Becky Kearns
Becky is Co-Founder of Fertility Matters at Work, designed to raise awareness and educate within the workplace about how best to support employees facing fertility struggles. She h...
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Who are you?
Hi, I am Becky Kerns and I'm one of the three co-founders of Fertility Matters at Work. And I'm here today to answer your questions all about how to support somebody who's going through fertility treatment in the workplace, how to make reasonable adjustments to support people, and also how to have conversations and create safe spaces about fertility in the workplace.
What does infertility mean?
So infertility is defined by the World Health Organisation as a disease of the reproductive system, and quite often it's seen as and referred to as an elective lifestyle choice, particularly in the workplace when actually it's a medical treatment for a need that people have in trying to have a child. There's primary infertility, which is where someone has difficulty conceiving. There's secondary infertility where someone has difficulty conceiving after having a child, but there's also social infertility as well where the factor in terms of conceiving is related to their partner. So they may be going down the route of solo parenthood or they may be in a same sex couple. And so there are lots of different reasons why people might need fertility treatment, but medical infertility is one of those.
Why is fertility an issue for the workplace?
So fertility may not naturally seem like a topic that you will talk about in the workplace, but what we know is that one in seven individuals in the UK are facing fertility struggles. We know that one in four pregnancies end in loss. So there are so many people within organisations who are going through this, but often in silence. And what we often find is that organisations aren't talking about this topic because people aren't talking to them about it. Nobody feels comfortable to open up about what they're going through. And for those who are going through it because they don't see the organisation recognising this, they're less likely to share. And so what we want to try and encourage is for organisations to open up this topic to try and break down the taboo. And what they will find are more and more people who are going through this, who will come forward and share their struggles in the past, or maybe something that they're going through right now. But what organisations can do is make a huge difference for people on this journey.