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Employers increasingly recognise the value of supporting employees with evidence-based fertility and reproductive health guidance. Yet they're also among the most preventable through early intervention, education, and supportive benefits.

Let's explore the tangible return on investment (ROI) of embedding inclusive reproductive health support into your employee benefits strategy and policies.

By doing so, you can reduce absenteeism, improve engagement, and deliver measurable cost savings.

Why Absence Management Starts with Wellbeing

Employee absence costs UK businesses billions each year in lost productivity, administrative burden, and reduced morale. Companies face an annual cost of £42 billion due to poor mental health, and £7 billion of this is from absence.

While many organisations track absence rates, fewer understand the underlying drives. Therefore, there is rarely a strategy in place for prevention.

Employee burnout, workplace bullying, and harassment are just a few of the contributors to absenteeism. However, the impact of reproductive health on absence is often overlooked.

Reproductive health heavily impacts wellbeing, and the challenges don't exist in isolation. They intersect with mental health, stress, and workplace culture, directly impacting attendance and performance.

The Hidden Cost of Reproductive Health Absence

The cost of absence due to reproductive health includes both direct and indirect expenses.

Direct expenses, such as wages for employees who aren't working and overtime costs for those that are.

Indirect expenses like delayed delivery of work and lower-quality work.

The Hidden Cost of Reproductive Health Absence

The cost of absence due to reproductive health includes both direct and indirect expenses.

Direct expenses, such as wages for employees who aren't working and overtime costs for those who are.

Indirect expenses include delayed delivery of work and lower-quality work.

Why do employees with reproductive health take absences?

Managers may be unsympathetic to employee absenteeism, but consider some of the challenges which impact wellbeing:

• Employees navigating fertility treatment often require multiple clinic appointments, which can mean frequent short-term absences or last-minute schedule changes, especially when they lack confidence in how to speak to their boss about treatment and time off.
• Menopause symptoms affect around 70-80% of women, with nearly half reporting that symptoms impact their work. Yet most say their employer offers no support.
• Mental health issues linked to reproductive challenges, including anxiety and depression, compound absence rates and reduce productivity even when employees are present. In fact, 23% of absences are related to mental health issues.
• Pregnancy loss affects one in four pregnancies, yet many employees feel unable to disclose their situation, leading to unexplained absence or presenteeism.

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Why does the absence of reproductive health matter?

Without proactive support, these challenges create a cycle.

Employees struggle in silence, take unplanned leave, and often disengage or leave altogether.

Absenteeism negatively impacts employee morale and productivity, and chronic absenteeism disrupts a business's day-to-day operations. It's recruitment, training, loss of institutional knowledge, and diminished team performance.

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Around one in seven couples in the UK have difficulties conceiving, and infertility is a growing issue. For many, navigating that journey while working creates stress that is rarely visible, rarely discussed, and rarely formally supported.

Fertility problems can have a significant impact on both mental and physical health. Over 85% of people experiencing infertility feel it affects their mental health, which leads to a negative impact on their work life and daily tasks.

Employees often feel the need to hide their struggles with fertility, which causes more stress and anxiety. Employers who take a proactive, inclusive approach to fertility support are seeing real, measurable improvements in wellbeing, retention, and productivity.

Fertility Challenges in the Workplace

Work-related stress tends to focus on workload, management relationships, or organisational change. But obviously, there are many reasons that people feel stressed.

The impact of fertility challenges on day-to-day life can be huge. Having the right policies and procedures in place helps your employees understand what benefits and support are available to them. From a business perspective, workplace fertility support can improve retention, morale, and productivity.

Why do people going through fertility challenges feel stress?

The NHS recognises that fertility treatment is directly associated with elevated levels of anxiety and depression.

Stress can be from the emotional cycles of hope and loss from trying to grow a family or from the physical demands of treatment, such as hormone injections, clinic appointments and surgical procedures.

Who do fertility challenges impact?

Fertility challenges affect people of all genders, backgrounds, and family structures.

Every person in your employment could be impacted by fertility, and that's why it is important to create inclusive benefits, regardless of what the fertility journey looks like.

That includes employees undergoing IVF or IUI, those using donor conception, those facing pregnancy loss, and those supporting a partner through treatment.

Support networks and practical employee support, such as flexible hours and understanding policies for fertility patients and those undergoing fertility investigations, are essential for employee wellbeing.

Read More about Inclusive Fertility Benefits

How to Identify Fertility Stress in Your Business?

Work-related stress impacts UK employers each year through absenteeism, presenteeism, and staff turnover. There is currently no statutory right to time off for fertility treatment in the UK. Employers are encouraged to adopt supportive policies to address this gap and retain top talent.

Here are 5 patterns for your teams to look for when identifying potential triggers for fertility stress:

Nearly one in five employees has considered leaving their job due to a lack … Read the rest