How to Push Your Employer Toward Better Fertility Benefits

You're sitting in an HR portal at 11pm, scrolling through your benefits summary for the third time, trying to figure out if "infertility services" means one consult or actual IVF. The page is vague on purpose. The number — if there is one — feels arbitrary. And you have no idea who decided any of it.

Here's something most people don't realize: that benefit was designed by humans. Usually a small HR team, often working with a broker, often without anyone in the room who has actually done a retrieval or signed a surrogacy contract. Which means it can be changed. And the people most likely to change it are employees who ask — clearly, specifically, and at the right time of year.

That right time is now. Most employers finalize the next plan year's benefits in late summer or early fall. If you want your company to look seriously at fertility coverage for 2027, the window to influence that decision is roughly the next few months.

This is a guide to using it.

Step 1: Find out what you actually have

Before you ask for more, get specific about what exists. Pull your Summary Plan Description (the long PDF, not the glossy benefits brochure) and look for:

• The word "infertility" and any definition attached to it (some plans still require a year of "trying" in ways that exclude single people and LGBTQ+ couples by design)
• Lifetime maximums versus per-cycle maximums
• Whether diagnostic workup is covered separately from treatment
• Whether medications are covered under the medical plan or pharmacy plan (this matters — coverage and caps are often different)
• Any mention of adoption or surrogacy reimbursement
• Exclusions. Read them twice.

Write down what's missing or unclear. That list is your agenda.

Step 2: Ask for a benefits review meeting — and frame it as feedback, not a favor

You do not need to disclose your medical situation to request this. A simple email to HR or your benefits contact works:

"As you prepare for 2027 plan design, I'd like to share employee feedback on the family-building benefits. Can we set up 20 minutes, or is there a formal channel for this input?"

Many companies have one and don't advertise it. Some run employee surveys before renewal. Some have an ERG (employee resource group) for parents or for people navigating health conditions that can carry this kind of feedback forward collectively.

If you're nervous about going alone, you don't have to. RESOLVE's current Month of Action is built around exactly this idea — that organized patient voices, including in workplaces, are how coverage actually expands.¹

Step 3: Know what "good" looks like beyond the dollar number

A $25,000 lifetime max sounds generous until you price a single IVF cycle with medications and genetic testing. A real fertility benefit is evaluated on more than the headline figure. When you talk to HR, these are the questions worth raising — many of them mirror what benefits consultants tell employers to ask their own vendors.²

Access and eligibility

• Does the plan require a medical diagnosis of infertility to access treatment? (This quietly excludes a lot of people.)
• Is coverage equal for single employees and LGBTQ+ employees, including donor gametes and gestational carriers?
• Is there a waiting period after hire?

What's actually covered

• Diagnostic testing for both partners
• IUI and IVF, including frozen embryo transfers
• Medications (and where they sit — medical or pharmacy benefit)
• Genetic testing (PGT-A, PGT-M)
• Egg, sperm, and embryo freezing — including for medical reasons like cancer treatment
• Donor tissue and agency fees
• Surrogacy-related medical and legal costs
• Adoption reimbursement
• Mental health support specific to family-building

How the benefit is delivered

• Is it through a specialized fertility benefits vendor, or layered onto the regular medical plan?
• If through a vendor, what is their clinic network like in your area?
• How is "success" measured — cycles completed, or live births?
• What happens if you need care outside the network?

The structure

• Lifetime max vs. cycle-based vs. "smart cycle" structures
• Whether unused benefit rolls forward
• Whether the benefit applies to a partner on your plan

You don't have to ask every question. Pick the three that matter most to your situation and bring those.

Step 4: Share your story — on your terms

This is the part people get stuck on, and understandably. Telling your HR director that you've had two failed transfers feels enormous. You may not want to. You don't have to.

But if you're open to it, personal stories move benefits decisions in a way that data alone doesn't. RESOLVE has built an entire advocacy framework around this — the idea that a specific human experience, told plainly, is often what tips a policy conversation.³ A benefits leader who has read 40 industry reports can still be changed by one employee saying: "I spent $38,000 out of pocket last year while working here full-time. I want to tell you what that was like, and what would have helped."

If you share, you get to decide:

• How much detail (a sentence is enough; a full timeline is also fine)
• Whether it's in writing or in person
• Whether your name is attached or it goes in as anonymous feedback through an ERG or survey
• Whether you're speaking only for yourself or relaying patterns you've heard from coworkers

A short, specific story plus a clear ask is more powerful than a long story with no ask. End with what you want them to do: "I'd like the 2027 plan to include coverage for gestational surrogacy," or "I'd like the diagnosis requirement removed so single and LGBTQ+ employees have equal access."

Step 5: Don't go in alone if you don't have to

If there's an ERG, join it. If there isn't, two or three coworkers raising the same issue carries more weight than one. You don't need to disclose anything about each other's situations — you just need to be aligned on the ask.

If your company already has a fertility benefit and you want it improved, that's often an easier conversation than starting from zero. The infrastructure exists; you're asking them to tune it.

A small permission, before you hit send

Advocating for yourself at work while you're also injecting yourself in a bathroom stall on your lunch break is a lot. You are allowed to do this in pieces. You are allowed to send the email and then close your laptop. You are allowed to decide that this round, all you have capacity for is forwarding a guide like this one to a coworker who might carry it further.

The people who got fertility coverage added at their companies five years ago did it by asking. Quietly, persistently, sometimes awkwardly. The benefit you'd want for yourself next year exists because someone, somewhere, decided their question was worth asking out loud.

Yours is too.

¹: RESOLVE launched its inaugural Month of Action in May 2026 to mobilize patient advocates around infertility and family-building policy change.

²: Progyny's guidance to employers on vendor accountability outlines the structural questions — network, success measurement, equitable access, scope of covered services — that distinguish a strong fertility benefit from a nominal one.

³: RESOLVE's #MoreThan storytelling campaign is built on the premise that personal narrative from patients is a primary driver of lasting policy and benefits change.