent. This might mean a morning gym session on days off, attending a yoga class, or having time to cook more nutritious meals. Sleep becomes more protective too. These investments have a real impact on both symptom severity and your long-term health.
Managing the Guilt Factor
Many women who reduce working hours feel guilty about earning less, or about colleagues picking up extra responsibilities. This guilt is understandable but worth examining. Perimenopause is a medical transition, and adjusting your working pattern to manage a health condition is not weakness. You would not feel guilty for reducing physical activity after a significant injury. Hormonal transitions require adaptation too. It also helps to remember that many women who make this change are more effective in fewer hours than they were when stretched too thin. A well-rested, focused version of you working fewer hours may deliver more value than a depleted version working more.
Phased Return and Trial Periods
If you are not sure whether a permanent reduction in hours is right for you, a phased approach can work well. Some employers will agree to a trial period of three to six months, giving both you and the organisation time to assess whether the arrangement works. A phased return after sick leave due to perimenopause symptoms is another formal route in some organisations, particularly if your GP has provided documentation about your health. Returning gradually, perhaps three days initially and building back up, allows you to monitor how your body responds without committing to a permanent change prematurely. It is also worth revisiting the arrangement periodically. Perimenopause is a transitional phase, and what you need at its peak may be very different from what suits you two years later as the transition progresses.
Tracking Symptoms to Inform Your Decisions
One of the most useful things you can do when considering or trialling a change in working hours is to track how your symptoms change in response. It can be hard to know, without evidence, whether reduced hours are genuinely improving your wellbeing or whether other factors are at play. The PeriPlan app lets you log symptoms and track patterns over time, which means you can build a data-driven picture of how changes to your schedule affect your experience. This kind of evidence is also useful if you ever need to make the case to a manager or GP for continued flexibility, as it shifts the conversation from general feelings to observable patterns. Your experience of perimenopause is the most reliable source of information about what you need, and recording it consistently helps you make informed decisions.
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