‘It’s essential for recruitment’: how fertility benefits got on the UK office’s agenda

A senior banker in London who underwent fertility treatment wanted to keep it secret because she feared her employer would not support her.

The bank eventually found out by accident, after a sick note from the hospital mentioned complications from IVF. When the woman returned to work, she was told she was being transferred abroad and could be fired if she went through with the implant.

“They rang her and said you could either have a baby or move abroad,” said Nickie Aiken, a former Tory MP. “She eventually left the bank but she felt bad about it and didn’t want other people to go through this.”

Encouraged by her constituent’s story, Aiken introduced a private member’s bill in 2022 that would have given individuals and couples the right to take paid leave for fertility treatments, but the proposal failed. She now hopes the new government will take up the issue. “It’s essential for retention and recruitment. It also sends a clear message about the ethics of the company,” she said.

More and more companies are realising this, with some offering paid leave and financial support of up to £50,000.

Apple and Facebook were early adopters, offering to freeze staff eggs in 2014 as a way to retain female employees. City companies in the UK soon followed suit.

International law firm Cooley now offers fertility benefits of up to £45,000, including IVF, adoption services and egg freezing. In 2019, Goldman Sachs announced its ‘pathways to parenthood’ scheme, which offers up to $20,000 to cover the cost of egg extraction.

This year, British brewer Greene King launched a fertility and IVF policy for its 40,000 employees, giving workers up to five days extra paid leave to attend appointments for each treatment cycle, for up to three treatments. In 2022, the Co-operative Group, which employs almost 70,000 people, also introduced paid leave for fertility treatments.

Eileen Burbidge, founder of Fertifa, which provides reproductive health benefits to businesses, said it was fast becoming a major issue for employers. She said Fertifa’s client base had quadrupled since the start of 2022, with companies offering benefits ranging from wellbeing support and paid leave to funding for fertility treatments. Companies are paying from £250 per employee per year for a lifetime allowance of up to £50,000 – with the average allowance between £10,000 and £20,000, she said.

“We’ve seen a shift in the last few years,” Burbidge said. “For example, in 2022, most companies were curious about what competitors and colleagues were doing. I think a lot of HR leaders back then were just building a case internally because employees started asking. Since 2023, curiosity and fact-finding has shifted to action and introducing the benefits.”

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found last year that only 27% of employers had a fertility treatment policyand that 19% of staff had considered quitting their jobs due to fertility problems.

That’s slowly changing. Natalie Sutherland, partner at law firm Burgess Mee, is co-host and co-founder of In/Fertility in the Citya live event series and podcast. She was appointed the law firm’s first fertility officer in 2021.

“A lot of women feel like it’s career suicide to talk about trying to have a baby, and they don’t talk about it when they miscarry,” she said. “If you have a stressful job, it helps to know ahead of time that there will be support.”

Becky Kearns, director of Fertility Matters at Work, an organisation that helps employers become fertility-friendly, said: “There is no legal right to take leave for fertility treatment and we hear terrible stories from people who have had no choice but to leave their jobs, with many feeling they cannot tell their employer.”

Labour’s manifesto promised to strengthen protections against discrimination in pregnancy and menopause in forthcoming employment rights legislation. However, there was no mention of paid leave for fertility treatment.

The Department for Business and Trade said: “We welcome businesses that choose to offer their staff better, wider benefits as part of their contracts. We are delivering an ambitious agenda to ensure workplace rights are fit for the modern economy. Our forthcoming Employment Rights Bill will be key to our mission to ‘make work pay’.”

The change in employer attitudes comes amid falling birth rates globally and at a time when IVF provision through the NHS has been severely reduced. Just one in four (27%) IVF cycles in 2022 were paid for by the health service, according to the latest annual report from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulates fertility treatments.

Data from companies that have introduced paid leave for fertility appointments suggests it is unlikely to be a significant burden. Cadent Gas, the 6,000-employee gas distribution company, introduced the measure in October 2022 and has so far recorded fewer than 50 days of paid leave attributed to fertility treatments.

When Big Tech introduced the benefits of egg freezing in 2014, critics came out in force, saying the policy sent the wrong message to women and encouraged them to delay parenthood.

But Burbidge believes the debate has moved on. “At the time, there was a false narrative that companies were supporting such treatments, such as pressuring (women) to work more and delay parenthood,” she said. “That’s clearly not why women seek the benefits and it was a false narrative. Women overwhelmingly choose to freeze their eggs because they haven’t found a partner yet.”

Some argue that such policies still do not prevent discrimination against women returning from maternity leave.

Joeli Brearley, chief executive of Pregnant Then Screwed, a maternity rights charity, said: “Fertility treatments are a great perk on paper, but as with all workplace policies, they don’t necessarily translate into good practice without real buy-in from managers.

“We know that women are judged as distracted and less committed to their jobs from the moment they become pregnant, and the majority experience some form of discrimination, including being fired, laid off, sidelined, demoted, bullied or harassed. Offering the treatment does not directly address the inherent biases that many employers have against pregnant women and new mothers.”