Supporting the Whole Woman: Building Comprehensive Women's Health Benefits That Work

Women's health is not one-size-fits-all, and it shouldn't be for your benefits strategy either. From fertility and family planning to menopause, mental health, chronic conditions, and preventive care, a growing number of employers are recognizing the need to support women throughout every stage of life.

This session will explore what it truly means to offer comprehensive women's health benefits, including the latest trends, evolving employee expectations, and the impact of inclusive, whole-person care on recruitment, retention, and overall well-being. Experts and employers will share what's working, what's missing, and how to close the gaps in your current offering.

Walk away with actionable insights to support the women in your workforce better—and build a benefits strategy that reflects their real needs.

Transcription:
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.

Morganne B. Francois (00:09):
Oh, hello. Good. Everyone wasn't ready for that. Thank you, Ed, for the introduction. I think he popped up out of here. My name is Morganne Francois, and again, I'm with Brickyard Healthcare. I will be paneling today and moderating a wonderful panel of amazing women that I had a great opportunity to meet with. We have Tammi Wortham on the end. She is the Senior Vice President and Human Resources of Sun Life. Lisa Coulson, the SVP and CHRO of Principal Financial, and ending it with Cassandra, Cass Pratt with Progeny, and she's also the CHRO. And so today we will be discussing supporting the whole woman and benefits that pretty much go into that. Designing a plan for the whole woman, getting those plans together, and actually listening to your employees and trying to get those benefits out there. As we know, women's health is not one dimensional; it's just not a one size fits all.

(01:04):
I think that's kind of been the theme that we've learned since we've been here. There's so many different aspects to the woman and what it takes to be the woman and come to work every single day, have the benefits to support you, and to also have an organization to support you. When you have those opportunities and you have a company that stands behind you, you have that personal engagement with your employee, which means they come to work, they are happy, they are healthy, they're not complaining. I get cursed at often from my employees sometimes when I can't make them happy. Women, we have hormones and I understand that, especially those who are going through pregnancy and maternity and they've got their short-term disability going on and they want to make sure everything is fine. I get cussed out a lot during that phase. I'm like, it's okay, I understand. Take your time, breathe. But when you are able to support your employee, you're able to have a better experience. So we'll be discussing trend-shaping benefits today, real life strategies, and how you navigate challenges like budget restraints and leadership pushback, which Tammi is going to push back on me about because she doesn't consider it pushback. We're going to pivot that. So I will start with Cass first. How do you define supporting the whole woman and the whole woman care for your company and organization?

Cassandra Pratt (02:22):
So I'm very excited that we're talking about this. I think Whole Woman Care is looking beyond episodic care

(02:33):
and really looking at the full continuum. So think about the whole woman starting with sexual health to preconception, fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, menopause, and really integrating access to all of that because if you want to treat a woman holistically and proactively, then you need to be able to look at the woman in the total life stage. I do think that it's really important to focus on full life stages because we all know that episodic care is just that one point. It may actually impact many other pieces of the journey that you have in your life. And so Whole Woman Care is super important and at Progeny we connect it through education and a guided experience to really help people understand each of those stages.

Morganne B. Francois (03:35):
I love how you say whole woman care. We only focus sometimes when you think of women on maternity, pregnancy, and menstruation. That's it. I actually had a joke earlier with two guys out there who had a joke about that and I was like, yeah, there's so much more to us though. There's so much more. And then the perimenopause—a lot of us yesterday when we were coming down to the conference, we were like, what's going on? My goodness. So you have to incorporate all of that in order to incorporate those types of benefits into your organization. Of course there's going to be gaps that you're going to have to identify that you're going to have to try to fill. It's kind of like a three-part question. I'm going to go and start with Lisa first. How do you identify those gaps and what do you use when you're coming up with that benefit plan or that wellness program?

Lisa Coulson (04:32):
It starts with listening. There's different ways that we listen. We have employee resource groups, they provide information, we have employee opinion surveys, and we do benefits surveys. So that's internal listening. There's also external market scans. In addition, I think in the earlier session you were talking about some of the "what's new." It's important that we stay on top of the what's new. And so through either consulting firms or reading or by keeping connected with the industry, we then add that into the mix and then determine how does that fit together based on the needs of our employees. Our session today is about women, but we listen to all. Because we're all different people and bring different things, it's important to provide options and choices for people based on what they're going through.

