What Women Want: A Future for Women’s and Family Health

BY Lisa Jaffe | May 08, 2023

Gender balance has been an issue in the workforce, well, forever. But more and more companies are pushing harder to move the dial. One way of ensuring that women apply for, are hired by, and remain with an organization is to focus your benefits package more on their needs – especially when it comes to health.

“Because of Covid and other factors, women are exiting the workforce in greater numbers than men,” said Christine Geissler, head of HR for the global nutrition business at Reckitt, the makers of Enfamil infant formula, among other products. “To stop that loss we need to figure out how to better support women and families in the workplace.” 

That’s about more than just keeping the women you have happy in their jobs, said Mamta Elias, the vice president of strategy at Ovia Health, a women’s health and parenting benefit company. “The business case for a diverse workforce is clear, and we know benefits are an important piece of that equation,” said Mamta during a From Day One webinar on women's and family health benefits.

What Are Family-friendly Benefits?

Ovia recently surveyed working parents and employees of childbearing age about their existing benefits and where they could improve. Among the results:

• Nearly 80% of respondents said they would gladly leave their current role for a lateral move to a company with better benefits. 
• More than 96% of respondents consider family-friendly benefits to be important. 
• 55% of respondents didn't consider their employer to be family-friendly.  
• Most employers offer at least around three months of parental leave, which is at least partially paid.  
• 44% of respondents said their leave was paid at 100%. 
• Only 22% of respondents said their benefits were easy to understand. 
• 63% didn't even know if they had family-friendly benefits like parental leave, adoption support, surrogacy benefits, or maternity support. 
• Respondents wanted digital tools for maternity support, perinatal mental health support, and pumping-friendly work environments.  
• They also wanted financial support for childcare, as well as for caring for elderly or sick relatives. 
• They wanted support for all paths to parenthood, including surrogacy, adoption, and fertility assistance.

Elias says the survey also asked which benefits matter the most. Flexibility was at the top of the list. Respondents also wanted fully paid parental leave of at least four months so that they wouldn’t have to drain their PTO and sick leave before tapping into parental leave. They wanted flexible scheduling, remote options, and gradual return-to-work options. And the desire for flexibility goes beyond postpartum: “People need flexibility, no matter what phase of their life or family building or family supporting they’re in,” Elias said.

The full panel of speakers from top left, Christine Geissler of Reckitt, Hannah Wilkowski of BuzzFeed, Mamta Elias of Ovia Health, moderator Anna Maltby, and Dr. Jaime Knopman of CCRM (photo by From Day One)

“There is a large spectrum of generations currently in or entering the workforce,” said Hannah Wilkowski, global director of benefits for BuzzFeed. Some younger people aren’t ready to start a family. But they may want to know more about contraception. Maybe they're new to a city and want to find a new OB/GYN. Being able to offer fertility benefits like IVF or egg freezing for those who are just starting their parenting journey can be as important as providing resources for those who are pregnant or have a young baby. There also needs to be attention to people entering menopause. “We want our employees to feel seen and heard,” she said. “Different people need different things. Providing the resources necessary makes their lives easier, and makes BuzzFeed a much better place to work for everyone.”

Finding Solutions that Works

Jamie Knopman, MD, a reproductive endocrinologist with CCRM, said there has been a huge shift in what employers cover. “Embryo and egg freezing used to be available only to couples and women when they were older, and only if they had the financial resources to do it,” she said. “I didn’t have $10,000 to freeze my eggs when I was 28, but I probably did when I was 40. But my eggs weren’t good by then. I could freeze all I want and they probably won’t make a baby.”

Now, more companies help women take advantage of technology when they are younger. Then, when they are ready, those eggs are available if needed. The pandemic also exacerbated the push towards freezing eggs and embryos, in part because, as people sat at home alone or with their partner, they started to think more about what they wanted from life. “Women came in droves to freeze their eggs or to make embryos with donor sperm,” Knopman said. Sperm banks were tapped out for a while owing to the demand.

