Offering a generous and inclusive fertility or family-building benefit is crucial when it comes to attracting and retaining today's young talent. The details of what is offered in the benefit, and how the benefit is managed, can have a significant impact on employee loyalty and productivity. In order for employers to ease the stress of millennials and increase their dedication as employees, family-building benefits need to focus on their priorities and tailored to help them live the life they want to live, recognizing that "traditional" families have changed. Here are three tips on designing a family-building benefit for younger generations.

Individual navigation: Nurture employees through their family-building process with clinical oversight and guidance.

The process of building a family can be complex, overwhelming, stressful and emotionally draining. Offering a family-building benefit management solution that connects clinical experts to millennial employees will ease employee anxiety through personalized guidance and support. Fertility nurse care managers guide employees through the process, explain the procedures, help them find the right provider, demonstrate medical injections as needed, and serve as a sounding board to discuss anxiety and concerns. Benefits that are managed appropriately help employees get the most effective treatment and make sound decisions along their path to parenthood, resulting in better outcomes and more satisfied employees. In addition to clinical experts, some managed benefit solutions connect patients with qualified behavioral health experts. Working with a mental health professional can alleviate the stress of what many view as a life crisis and help employees find ways to cope through an emotionally challenging time. Supporting young employees both clinically and emotionally demonstrates your clients' commitment to employees, showing that the organization values their professional and personal needs, resulting in a calmer, more productive employee.

Fertility preservation: Build a benefit that allows for delays in starting a family.

Millennials seek a feeling of security about the future that allows them to concentrate on their jobs without sacrificing their desire for a family someday. Many companies in competitive industries are using fertility benefit management solutions that include egg and sperm freezing as a benefit to aid employee recruitment and retention. Egg freezing is important for fertility preservation in females because the age of the eggs determines a woman's fertility more than her own age does. Freezing eggs when she is younger keeps the window for parenthood open longer. For oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing), a patient undergoes the same process as in IVF to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs. The eggs are then harvested and frozen for later use. Sperm freezing is an option for young men, especially those who are undergoing medical treatment that may affect their fertility, those who work in dangerous occupations, or expect military deployment. The patient produces a sperm sample at the andrology lab, which is screened for infection, analyzed for quality and quantity, frozen and stored.

Inclusivity: Accommodate the new definition of family.

Inclusive benefits, such as surrogacy, egg donation, donor sperm, and adoption meet the special needs of a number of different employees, from gay and lesbian couples to single parents of either gender or non-binary people. Benefits that help these non-traditional paths to parenthood also help the entire employee population. Surrogacy is an important benefit for male same-sex couples, and also for heterosexual couples where the female partner is unable to carry a child. In both cases, eggs are fertilized in the lab, and a resulting embryo (or embryos) is transferred to the gestational surrogate. If the embryo implants and grows, the surrogate carries the child until birth.

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3 benefit design musts for younger generations

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