The desire to have a family is a deeply personal one, and whatever a person’s fertility journey might be, stressors might exist even before they get to see a doctor or consult with a traditional medical touchpoint. “The responsibility of a child is a personal discussion, with awkward conversations concerning leave,” Brian Levine, M.D., founding partner of the fertility clinic CCRM New York said in a From Day One webinar on inclusive and empathic employee benefits. “For individuals who go through ERT, IVF, or anything else, all that requires appointments. There's missed time from work. People have to understand there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t include doctors visits that causes distraction. If an employer makes a move saying we support you, then they need to invest in transparency from the beginning.” 

Levine was making a case for empathic benefits to support the modern workforce, and why they now matter more than ever. With women’s workforce participation historic lows, and burnout rates not dwindling, professional organizations are restructuring their offerings surrounding family planning. The main problem with the definition of empathy, though, is that it’s subject to a wide range of interpretations. “Empathic benefits is about putting yourself in your workers’ shoes, even when the needs are not the same as yours,” says Mamta Elias, VP of strategy at the women’s health platform Ovia. When it comes to platforms, it’s also about having an approach and “recognizing,” explained Carol McBride, VP of benefits at the home-mortgage platform Mr. Cooper. “They’re not just a name and a Social Security number; they’re real human beings seeking our support,” McBride said. 

Idealism aside, though, empathic benefits are key to attracting and retaining talent. In the past decade, we’ve seen that 90% of parents would leave their job for a similar position with more family-friendly benefits. “Companies are now using their benefits to compete for talent,” said Elias.

Educating Employees

It starts with educating the workforce through the use of as many communication channels as possible, “leveraging them over and over, finding ways to embed benefits, a one-stop shop,” said Melissa Reeves, the system director of well-being and benefits at CommonSpirit Health, a not-for-profit health system. Crucial questions include: how can we use technology to create an Amazon-like experience where you know what you need before you need it? How do we make sure leaders understand benefits before they’re available? How can we harmonize it? 

Jessica Muhlenberg, responsible for global benefits at the apparel company VF Corp., vouches for newsletters and content. “Storytelling is important. I think that talking about benefits, trying to come up with ways to have associates understand that this is something that people are using, that they’re taking advantage of, that they’re not just programs, is really important.” VF published a newsletter story about an employee taking advantage of the company’s benefits for her fertility journey with her own daughter. “That kind of messaging is really important to getting people to really connect the boring benefit with the actual impact it has on lives.”

It’s also about peer support. Reeves’s company embraces Code Lavender, a kind of psychological first aid provided by a group of employees who understand all the support that’s available.

If communication channels are to be used as an educational tool, they can’t just mention benefits during open enrollment. It needs to be a day-to-day conversation. “There’s more than one pipeline to go to individuals,” said McBride. “How do we make sure we are communicating all programs that are available, so that when time comes they don’t solely have to rely on tech?” She praises the role of employee resource groups (ERGs), which can be a safe space for workers to have more in-depth conversations on the matters that concern them.

Leading With Empathy

Of course leaders have a huge role to play with regards to empathy and for HR leaders generally, the core is the way to communicate the value of empathic benefits. We already established that benefits play a key role in hiring and retaining talent. In addition, “Companies with women on their executive teams perform better but, on the other hand, the women’s participation in the workforce is at a 30-year low,” said Elias. “Leaders have to be intentional about bringing them in” 

Reeves agrees. “From a leadership perspective, it starts with the hiring process, making sure they can lead in the way the organization needs them to lead. It’s about living your values every single day, not just through the lens of checking the box or a performance evaluation.” That said, there needs to be acceptance of leaders who may be not as comfortable to have, say, mental-health check-ins and conversations. The key is extending grace to the situation and making them feel more confident in such situations through education.

Flexibility Beyond Hybrid Schedules

When it comes to flexibility, the first thing that comes to mind is the hybrid schedule. “There are as many ways to do hybrid work as there are employees,” said Muhlenberg, who considers flexibility to be critical to her company’s well-being approach. “For our leaders, it was really important to ensure we were focusing on what employees need but also what the business needs.” In particular, that revolved around making sure that the emphasis on the importance of spending some time in the office translated into meaningful work being done there. “We want to use that day to make sure we’re not staring at zoom screens.” They’re also trying to encourage core hours to put some boundaries on the length of the workday. While the main focus of this conversation was on family life, employees working with vendors on different time zones and those with elder-care responsibilities might benefit from them too.

Flexibility, however, also means making sure that empathic benefits can account for each unique situation, with fertility journeys a prime example. “When it comes to being a member of the LBGTQ community, the gender matters, because the ingredients are different depending on the cake,” said Levine, acknowledging the difficulty of the topic. A single woman or two women, for example, might just need to buy sperm and get inseminated, which costs $2,000. A single man, or a gay couple, may might think about purchasing eggs, finding a donor, then finding a carrier. “Over the last five years [surrogacy cost] went from $75,000 to $250,000,” he said. “Because of employer-based benefits, more people can create embryos, but we never thought about that when we deploy benefits for someone to create embryos, we need to have the conversation of, Are we covering them to actually use them? If you don’t help them put that embryo in, then what's the point?” In IVF, for example, a same-sex couple may need only one cycle of IVF, so why can’t they use the saved money to cover surrogacy? And what about a woman who can’t carry because of a past cancer diagnosis–what are her options? Predicted Levine: “Surrogacy is going to be the hot topic of 2023.”  

Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Boston and Milan.