What are family planning benefits?
Family planning benefits refer to benefits that support the reproductive health of your employees. Though most traditional health insurance companies typically cover key components, such as birth control, pregnancy and maternity leave, family planning benefits have expanded to fertility benefits, infertility treatment and options for surrogacy and adoption.
What are fertility benefits?
Fertility benefits are a subset of family planning benefits. Designed to help employees build happy, healthy families, these inclusive benefits typically cover infertility treatments and provide access to specialists and support services.
Consider the following when designing a fertility benefits package.
- Fertility consultations and counseling: These initial steps can help your employees get a diagnosis and understand their fertility issues. Fertility specialists may perform tests and evaluations to identify issues potentially affecting conception or carrying and create custom treatment plans.
- Fertility medications: Personalized treatment plans usually include fertility medications that stimulate ovulation and regulate menstrual cycles. These hormonal treatments may enhance the chances of conception while preparing the body for pregnancy.
- Egg freezing and storage: Not everyone’s ready to have children immediately, making egg freezing and storage a great option for flexible family planning. This benefit can help employees create families on their own timelines.
- In vitro fertilization (IVF): This infertility treatment involves fertilizing the egg outside the womb and implanting it in the uterus.
- Intrauterine insemination (IUI): Generally less invasive and more cost-effective than IVF, IUI involves direct fertilization via an in-office procedure.
- Surrogacy and adoption options: Employees who can’t conceive or carry may still want families of their own, making surrogacy and adoption benefits important to consider.
Why offering fertility benefits matters
As potential employees look for jobs that support their wellbeing, offering fertility treatments in your benefits package gives your business an advantage. Showing your compassion by helping workers build a family also demonstrates trust, inclusion and respect, all of which prove highly important to employees.
Attract talent to your company
Comprehensive benefits packages often influence employees’ decisions to work for companies. Providing fertility benefits shows you care about their wellbeing both inside and outside the office.
Help your business retain employees
Employees may be more likely to stay with your company if you offer more comprehensive benefits, including fertility and infertility benefits. By showing you genuinely care about your employees’ futures and aspirations, you can foster loyalty and help reduce your business’ turnover rates. This, in turn, can reduce costs associated with hiring and training new employees.
Enhance your brand and reputation
When you offer progressive benefits that relate to reproductive health, these forward-thinking perks boost your brand and reputation when it’s time to hire. Being known as a caring employer helps differentiate your company in its industry, improves customer perceptions and may attract business opportunities.
Create a positive company culture
Company culture matters to workers, with a supportive environment playing a big part in their wellbeing. Offering fertility benefits lets workers know you understand their varied needs. This knowledge can boost employee morale and create a community where workers feel supported.
Align with corporate social responsibility goals
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals promote gender equality and diverse families. Offering benefits like this contributes to your employees’ wellbeing and helps your company enhance its CSR profile. Businesses with excellent CSR profiles often appeal to socially conscious investors, consumers and employees.
Challenges with offering infertility benefits
HR managers and benefits coordinators need to consider the potential obstacles associated with fertility benefits before adding these perks to packages. Understanding these challenges can help your company mitigate problems when implementing fertility benefits programs.
Overall cost
Fertility treatments such as IVF and IUI are expensive, so covering these fertility benefits can increase your company’s overall costs.
Administration is complex
The complexity of fertility benefits can require coordination with insurance companies and health care providers to ensure compliance. Benefits administration requirements also require detailed record keeping with strict privacy requirements.
Privacy concerns
Because fertility is a personal and sensitive issue, employees may have privacy concerns. You may need to take steps to increase your privacy policy and protection and clearly demonstrate how you protect an employee’s personal details.
Ways to cover employee fertility benefits
The costs of covering fertility benefits are often worth the advantages they bring to your company. But you can reduce those costs when you want budget-friendly options to promote employee wellbeing. Here are some ways to cover these perks on a limited budget.
- Collaborative insurance plans: Teaming up with other businesses that want to offer fertility benefits helps reduce individual costs. Pooling resources may let you negotiate better terms and coverage options.
- Fertility benefits providers: Many specialized fertility benefits providers offer customizable plans. They often have partnerships with clinics for additional discounts and more streamlined services.
- Partial reimbursement programs: If you can’t cover everything, you could provide partial reimbursement.
- FSAs and HSAs: Offering flexible spending accounts (FSAs) and health savings accounts (HSAs) gives employees flexible ways to pay for fertility treatments. These accounts let workers set aside pre-tax money, saving them money when they file next year.
