Latest / The Diversity Career Podcast with Fexingo: Inclusion, Equity, and Underrepresented Professionals / How One Company Made Fertility Treatment a Career Retention Tool
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's a phrase in HR circles that I keep hearing lately: 'cliff effect.' It's the moment a high-performing employee hits a life event that their benefits don't cover, and they walk. Luna: Right — and fertility treatment is one of the biggest cliff effects that nobody talks about. Lucas: Exactly. And today I want to look at one company that decided to talk about it. A mid-sized professional services firm — about four thousand employees, not a tech giant — that introduced a comprehensive fertility benefit in 2022 and then tracked what happened. Luna: What did they find? Lucas: Within two years, turnover among women aged thirty to forty dropped twenty-two percent. And they calculated a three-to-one return on investment just from reduced recruiting and training costs. Luna: That's a massive swing. And it's not just about IVF — what does 'comprehensive' mean here? Lucas: They covered IVF, egg freezing, fertility preservation for people undergoing medical treatments that might affect fertility, and adoption assistance — up to thirty thousand dollars per adoption. They also covered surrogacy legal fees, which is rarer. And critically, they did not impose a lifetime cap. Luna: No cap is unusual. Most plans cap at like ten or twenty thousand dollars. Lucas: Right. And the reason they gave was that a cap essentially penalizes people who need multiple cycles, which is often the people who face the most biological or financial barriers. They wanted the benefit to actually be usable, not just a PR line. Luna: Was it expensive? I imagine the per-employee cost could scare off a lot of firms. Lucas: Their CFO told me the per member per month cost came out to about twelve dollars. That's less than what many companies spend on free snacks. And the ROI calculation included things like avoided recruiter fees, reduced temporary coverage costs, and lost productivity from open roles. Luna: So the cliff effect they were preventing was specifically women in their thirties who are at peak earning and promotion potential, but also peak fertility timing. Lucas: Exactly. The company's own data showed that the highest-risk departure group was women aged thirty-two to thirty-eight who had been with the firm at least five years — exactly the cohort that might delay childbearing for career reasons, then find themselves spending tens of thousands out of pocket. Luna: And one bad IVF cycle can cost fifteen grand. That's a real wealth drain. Lucas: It's also a loyalty drain. The firm surveyed employees who used the benefit, and something like seventy percent said they would have considered leaving if they'd had to pay for treatment entirely themselves. Luna: So it's a retention tool disguised as a health benefit. But what about communication? Fertility is still pretty personal and often stigmatized. Lucas: The company was very deliberate about that. They didn't just add it to the benefits portal and hope people found it. They did a series of internal webinars with a medical provider, not an HR person, explaining the clinical side. They also created an internal resource group for employees going through family-building journeys. Luna: That's smart — peer support normalizes it. And it signals that the company isn't just writing a check, they're creating a culture where it's okay to talk about. Lucas: Right. And they specifically included language in the policy that covered fertility preservation for transgender employees starting hormone therapy. That was an intentional inclusion choice — it meant the benefit wasn't just for cisgender heterosexual couples. Luna: That widens the retention impact. Because if you're trans and your employer covers something that most don't, you're going to think twice before leaving. Lucas: One more data point I found striking: the firm tracked utilization by gender and found that about sixty percent of the benefit users were women, thirty percent were men — mostly for male-factor infertility testing and treatment — and ten percent were non-binary or transgender employees. Luna: So it's not just a women's issue. It's a workforce issue. And the ROI math seems compelling enough that I wonder why more mid-sized firms haven't followed suit. Lucas: I think the blocker is that many CFOs still see it as a niche perk rather than a strategic investment. But this case suggests otherwise. When you map the cost against the salary of a senior manager who leaves, the breakeven is pretty quick. Luna: Honestly, if today's episode helped you think about this differently — maybe you're in HR or you're advocating for a benefit at your own company — that's the kind of thing that makes what we do worthwhile. Lucas: Yeah, and if it was worth a coffee to you, there's a link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's the smallest ask, and it directly supports keeping this show ad-free and focused on cases like this. Luna: Exactly. And we don't run ads, so listener support is literally what keeps us going. But back to the firm — they also extended the benefit to part-time employees, which is rare. Lucas: That's a good point. Most companies limit fertility benefits to full-time staff. But this firm had about fifteen percent part-time workers, many of them women with caregiving responsibilities. Extending the benefit to them was a deliberate equity move. Luna: And it probably helped with retention in that group as well. Part-time turnover is notoriously high. Lucas: It did. Their part-time turnover dropped about twelve percent in the same period. Not as dramatic as the full-time number, but still significant. Luna: So the big takeaway is that a fertility benefit, when designed inclusively and communicated well, can be a powerful retention lever — especially for the demographic that's hardest to replace. Lucas: And the cost is lower than most executives assume. Twelve dollars per employee per month. That's less than the office coffee budget. Luna: That's a pretty concrete number to walk away with. If you're in a position to influence benefits at your company, you can actually go to your CFO with that. Lucas: And the firm is now two years into the program, and they're seeing a second-order effect: they're attracting candidates who specifically mention the benefit in interviews. It's become a recruiting differentiator. Luna: So it's not just retention — it's also attraction. That's a double win. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the kind of holistic ROI that doesn't always show up on a spreadsheet but absolutely shows up in the quality of hires. Luna: Alright, Lucas — next episode, I want to talk about how one company is using sabbaticals as a retention tool for mid-career employees. Lucas: That's a great follow-up. Let's do it.