It’s European Fertility Week, and this year it’s about work
This week, from 2 to 8 November, is European Fertility Week, which has run every year since 2016. Every year Fertility Europe, the umbrella organisation for fertility patient associations across Europe, picks one theme. This year it’s “Double Duty: Fertility@Work“.
The name says it well. Somewhere in your team, there may be someone doing two jobs at once. One is the job you see. The other happens before 8am at a clinic, with an injection pen in the office bathroom, or on the phone waiting for test results between two meetings.
Around 1 in 6 people of reproductive age face fertility problems. That’s about 25 million people in the EU alone, and almost all of them work. If you manage a team of any size, this is not a hypothetical.
This post is for line managers. Not HR, not leadership. You.
Why this week is about managers, not just HR
When someone going through fertility treatment decides to tell a person at work, they usually don’t go to HR. They go to their line manager.
In The Impact of Fertility Challenges at Work, an international survey of more than 3,600 employees and employers, 67% of people going through treatment told their line manager. Only 12% told HR or their benefits team.
So whatever fertility support your company offers, it reaches the employee through you. If you don’t know what to say, or what is available, the support often stops right there.
The same survey found that 39% of employees had left their job, or thought about leaving, while going through treatment. That’s a lot of good people walking out during something that, with a bit of support, could have been a temporary rough patch.
What double duty looks like from the inside
Fertility treatment rarely fits into a calendar. One IVF cycle can mean several clinic visits within two weeks, often early in the morning and booked a day ahead, because the timing depends on how the body responds.
Then there are the hormone injections, which most people give themselves at home, and sometimes at work. They can bring tiredness, headaches and mood swings. And there’s the waiting. The days after a treatment step, before anyone knows whether it worked, are the part many people describe as the hardest.
All this time, your employee is still answering emails, running meetings and hitting deadlines. Often nobody at work knows.
Men are part of this too. Some are dealing with male infertility at work themselves, often in silence. And as Fertility Europe points out, partners feel it as well, going to appointments together and coping with long waits and constant schedule changes.
And one round is often not the end. Many people go through several cycles, sometimes over a few years.
How to support an employee going through IVF: what this week asks of you
You don’t need to know medicine, and you don’t need to have answers. What helps most is simpler than that.
- Listen first, plan second. If someone tells you, thank them for trusting you. Then ask what would help, instead of guessing.
- Keep it private. Agree together who else needs to know, if anyone, and stick to it. A well-meant “I told the team so they’d understand” can do real damage.
- Be flexible without asking for details. Clinic visits often come at short notice. A simple “go, we’ll cover it” means more than you might think. You don’t need to know what the appointment is for.
- Check in, quietly. A short private chat every few weeks shows you haven’t forgotten, without putting anyone on the spot.
- Know what your company offers. Paid time off for appointments, flexible hours, counselling? Fertility benefits often go well beyond paying for IVF. Find out now, so you can point people to them the moment they need it.
- Treat a failed cycle as a loss. When treatment doesn’t work, people grieve. Give them space and a little slack, even if they show up the next day as if nothing happened.
One small thing you can do this week
This year Fertility Europe is running its first large, Europe-wide survey on infertility and work. It’s anonymous, takes 10 to 15 minutes and is available in 21 languages. Anyone who has been through infertility, fertility treatment or fertility preservation while working can take part, women and men alike.
Sharing it in your team channel takes you a minute. It also sends a quiet signal that this is something people can talk about here. You’ll find the links on the European Fertility Week page.
Want to feel ready for that conversation?
Most managers want to help. They just don’t know where to start, and they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing.
That’s why we made a free guide for managers and HR. Inside, you’ll find:
- how an IVF cycle lands on the work calendar
- what to say (and what to avoid) in the first conversation
- practical options for time off and flexibility
- who needs to know what, and how to protect privacy
- support beyond IVF: egg freezing, pregnancy loss, surrogacy and more
Keep it, reread it, and the first time this comes up on your team, you won’t be making it up on the spot.
Send me the free manager guide
And if you think your whole management team could use this, forward this post to HR, along with what Family By Choice offers employers.
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