In competitive industries, fertility benefits are a way to retain talent, especially female and LGBTQ employees. Surrogacy is a recent addition.
Several years ago, William Preston began feeling the pressure of time. He and his husband, who had been together since they were teenagers, were now in their 30s and beginning to think seriously about starting a family.
But they were shocked when they found out the costs of surrogacy and adoption. So, Preston was thrilled when his employer, the San Francisco-headquartered Internet of Things company Samsara, made a special announcement last November. Starting in 2019, it would be offering up to $15,000 (£12,300) per-employee-per-year to cover fertility expenses.
It was a no-brainer to sign up for the fertility benefit immediately, Preston says. If they’d been sitting on the fence before then, the new policy “pushed us over the fence”.
Preston, a sales executive who’d previously worked for small Bay Area start-ups, was initially drawn to Samsara partly because of its generous perks, from catered lunch to Uber and Lyft credits. But the value of the fertility benefit – which can also include egg and embryo freezing, adoption and semen analysis – dwarfed those.