Morganne B. Francois (05:33):
And women, we've come so far and we still have such a far journey to go in the workforce. I believe for a while we weren't even able to do a lot of things. And so now when you're talking about bringing women care into an organization, sometimes you hit a wall. Some men or some women may not fully understand what it is. I am not the same person as Cass. We experience different things based on our socioeconomic and our environments, our DNA, and everything. So how do you handle when you're trying to implement that program into your company? I don't want to say pushback, Tammi. Influence. There you go. Influence. How do you get the buy-in for it? I struggle with that. Most of my leaders and my senior leaders are all men. So I'm coming to them as the only woman, of course, trying to talk to them about benefits. They're like, you got that 15-second window with men before it just goes to sports or Moneyball. I keep hearing that all the time. So how do you go over that?

Tammi Wortham (06:43):
Alright, so we'll go there. I'll go to the pushback, but just a couple of things to start. One of the things is the word "whole woman." I sort of laughed when I came in because I was like, oh, my genes have wanted me to be half a woman, not a whole woman. A whole woman is something like a whole donut. You know what I mean? You always want the half a donut. So I tend to think about half a woman. No, but I agree with the whole woman care; it's super duper important. The other piece which is really important is just having the forum and the opportunity to talk and share this illustrious panel with this group of ladies. I hear all the time about thinking about it as episodic or not episodic or how do we think about ourselves because we are all good girlfriends—all of us here, even the guys, we are good girlfriends together. It's this interesting thing that happens for us as women in business. As we start to ascend, as we think about our careers and contributing more to the outcomes of the business, we start to recognize that we can do anything.

(07:45):
We can. No doubt. 100%. So as we've learned even when we're sitting up here today, we all thought: do we cross our legs this way? Do we stand this way? Do we have our heads? These are things that are not going through men's heads when they sit down. For us, it is. So there is always this little extra piece for us as women that carries with us. And then eventually you start to say, "yeah, this is coming along," but then actually something else happens. You actually may impact or experience things physically as a result of being women outside of fertility, which for me—I don't have children. I figured great, I don't have any kids, that menopause thing is not for me. I'll pass on that one because I didn't go through that phase. Well, ladies, it came and it welcomed me with open arms.

(08:34):
The piece that I wanted to talk about is why I'm bringing that up for all of you: I didn't know of the support systems that were available to me to really understand that what was happening to me wasn't that I was just losing it in the workplace, or I was just getting stressed or really hot. There's something else that may be going on. So as we employers think about the journey of our women in the workforce, I love the place of menopause because usually the place of menopause is when we figured we got it all together. We had it all worked out and then we had to really come to terms with it. But it does make us realize that we are more than just fertility, exactly to your point. To get to your point, I promise, whenever we think about convincing, all of us in benefits—now my benefits team, we literally had an argument today about guess what people? GLP-1s. Every other day.

(09:30):
We're all arguing about that. But what's important when you think about your benefits is we always have to put together the business case for it. For us, our purpose is to help not only our clients but our employees live healthier lives. Doesn't that put me at the top of your priority list, CEO? I think it does. So we need to bring that level of energy. 700 million of my company's budget is me. I need to be at the table. And if you aren't coming to the table with $700 million in benefits and comp in your pocket to say, "listen to me, and this is why," that's the energy you need to bring. You're not coming in with hearts and minds. It would be real sweet if we got Tammi a fan because she's hot. No, I can figure out a way of ensuring that our workforce is performing at the peak that it can. For us, 70% of our workforce is women. So if you want this thing to roll and you want to meet all those business goals, I'm going to teach you the way to get there that's caring for the whole woman—and the whole donut too, which I'm going to add.

(10:42):
You're making me hungry.

Morganne B. Francois (10:43):
I know, I want a donut. One of the things that I liked that you said was sitting at the table. I shared the story with someone yesterday, and again, as the only woman dealing with a whole bunch of men, I like to make sure that you've seen me. I want to be seen. I want to be heard, not just sitting in a corner where my ideas and suggestions are not being listened to. So I took my approach so that you can hear me. I sit at the head of the table. Sorry CEO, sorry CFO, sorry whoever you are. I sit at the front of the table and they all come in and they're looking at me and I'm like, "hi, how are you?" Especially when it comes to benefits. I want you to focus on me. I want to be at the head. I make sure whatever new vendor we're bringing in, whatever new program we're bringing in, whatever new wellness or preventative care, I want them to fully hear me and understand what I'm saying.

(11:33):
I don't want it to be just kind of passed off like, "oh, okay, Morganne's talking about women again." No, you're going to hear me. And if I have to somehow manipulate it into a way—I always bring up Moneyball. That was just the first thing I kept hearing when I first got on with these men. The lady Kelsey back there explained the movie to me. So I was like, oh, so if I switch it, maybe I can make them understand. So trying to do those approaches is my innovative approach to making them listen to me. Cass, what is one benefit or program that your organization implemented in order to support women's health and how did you measure it? We always talk about that wonderful abbreviation of ROI. How do you get an ROI in supporting a whole woman?

