Offering competitive work-family employee benefits is becoming a business necessity. This year, 94% of workers described family benefits as “important” or “extremely important,” in a survey by Ovia Health. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said they would switch companies for better family benefits.
Employers have not adequately responded to this shift in employees’ priorities. In the same study, more than six in 10 employees said they did not view their current employer as family-friendly—an increase from four in 10 employees in 2023. Over 40% of employees gave their companies’ existing work-family benefits a grade of “C” or lower.
This disconnect offers employers an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by investing in work-family benefits in 2025. Four key trends from 2024 can help employers get in front of the work-family benefits wave heading into the new year.
1. Employees Are Prioritizing Paid Leave (Even More Than Employers Realize)
Gen Z workers are the first cohort to rank paid leave as their top priority among employee benefits—even higher than health insurance—according to 2024 MetLife data. Among Gen Z workers, 69% described paid leave as a “must have.”
Paid parental leave has become an expectation rather than a perk. Employees are seeking comparator data to make informed job decisions based on parental leave plans. This rising demand includes increased interest in paid leave for secondary caregivers, partners of birth parents, and adoptive, foster, and other non-birthing parents.
Many employers, however, have not yet recognized the increased value that employees place on paid leave.
A commissioned survey by Forbes Advisor asked U.S. employees to identify the benefits they value most, and compared their responses to the benefits that employers most commonly offer. The two lists largely aligned, with the notable exception of mandatory paid time off.
Nearly one-third of employees cited mandatory paid time off as their most prized benefit. But paid time off was absent from the list of benefits that employers identified as most in-demand.
“Employees value mandatory paid time off more highly than employers are aware,” said Dennis O’Reilly, the report’s lead writer. Companies interested in attracting top talent will need to expand paid leave offerings in 2025.
2. Rising Expectations For Reproductive Healthcare Benefits
Millennial and Gen Z workers—who will make up a significant majority of the U.S. workforce in 2025—are raising the bar for employers on reproductive health benefits. This trend will have an increasing impact on employee recruiting and retention.
Over 60% of millennial and Gen Z workers said that fertility and pregnancy benefits play a critically important role when selecting a new job, in a 2023 survey by HRC Fertility. Employees are also seeking greater healthcare coverage for prenatal and maternity care.
As early as 2021, 88% of workers said they’d be willing to change jobs to access fertility benefits, according to a survey by Carrot Fertility and RESOLVE. In 2024, demand has continued to increase for in-vitro fertilization, fertility testing for both women and men, and other fertility-related diagnostic services and treatment. This trend is driven in part by rising reproductive healthcare costs, and by women deferring motherhood.
Employees are also demanding support for abortion-related healthcare, including paid time off, travel, and lodging expenses for out-of-state abortion access and recovery.
Employees’ expectations for reproductive health benefits are aligned with legislative developments increasing employer obligations. The federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission’s regulations on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act became effective on June 18, 2024. The Act requires private sector employers with 15 or more employees to provide reasonable accommodations for employees impacted by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, absent an undue hardship.
Although still facing legal challenges, the EEOC’s regulations clarify that the Act’s reasonable accommodation requirement applies to employees when having or recovering from an abortion. Workplace accommodations—including time off—may also be required for fertility treatments and recovery from a miscarriage.
A new California law also took effect in 2024 requiring private sector employers with five or more employees to provide up to five days off following a miscarriage. In the Ovid survey, 53% of workers said they highly valued leave for pregnancy loss, but only 5% had access to this benefit. Employers that recognize this demand are starting to ensure that their bereavement leave policies explicitly include time off for reproductive loss.
While new 2024 laws set a floor, employee demand reveals significant room for employers to gain a competitive advantage by offering broader reproductive health benefits in 2025.
3. Menopause Is More Than Just A Hot Flash
In May, actress Halle Berry stood at the U.S. Capital and yelled to a cheering crowd, “I’m in menopause, ok?” She was there to support a bipartisan federal bill to fund menopause research and awareness. Why should business leaders care? Because this iconic moment highlighted a much larger movement by U.S. women to destigmatize menopause and demand greater workplace support for this inevitable life stage.
