In August, Amazon announced it would expand reproductive health care benefits to its full-time, part-time and hourly employees. This means that more than 1 million Amazon employees in 50 countries beyond the US and Canada, including the UK, Spain and Belgium, now have access to fertility support in vitro, adoption, egg freezing and other benefits for creating a family. Through Amazon’s partnership with New York-born virtual platform Maven, workers can seek advice and guidance from a collection of fertility doctors, coaches and other care providers in their own country and in their native language .
A decision as broad as Amazon’s could be an inflection point in the employee benefits landscape. The concept of employer-sponsored egg freezing, first offered as part of a broader benefits package by Apple and Facebook in 2014, caught on in Silicon Valley and slowly spread expanded to Europe in the 2010s. Critics saw the offer as a ploy to encourage women to delay childbirth and devote their “best” years to the business. However, progress has been made since then and the number of companies offering reproductive benefits, such as fertility care, is increasing each year. Some company policies have even started offering help in underserved areas of healthcare, like menopause, endometriosis, men’s health, and LGBTQ+ health. Amazon’s decision marks an inflection point due to both its geographic reach and broad application.
In the UK, in particular, where fertility and reproductive health care is patchy and not covered by compulsory insurance, workers value support and sponsorship in the workplace. Facilitated by private third-party fertility and family care providers, employees can access discreet expert advice, with some packages including reimbursement of up to £50,000 ($60,800) in lifetime costs. Such fringe benefits widen the already yawning privilege gap between company employees and other workers (such as the self-employed, zero-hours workers and migrant workers), but with the rapid collapse of NHS arrangements, they could being the only way many people in the UK can afford. have a family.
Since the pandemic, corporate interest and investment in reproductive health and family planning support have increased rapidly. According to a study by jobs platform Adzuna, since March 2022 there has been a 700 percent increase in job postings citing fertility benefits, while fertility clinic Apricity found that 61 percent Hundred of Brits expect their employer to cover the cost of their IVF treatment, either partially or in full. It’s not difficult to understand why. In the UK, adults, for many reasons, are waiting longer to explore their fertility, leading to more problems conceiving. At the same time, state support in this area is decreasing.
In 2021, only 35 percent of IVF treatments were funded by the NHS, compared to 62 percent in Scotland, 50 percent in Northern Ireland and 39 percent in Wales. Even if support is available, effectively navigating the system while working full-time is extremely taxing. The waiting list for gynecology and fertility appointments is growing faster than for other areas of health care, averaging about four months, causing significant emotional and physical stress for those who are trying to conceive.
For cancer patients and people with other health conditions affecting their fertility, sperm and egg preservation options are not always widely accessible or adequately funded. Then there’s the hard truth: Many patients, especially those over 35, fall through the cracks, due to strict eligibility criteria and limited funding for multiple IVF cycles. Going private is simply not affordable for many people, with the cost of a single IVF cycle starting at £5,000.
