Maternity leave is up, but contraception coverage is down — when it comes to what employers provide to their female employees, that is.
The Employee Benefits Survey from the Society for Human Resource Management finds while 30 percent of organizations are now providing more paid maternity leave than what is required by short-term disability or state law — an increase from 26 percent in 2016 — just 75 percent of employers offer contraceptive coverage, while in 2013, 82 percent did.
In addition, while companies which offer onsite lactation rooms (42 percent) increased 8 percentage points over 2013, only 24 percent of employers offer in-vitro fertilization coverage, compared with 30 percent in 2013.
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And that's even though employers find they must become more competitive with benefits to stay on top of recruiting and retention, and with nearly one-third of employers sweetening the pot with additional offerings (some of which aren't exactly earth-shaking).
While increases in benefits packages are most likely in health (22 percent) and wellness (24 percent), other improvements include casual dress, financial advice, and free coffee, as well as flexible schedules and telecommuting. One area which saw a big boost from 2014–2016 is the offering of health benefits to both opposite- and same-sex spouses — not just to woo talent, but also to try to drive down health care costs for the employee.
In 2014, while 71 percent of companies offered health care coverage to opposite-sex partners, just 46 percent did so for same-sex partners. However, in 2017, there's now just a 10 percent gap between companies that do and companies that don't, with 95 percent offering coverage to opposite-sex partners and 85 percent offering it to same-sex partners.
According to the report, extending health coverage to spouses and domestic partners "helps employees save on overall health care costs for the family by having spouses or domestic partners covered under the same health plan."
The report adds, "It also provides the convenience of having access to the same doctors in the plan. If families have the same primary care physician or family doctor, health-related behaviors and treatments can be addressed for the entire family rather than on an individual basis."
In addition, 34 percent of companies now offer health care coverage to part-time employees, compared with just 27 percent in 2014.
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