HR's focus on ROI often overlooks the human impact of fertility needs, leading to a lack of meaningful support for employees.
myStoria advisor Japneet Gill highlights the gap in workplace support for infertility, emphasizing the need for empathy and inclusive policies.
As employees fear discussing fertility issues due to potential career repercussions, Gill advocates for HR leaders to prioritize human experiences and create supportive environments for family planning.
When fertility needs are sidelined, companies lose trust, talent, and traction. Yet HR’s fixation on quantifiable ROI often obscures this cost, reducing complex human experiences to line items on a spreadsheet and keeping meaningful support out of reach.
Japneet Gill, Advisor at myStoria, brings over a decade of CHRL-certified experience in talent strategy and workplace wellness. Gill asserts that the traditional ROI-driven mindset in HR is failing employees who are navigating the often-taboo subject of infertility, which opens profound gaps in workplace support.
Counting pennies, missing people: "Leaders want to see the return on investment, and often it comes back to a hard numerical value," Gill explains. "They're not always looking at the ROI from a churn or retention perspective, which can be far more significant."
She recalls an instance where she proposed adding fertility medication benefits, costing only around two dollars per employee. "I still had to put a full case forward in terms of how many individuals in the organization are actually going to be using it. In the end, the employee was only getting about $2,400 in coverage. It shows how fixated we can get on small numbers, missing the larger human and business impact."
No seat, no say: The intense focus on direct financial return is often compounded by a historical lack of women in senior leadership. "Up until recently, a lot of women were not sitting in those leadership roles," she says. "Yes, the couple is going through infertility, but men deal with it very differently. The physical pain, the emotional pain, the mental exhaustion, a lot of that still falls on the woman in the relationship." Without that lived experience at the top, the profound personal toll can be underestimated, making it harder to champion comprehensive support.
A silent sacrifice: The consequence is often a culture where employees fear speaking up. "For a very long time, I was not comfortable talking about my fertility journey because I knew it could impact potential promotions and compensation," Gill says. "I'm not going to be considered for certain opportunities if people know I'm family planning or taking time away for appointments, because they'll see it as time away from work." This fear creates a cycle of silence, preventing leaders from understanding the true scope of the need.
Support gaps: "Our managers are not equipped with the right tools, not even basic conversation skills to support employees who are opening up and being vulnerable," Gill says. "Knowing how to lead with empathy is still a major gap." She adds that effective policy design is just as important. Support must be inclusive and equitable, covering the diverse needs of all employees, including partners and same-sex couples, because "it's not just a female problem anymore."
When HR is human: Gill’s advocacy is rooted in her own five-year fertility journey. "If I had kept my story to myself, we wouldn't have made the small changes we're making," she says. "HR practitioners with a platform need to speak up, or that change will never happen." For Gill, the goal is clear: create workplaces where employees are not forced to choose between their careers and their family planning. "We need to challenge ourselves to think differently—not just as HR leaders, but as people. We need to build workplaces where we can bring our whole selves."