Women ages 45 to 64 make up nearly 20% of the U.S. labor force, according to Department of Labor data. These are women at the height of their careers. With a shrinking pool of younger workers in the U.S., these women are an irreplaceable part of an employer’s talent pool.
As early as 2022, 92% of women ages 40 to 55 were already reporting a belief that employers should provide menopause-related employee benefits, according to a Carrot Fertility report.
The Society for Human Resource Management has recognized that this trend is not going away. For the first time, SHRM asked about menopause benefits in its Employee Benefits Survey—one of the longest running annual surveys on employee benefits in the U.S.
The good news for employers is that this trend offers a win-win. The business case for providing menopause support is well documented. There’s a great ROI on menopause-related employee benefits, which improve recruiting, retention, and brand ambassadorship, increase productivity, reduce absenteeism, and advance gender equity and women’s leadership.
Creating a menopause-friendly workplace will also reduce the risk of legal claims alleging menopause-related discrimination and lack of accommodation. Courts are beginning to recognize that menopause-related symptoms are protected under various discrimination laws because of their connection to sex, age, and temporary disability.
While the law again sets a floor, employers have much to gain by investing in menopause-related support. There’s been a surge in health benefits specialists that offer menopause-related workplace packages, trainings, and resources—including Carrot Fertility, Electra Health, Gennev, Maven, Midi, Ovia Health, and Winona—which should make workplace support accessible to a wider range of employers.
4. Increasing Demand For Work-Family Benefits Transparency
As the demand for work-family employee benefits has grown, so has the demand for increased corporate transparency. “Transparency is appropriately becoming a bigger part of the conversation,” said Penn State Dickinson Law Professor Samantha Prince, via email.
This trend has its roots in the pay transparency movement of the last five years. To combat the persistent gender pay gap, various states and cities passed laws requiring employers to disclose salary ranges and pay scales to current and prospective employees. But these laws do not require employers to disclose information about employee benefits, which comprise about 30% of the average worker’s paycheck, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Thanks to pay transparency required in some states and cities, transparency is trending,” said Prince. “But transparency needs to extend beyond cash compensation to include important details about benefits. Without transparency, it is impossible to compare companies and make a sound decision on where to work.”
That’s why “benefits transparency” became the new watchword of 2024.
The demand for greater transparency has been targeted particularly at work-family benefits, which vary widely among companies, even within the same industry. “With more information, women are better situated to choose to work where family and reproductive care benefits will meet their needs,” said Prince.
The transparency trend was also fueled by high-profile public campaigns pressuring employers to share information on their work-family benefits.
This strategy began with theSkimm’s #ShowUsYourLeave initiative, which has built a public database of over 500 companies’ paid leave policies. Moms First then teamed up with theSkimm to launch a follow-up #ShowUsYourChildcare initiative. Rhia Ventures used a similar tactic with its #WhatAreYourReproBenefits campaign.
These transparency campaigns have been so successful that companies often tout their participation on social media as a recruiting tool. As the databases grow, companies will face increasing recruiting risks by not participating.
Researchers have also become more sophisticated in compiling data from multiple sources into user-friendly websites that enable workers to compare policies across companies. Hillary Cookler, PhD candidate and researcher at UCLA Anderson School of Management, launched an online database in 2024 that rates the 500 largest U.S. public companies on the transparency and quality of their paid parental leave plans.
Cookler’s research revealed that companies with greater public transparency tend to offer more generous parental leave. So job candidates who value parental leave may reasonably view a lack of transparency as a red flag about a company’s benefits plan.
Employees may also view lack of transparency as a lack of commitment to work-family balance. Job candidates see employee benefits as “an indicator of a company’s values,” said Prince. So companies that stay on top of work-family benefits trends can send a powerful message to help attract and retain talented workers in the new year.