Centrica has announced that its is providing employees with reproductive health and fertility support by partnering with reproductive healthcare benefits provider Fertifa.
Centrica will be offering its 18,500 UK and Ireland-based employees’ the health support as a workplace benefit.
Staff who work across Centrica’s British Gas, Bord Gais Energy, Centrica Business Solutions, Energy Marketing and Trading and Upstream businesses will now have access to an education programme, discounted fertility treatment such as IVF, intrauterine insemination, egg and sperm freezing, frozen embryo transfer, genetic testing, and donor eggs and/or sperm.
Also available to employees are free appointments with a dedicated fertility advisor, menopause support consultations and services, and free home testing kits for themselves and their partners in the UK.
Centrica said the partnership is important as it acknowledged that fertility and reproductive health challenges, and their status as a workplace taboo, can have an impact on employees.
Ulf Bengtsson, HR director at Centrica and HR business partner for British Gas, said: “From a deeply personal level and because it truly matters to Centrica, we are so thrilled that our colleagues can now benefit from reproductive health services and support thanks to our long-standing relationship with Fertifa. They are the perfect addition to complement our network of colleagues supporting each other, by offering an anonymous way to manage fertility in the workplace and grow families as well as careers.”
Hortense Thorpe, procurement business partner, founder of employee-led network The Centrica Fertility Group and workplace fertility ambassador, added: “From the start, The Centrica Fertility Group partnered with Fertifa as [it] offered what no one else does: caring, personalised and confidential advice to help people navigate their own fertility journey.”