Offering egg and embryo freezing provides options for families, Knopman said. While they may not be sure at 28 if they want to be a parent or carry a pregnancy, they won’t have to face fertility decline in their late 30s. They just need to open the freezer, pull out their 28-year-old eggs, and make a baby.

Solutions can cost a lot of money, but Wilkowski said you can make a difference by looking at redundancies in the benefits you offer. Is something offered in two different places or with two different vendors? Are you paying for benefits that no one is using? Know what they use, what they like, and what they wish they had. What are the problems they are experiencing that keep them from being their best, most productive and engaged self at work? “When we understand the problems and perceived gaps, we can go find a solution,” she said. 

Geissler suggested that companies regularly evaluate what they spend and ensure that it aligns with the company’s vision and goals. Who do you want to attract and keep? Are you fixing a gender imbalance? Are you a company whose ethos and products have an obvious alignment with specific kinds of benefits? Since Reckitt is in the formula business, women’s, mothers’, and infants’ health had better be included in their offerings. “We over-index in supporting women and families. We support environments where healthy babies and families can thrive.” Reckitt offers 26 weeks paid parental leave, something that is vanishingly rare in the United States. “But we should over-index in that area because the importance of babies and families is our message.”

Elias says that having an organization where women’s and family benefits are respected and utilized, and where everyone sees the value and importance of those benefits, requires having an open and supportive work culture. “Everyone understands the ways in which women's and family health can impact people's personal and professional lives. We need to highlight why this should matter to all of us in an organization.”

Lisa Jaffe is a freelance writer who lives in Seattle with her son and a very needy rescue dog named Ellie Bee. She enjoys reading, long walks on the beach, and trying to get better at ceramics.

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Building a World of Accessible, Affordable Healthcare For All Women

