One clear trend in employee benefits has been a collective focus on a healthier work-life balance. With that comes fertility and family planning benefits. According to the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, family planning benefits are gaining recognition among the benefits employees ask for.
Family planning benefits greatly impact the resources and trajectory of parents both in and out of the home. Ten percent of employers with 50 or fewer employees offer some sort of fertility benefit, and more than 30 percent of employers with 500 or more employees provide fertility benefits.
The most common benefits include:
- In-vitro fertilization treatments
- Fertility medications
- Genetic testing
- Fertility counseling
- Egg harvesting or freezing services
As this trend continues to evolve, employers may wonder how this type of benefit impacts their ability to attract, engage, and retain talent in their business.
Attracting
With the current state of the job market, it is even more essential to find impactful ways to set your business apart from the rest. What's important is being able to attract and retain talent that proves to be an investment in their lives at work and beyond. Comprehensive fertility benefits are key to that investment as it provides stability to individuals seeking specialized family care.
Family building benefits attract a diverse talent pool, supporting not just women but all genders and their families. When your employees are happy and supported through their family planning journey, that will shine through in retention and your ' 'organization's overall culture. These factors will then attract dynamic new talent looking to grow with a company they feel values their employees outside of work.
Engaging
As with any benefit offering, family planning benefits help employees focus on their work-life balance while also keeping them productive and engaged at work. Surprisingly, these perks can also help improve employee engagement and productivity while staying easy to manage for Human Resource professionals. It can also provide flexibility so parents can reconcile between work and their private life more easily. When caregivers don't need to worry as much about their family life, they can be more focused on their job responsibilities.
The advantages of offering family planning benefits are that it shows improved employee morale and company loyalty. You help build a culture that supports all employees of a diverse workforce. Providing employees access to dedicated assistance throughout their family planning journey–whatever that may look like–helps to decrease their stress and keep them engaged at work.
Retaining
Health benefits have always been an important tool for employee retention. With the rise of family planning benefits, employers need to think hard about adding these services to their total rewards package. Many may not know that offering these services can provide employees with top-notch fertility benefits while being cost-effective. And when you create a comprehensive health support plan—ranging from family planning to postpartum support—you impact your employees' ability to be successful in the long-term, as well.
For many, the employee value proposition comes from comprehensive health and well-being benefits. And one category of benefits that continues to attract employees is family-planning benefits. According to recent data from Carrot, 77% of employees would stay at their company longer if offered fertility benefits, while 88% would even consider changing jobs to access fertility benefits. Being intentional about offering a competitive benefits package reduces the likelihood an employee will find the grass greener on the other side.
Now that you know why family planning benefits are so crucial to the workforce – let's implement them!
5 Steps to Implementing a Family Planning Benefit
Your Total Rewards package is null without the addition of fertility and family-planning benefits. It's important to understand what your employees need and want.
Set goals and get buy-in
First, make sure you have executive buy-in. That includes setting goals, developing a timeline, and establishing success metrics. Consider the cost impact on both you and the employee. Make sure that the eligibility criteria are suitable for you and your team.
Engage with specialists
Engage employees with benefit engagement surveys, speak to your benefit brokers, and reach out to vendors who specialize in offering tailored fertility and family planning services. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, you want to build a benefit that delivers the most impactful to your employees in a positive way.
Determine the value for your workforce
When implementing any new benefit, make sure you do so deliberately and with a clear plan in mind. That way, you'll maximize the effects of the benefits, ensuring that your current employees will be more satisfied and that you'll be better able to recruit new hires who fit in with your organization's culture. You can find out if these benefits suit your team by running internal surveys, conducting focus groups, or comparing against benchmark data.
Develop a communication plan
Once the company has information to share, it's time to plan out the best way to share it. Consider a variety of communication mediums: online, face-to-face, and on paper. Consider the way that you communicate your current medical benefits and think about whether you can expand on that, or if you need to develop a new communication strategy for family planning benefits.
Manage Engagement & Get Feedback
Organizations want to do the right thing and give employees benefits they like and will use. If employees 'don't know about the benefit or they don't know how it works, then they can't take advantage of it. Keep track of how many people are actually using this benefit.
Family planning benefits are way past the time of being considered a nice-to-have benefit option. They're a must-have benefit for employers if they want to engage, retain, and attract top talent. Fertility benefits support everyone, no matter their sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or geography.
These benefits also encourage people to seek person-centered care and clinical support, ultimately providing better support that leads to healthier outcomes – and healthier employees. There is a positive impact on the workforce when employers focus on what matters most to employees and can use that to their advantage.
