The percentage of large employers covering egg-freezing benefits, meanwhile, climbed to 15% in 2021 from just 5% in 2015, the Mercer data show.

Beyond Tech
The breadth of companies offering fertility benefits has also spread far beyond tech. Carrot Fertility, a global fertility-benefits provider, mostly saw interest from companies also in financial services and consulting prior to the pandemic, said Chief Executive Officer Tammy Sun.

In the last two years, Carrot has added clients in the food and beverage, retail, automotive and manufacturing industries. They’re also working with labor unions and municipalities. Revenue has grown by about 400% in the last year, Sun said. The closely held company declined to provide further financial details.

“This has been a huge part of our attraction campaign,” said Aja Harbert, human resources director at B Capital Group, a Los Angeles venture capital firm that started offering a fertility benefit through Carrot in 2021. She said it helped convince four candidates to accept job offers. “It kind of pushed them over the edge when they had competing offers,” she said.

Increased employer investment in fertility benefits has also helped vendors offer a more holistic approach to family planning. Two years ago, many of the family-planning vendors “felt more like tech startups,” and have since “grown by leaps and bounds,” said McCann of Willis Towers Watson.

Maven Clinic, for example, offers fertility treatments and education, as well as physical and mental support, from preconception through postpartum.

When Priscilla Martinez, a senior industry account manager at Microsoft Corp. in Chicago, was having trouble conceiving, she was able to get pregnant after using Maven Clinic’s nutrition and fertility counseling services. She had her first child in early 2021 and has continued to use Maven’s new-parent support classes.

Martinez said she didn’t put much thought into benefits when looking for jobs in the past. But now that she’d like to have a second child, her mindset has changed. “It’s definitely something that has helped” keep me in the job, Martinez said.

Controlling Costs
In the past, employers didn’t want to offer fertility benefits because of concerns about higher costs, given how expensive treatments like IVF and egg freezing are, said Samantha Purciello, senior associate at Mercer. But 97% of employers surveyed by Mercer said that adding the benefit didn’t lead to a significant increase in their costs, according to the company.

One way employers can keep costs down is by capping benefits, and the vast majority do. The most common is a lifetime dollar maximum, and of those, $16,250 is the median amount, Mercer data show. About 13% of companies restrict the number of IVF and egg-freezing cycles to three.