Women’s health, once overlooked, is now receiving the attention it urgently needs. In response to growing demand, the Women's Health Coalition for Digital Solutions was formed to leverage technology and innovation, and to improve the accessibility and affordability of women’s care by working with employers to improve corporate benefits and workplace support.During a From Day One webinar, experts from the coalition and women’s health advocates discussed resources and solutions to ensure every woman has access to high-quality care tailored to her specific needs, focusing on virtual behavioral health, digital health solutions for women and families, personalized menopause care, 24/7 fertility and pregnancy support, and best practices to support women’s health and improve overall well-being.The Women’s Health Coalition for Digital Solutions was formed two years ago by partner organizations including: Ovia (pregnancy), Conceive (fertility), 30 Madison (reproduction), Evernow (menopause), Talkspace (mental health), FitOn (exercise), and Nutrium (nutrition). “All of these companies came together with a goal of creating access and creating affordability to close the gaps in women's health care,” said Natalie Cummins, chief business officer at online therapy tool, Talkspace.Among those gaps is the growing need for healthcare for women past reproductive age, as employees in their 40’s and 50’s become one of the largest demographics in the workforce. “The fastest growing benefit that [workplaces are] offering to employees right now is this menopause and perimenopause benefit. And they’re looking for something beyond just a conversation with a general practitioner–they’re looking for very deep clinical expertise that can continuously be high touch for this journey, because it really is a decades-long process,” said Dr. Alicia Jackson, CEO & founder of Evernow, which offers online menopause treatment. The cognitive symptoms of perimenopause can start as early as someone’s late 30’s or early 40’s, Jackson says, which can impact their work performance. “Their most severe symptoms are things like inability to focus, brain fog, and sleeplessness, which leads to fatigue and compound brain fog,” Jackson said. “The workplace dynamic gets pretty complicated, because it either looks like they’re not capable or they’re lacking engagement, when the real thing is that they’re going through this huge physiological change without any form of support.”Because of the stigma attached to menopause and aging, women have been afraid to speak about it, especially when facing the glass ceiling at work. Providing women with the tools they need to navigate this hormonal transition, which often happens right as they hit the peak of their leadership years at work, can support their career longevity.Providing Mental Health SupportParticularly post-pandemic, mental health benefits are also becoming a popular option. “This is more than just a women’s issue,” adds moderator Tricia Schmidt, SVP, senior healthcare strategist at Alliant. “It’s more of a family issue,” she said.And indeed, mental health support is essential across all genders, ages, and cultural demographics. Cummins highlights five key mental health trends to consider when planning benefits.First, emotional burnout and the mental health toll of caring for a family are significant challenges, especially for women. Second, hormone fluctuations can have a major impact on mental health, particularly in relation to conception, pregnancy, and menopause.Third, there has been a huge increase in anxiety and depression, which are the top two concerns clients seek help for on Talkspace. Fourth, there is growing acceptance of women speaking publicly about trauma and PTSD. Finally, digital options now provide convenient, 24/7 access to mental health support.Panelists spoke about "Building a World of Accessible, Affordable Healthcare For All Women," during the webinar moderated by Tricia Schmidt of Alliant (photo by From Day One)For all benefits, but especially those related to mental health, immediate access is crucial. “To be able to send a text message to my therapist when I can’t sleep at two in the morning is great because. There are studies that show that [opportunity to get something off my chest] relieves anxiety and probably will put me to sleep, even without a response at the moment,” Cummins said. Talkspace has 6,000 providers across all 50 states and matches a patient with a provider within 24 hours of initial intake. The digital benefits are always there but need to stay top of mind for patients to use them. Cummins says it all comes down to consistent communication and awareness. “We can’t just stop at one-time awareness or a one-time message. It needs to be a true campaign around women’s health and all the aspects around a women’s life cycle,” Cummins said.Incorporating Inclusive Reproductive Healthcare for EmployeesGiven the volatile political landscape in the United States, reproductive healthcare is top of mind for many employees. “What we hear from our patients is widespread uncertainty: uncertainty around access to critical services, and also uncertainty around how to access accurate information,” said Rajani Rao, chief business officer at Nurx, an online platform offering birth control, skincare products, weight management solutions, and more.Nurx is listening to both clinical experts and patients through surveys and direct conversations to understand how best to support them. “27% of women are not confident that their right to use contraception is secure. More than half of women surveyed are concerned about a national abortion ban, and 43% of women are concerned about changes in the state-level abortion restrictions. Just shy of 50% are concerned about more limited access to their [preferred] choice of contraceptive care, and 43% are concerned about changes to insurance coverage for contraception,” Rao said. “That, for us, is additional fuel for how we drive access.”Given the highly localized nature of some of the restrictions, telehealth may become increasingly critical in providing access to reproductive care. “For HR, when you have to manage a program across 50 states with different mandates and different laws, having a strong provider that can provide these services digitally helps you make sure that your employees have coverage,” Schmidt said.Increased Accessibility For AllDigital solutions have more expansive options for follow-ups, allowing patients access to doctors beyond the standard once-per-year consultation that may last only a few minutes. “[Evernow does] a full consultation, but then we also have unlimited care follow up, similar to Talkspace, where you can text your doctor anytime you could do a video visit,” Jackson said. Patients have the freedom to get their questions answered as they pop up any time along their healthcare journey.  Cummins emphasizes the importance of having a strong navigation tool so employees can easily access all the benefits on offer. “When we have healthy minds, we have healthier bodies, we’re more present, we’re less absent, we’re more satisfied,” Cummins said, so providing a benefits navigation tool will impact all areas of business. In terms of measuring ROI, Cummins points to “absenteeism, presenteeism, work satisfaction, retention, and turnover” as stats to measure in relation to the implementation of a new benefits program. Ultimately, providing comprehensive health benefits for women is a way of ensuring economic parity. “In a year, women will have $15 billion more out-of-pocket expenses in the U.S. compared to their male colleagues,” Cummins said. “And so providing these digital solutions, it’s a really important gateway for accessibility and affordability for support.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Talkspace, for sponsoring this webinar. Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by gorodenkoff/iStock)

