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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Creating an Optimal Workplace for Hourly Employees: Essential Tips for Leaders

In an industry where employee turnover is famously high, what might keep a grocery store employee with the same company for decades?Mayerland Harris, group VP of talent at Texas retailer H-E-B, started at the company right out of college, taking her first job in store operations before moving into HR. She spent some time in the pharmacy department then held a few corporate roles where she oversaw all the centers of excellence for compensation, talent development, recruiting, and people analytics. Recently, she’s taken over HR for all store operations. Harris estimates she’s had a new role roughly every three years, and more than three decades later, she says the experience still feels fresh. Though Harris isn’t an hourly employee, the majority of H-E-B’s 160,000 employees are.“But the fundamental reason I’ve stayed all this time is the company has never really given me a strong reason to look outside,” Harris said during a From Day One webinar on creating an optimal workplace for hourly employees. “To take another job, you have to take that call from the headhunter, and you have to go on the interview, and you have to have some level of curiosity or dissatisfaction.” Harris just hasn’t felt that. “By the time I started thinking, ‘Hey, this doesn’t seem right,’ the situation would change, or my role would change, or that person would leave.”Lots of hourly workers start at H-E-B with a temporary summer job—then they end up staying, and it’s not uncommon for careers to last decades like Harris’s has. Some have been at the same store for 55 years. “I believe it is 100% the family orientation,” she said. “People will tell us they feel like when they work here, they’re a part of a family. 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Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 21, 2024

Support the Change: Why Menopause Should Be Part of Your Women’s Health Strategy

Did you know that signs of perimenopause can start appearing in women of childbearing age? Many of us are lacking crucial knowledge that can help us or our women colleagues navigate this time in their lives.Offering solutions to improve and support needs specific to women can also be an important factor to retention. But a new survey reports that only 1% of US women have menopause support as part of their employee sponsored benefits. What’s more, according to a new survey, 85% of women said they don’t know enough about menopause, and 83% experiencing menopause report that their symptoms impact their ability to work.During a From Day One webinar, panelists shared how employers can better support women experiencing the change, and the impact it can have on productivity, medical spend and retention.Often, the concept of “women’s healthcare” ends with postpartum. 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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.

Katie Chambers | October 14, 2024

How to Use Skills Data to Power Development and Achieve Business Objectives

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Her team mapped out the new skills plan based on manager feedback, honest self-assessments, and forecasted what would be needed down the line.Those self-assessments, though, can be tricky. “Oftentimes people are not terribly good at assessing their own levels of facility with certain things,” said moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company. “Is there a way to make sure that what people are reporting is actually where they are?”The panel of industry leaders spoke about "How to Use Skills Data to Power Development and Achieve Business Objectives" in a session moderated by Lydia Dishman of Fast CompanyLarger companies, especially, must work hard to not lose track of  each individual’s growth. “With 600,000 employees all around the globe, it’s hard to know who can do what and what they are good at,” said Abbe Partee, VP, head of global certified learning at DHL. 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If you do have those gaps, and they're relevant to the job you're doing or the job you want to do, how can we get around that and support that?” she said.Post-pandemic, individuals are more acutely focused on whether they are happy in their current position, so it’s important for employers to facilitate those conversations early and help workers move and grow internally, rather than externally, to boost retention.Beaumont says organizations should not only be measuring skills as they stand, but also tracking how those skills gaps are then bridged over time. While pulse surveys are helpful, they can sometimes have a tough time measuring soft skills, such as leadership. Therefore, the hard data must then be analyzed with a human approach. “We do take broad strokes, but then that aggregate view allows us to prioritize and see what it’s hinting at,” Vujec said. 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Katie Chambers | September 05, 2024