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Aligning Learning Programs With Business Strategy for Global Workforce Agility

Businesses are placing more demands on learning and development teams, says Jamie O’Brien, AVP of learning and development at investment platform Voya Financial. Most importantly, “keeping learners engaged in a rapidly changing environment, and aligning our learning programs with our business objectives,” she said during a From Day One webinar. The pace of change gets faster every year.“We’re no longer designing and delivering training solutions just for different adult learning styles, but also for virtual and hybrid work environments, with rapidly changing technology, and for five generations of workers,” she said.Voya’s learners are increasingly seeking an experiential environment. They don’t want to sit through lectures, O’Brien says. “They want to do it. They want to try it. They want to feel it. They want to feel like they’ve been prepared and they’re confident in their ability to come out of training and then go do their roles.”Fellow panelist Tim Gerrits agreed: Leaders in L&D now do much more than transfer information. Gerrits is the the head of learning and leadership development at pharmaceutical company AbbVie, thinks about application most of all.“As it becomes easier to find whatever snippet of knowledge you need, that’s no longer the real crux of success for organizations,” he said. “It’s not putting information into people’s heads, it’s how you get that information back out and change behavior.” Lynnette Collins, head of global L&D at office furniture manufacturer Steelcase, identified the “most difficult part, and the most critical part,” of her job: “Making the connection between those goals, our learning experiences, and key performance indicators.” Who completed the training and when is not nearly as relevant to the executives as how they’re helping the business grow.Yet it’s not easy to demonstrate the value of L&D, said Ken Matos, director of market insights at HiBob, an HR management platform. Returns may not happen right away and even if they do, learners may need help identifying just how they’re applying their new skills. As businesses become more complex, so do learning outcomes, and measurement follows suit.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the panel of experts (photo by From Day One)Ultimately, leaders have to be able to feel the difference, not just see it on paper, says Matos. “Being able to change the stakeholders’ impression of what’s happening in the organization is one of your best, most accessible outcomes, because they are the ones who said it was a problem to begin with. And if they’re not feeling that problem anymore, you have succeeded. Being able to articulate that back to them is a really powerful message.”At AbbVie, Gerrits invites those leading business functions to observe learning in progress at assessment centers. “They see what we’re doing and the transformation that’s taking place with participants, and that gives them confidence that what we’re doing–not only in that assessment center, but overall–is important for the organization.”When Steelcase’s new CEO Sara Armbruster took the role three years ago, “she introduced a long-term strategy for growth, which was new for us in the organization,” Collins said. In the first year, Collins’s team contacted the top 400 global leaders in the company to ask what skills and behaviors they believe are necessary to achieve those new goals, and what might get in the way.“At first, our measurement was really around improving leader perception on how we perform these transformation behaviors,” Collins said. “But now we’re going a bit deeper, because we want to connect it to performance. Ultimately, we want these behaviors to become the way we work to achieve our results.”O’Brien knows her L&D programs are really working when they create a buzz, and managers–or individual contributors–come asking to participate or partner in the design. She knocks on doors, too, to find out whether teams feel that they’re benefitting. If they don’t seem engaged, “that’s a chance for me to ask questions about what their goals are and get closer to what it is that we can deliver.”Business goals can change quickly–just think of how many employers rushed to incorporate some kind of AI into their workflows–and priorities may migrate up or down the list. To stay relevant, L&D needs to change along with them.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, HiBob, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., Quartz, Business Insider, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

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Redefining Skills: How Skills Assessment Data Can Give You The Strategic Advantage

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More efficiently than before, companies can identify leadership and talent skills for talent acquisition, personalized learning, reskilling, succession planning, and internal mobility.During a From Day One webinar, a panel of talent and learning and development leaders shared their experiences of implementing a variety of skills assessments to measure skills, reskill, and improve employee performance.Using Assessments to Propel Workers ForwardLucy Beaumont, a solution lead, manager and leader at SHL, shared three ways most organizations collect data The first is using a form of self-report, manager report, or 360 assessment to obtain subjective data. Next, AI data assessments quickly and objectively sort and analyze internal data to measure and summarize employees’ current skills, skill gaps, and potential. 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They identify the group’s skill gaps, assess them, give feedback to leadership development, and implement them into development programs for future company leadership.The panelists discussed "Redefining Skills: How Skills Assessment Data Can Give You The Strategic Advantage" during the webinar (photo by From Day One)Stephanie Ketron, head of learning and development director at Westgate Resorts, spoke about using data-driven and personalized assessments. First, the company assesses an employee’s inventory of skills. After their skills are rated, they proceed to individual curriculums based on their skill sets.Leaders then review an employee’s skill gaps identified through their individual assessment and design a personalized development plan tailored to their needs. Ketron emphasized the importance of avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach, noting that even employees in the same role may possess different skill sets.Westgate Resorts has seen this data-driven and personalized skill assessment approach achieve positive business outcomes. However, traditional self-report assessments still create efficient data that can be combined with data from other assessments later on.Julian Allen, director of global talent management at MiTek, discussed the continuing effectiveness of 360 assessments. After creating a strategic plan with company leaders, MiTek refers to external resources to pinpoint the skills needed to achieve business outcomes. Then, by using 360 assessments, they create individual employee development programs to learn the necessary skills.The personalization of these programs is evident, initially only for employees to progress in their internal mobility without input from managers. Now, MiTek is shifting to using 360 assessments for overall talent planning.Ultimately, companies using a variety of assessments improve their hiring processes, Allen says. “So be that job simulations, personality assessments, and multiple different tools that are out there, I think that gives us additional data to make an informed decision,” he said.Skills for Future-Proof JobsWhat are other factors employers consider when determining the specific skills employees should learn? How are employers building roadmaps for employees to learn those skills to advance in their careers?SHL provides data-driven insights to help organizations enhance their hiring, development, and talent mobility strategies. Drawing from client feedback, SHL highlights that reskilling is a critical need across all industries. Beaumont says that reskilling has become a common priority for SHL clients, particularly as industries evolve and integrate new technologies.“As soon as you start your job, it’s going to change and you’re going to have to learn something new. And then from an L&D perspective, we’re just constantly trying to get people up to speed. Whether it’s with new technologies or new ways of working,” Beaumont said.Soft skills are still relevant. However, they are developed differently. Ketron expressed how emotional and cultural intelligence or interpersonal relationship skills are crucial. Yet, these skills aren’t quantifiable. “I think sometimes those are a lot harder as a skill set to kind of measure and determine, and we put very clear behavioral identifiers to those,” she said.Paul Jung, senior director of people experience at Optum, emphasized the significance of technological skills in the healthcare organization. Their clinical key talent group sets a precedent for existing and incoming talent.Using AI, Optum assesses the entirety of company data to identify skill opportunities and gaps, aligning them with business goals, and creating talent pipelines. As AI serves an integral role in managing mass employee data, personalization and a humanistic approach to other skill development remains a necessity. “They don’t want the machines to tell them where they should go next,” Jung said.For example, at Hormel, employees work with a coach for 6-9 months after completing their behavioral assessments. This has proven effective for the company, Freshwater says. Therefore, data-driven skills assessments with peer and leader mentorship for soft skills continue to achieve better business outcomes.Moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor at Fast Company, summarized using hard data with human mentorship to redefine skills and boost development. “You do need the human component, but you do have this partnership with artificial intelligence in order to put whatever you’re doing up a notch,” Dishman said.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SHL, for sponsoring this webinar. Stephanie Reed is a freelance news, marketing, and content writer. Much of her work features small business owners throughout diverse industries. She is passionate about promoting small, ethical, and eco-conscious businesses.

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