Cassandra Pratt (12:16):
Well, I like what Tammi said about the ROI because any benefit that you're implementing has to have value to both the employees and the business. One of the programs that I'm really proud of is our leave program. We do 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave. We have extended prenatal care, we have miscarriage leave, and we have extended NICU coverage, which allows families in crisis to have more bonding time with their children. We're a women's health company. We're 75% female. We have about 20% of our employees go on leave every year for a variety of reasons, not just parental. It's a very costly experience for us. But by offering these types of programs, employees are feeling seen and valued. They're more engaged when they return to work; they're able to return with their whole person. Our leaders really see the value in it because it is increasing our utilization. So we look at all the utilization data. Our engagement scores have gone up. We track clearly attrition and attraction.

(13:32):
As we share these things in different venues, our employees talk about them. The word that gets out to the wider employee base or potential candidates is that our company really cares about our employees and the whole person even in the times when they are not going to be working. And so the value comes by really increasing all of those different elements and it has paid off over the course of the last five or ten years. We keep looking for other opportunities to add things to that program. When you help employees at their most challenging time, then they are coming back engaged and focused.

Morganne B. Francois (14:11):
I like how you said you're helping them at their most challenging time and you're actually listening to them. You're helping the employee. But what I also run into issues with is training the other leaders underneath and above them and their supervisors to pay attention. We're the benefits people, we're HR, so we get it. We know when a woman is going through something and she's rubbing her belly and she's cramping. We know what that means and we know that we need to give a little bit of extra attention. But Lisa, how do you within your organization make sure that it funnels down? It starts at the top, but how do you get it to funnel down to the other leaders and supervisors to make sure that they also have that empathy and they understand and they're not just waving it away?

Lisa Coulson (15:00):
I'm going to start more with storytelling. So some of it, we started with influence, budgets, design. So many of the things that we all worry about in this room on a day-to-day basis are the nuts and bolts of having the best programs for our employees. Devil's in the detail, though, in the moments that matter. In the panel that was up here before us, they were talking about how to educate and how to get people to pay attention, whether it's your employee group or it's your leadership group up the chain. It's in the moments that matter. It's when an employee needs the benefits that knowing how to access it, understanding how it drives the different values of the organization. As Cass was talking, it's obvious that you're very caring. You want to show up as a caring organization in those moments that matter for folks. And so how do we do it? We start first with having the infrastructure in place. That's how you get to the table. And then it's knowing that when those moments happen, how do we get at either the employee's fingertips or the leader's fingertips enough information so they can address the concern relative to our programming at that time?

Tammi Wortham (16:28):
Yes. I love that. And one of the things, when I think about the idea—so much great information in this conference—is that idea of when does it click? When do you say it seven times and they actually get it? I was thinking about our ability to influence the culture that we have and how the culture you create will start to create that forum around you. It's not just your email. Employees will start to understand, "no, this doesn't sound like the way we are in the organization." Let me give you a couple examples. When we think about the whole woman and our journey on paid family medical leave, similar to you, we went out and expanded our program to include 16 weeks paid leave for women having children. Then also we extended that same amount of leave for men for paternity leave.

(17:24):
But then we took it a step further and we said, we want to make sure also we're taking care of our employees that are also caregivers, which we all know is disproportionately impacting women. So we allow 16 weeks of paid time for individuals that need to take care of someone in their lives or families that have more episodic care—three hours here for cancer, driving someone to appointments, et cetera. So we also do that level of support, and what we found in those areas is it started to create this culture of real caring. The other piece that's really obvious—we didn't talk about it as much over the past couple of days—is hybrid work. It's clear in all of the data that suggests women are disproportionately being supported by the idea of having flexibility at work. For us, we've never gone to a mandate.

(18:17):
We wanted our offices to be a magnet, not a mandate. So what we tried to do is allow our employees the flexibility to be able to determine what schedule works best for them. So we started to see not only our leave programs, but the way we think about the future of work. We also have a sabbatical program. All of those things come together and we watch this workforce start to be the workforce that talks to each other about, "this is the kind of workplace that I expect." So it's an exciting place to be when the ecosystem starts to work in support of your purpose and ultimately for the business.

Cassandra Pratt (19:06):
I think to go back on the storytelling and the culture, that's really critical because it normalizes the conversation. It helps people trust the benefit, and then they're going to start using it. And if you have your leaders, male and female, modeling usage of the benefits. We sometimes have the secondary caregiver not take all their leave, which then prompts a question from myself or somebody else on our team to say, "no, you really need to use this time. You're never going to get it back. So use it now." And then ongoing education—educating all coworkers, male and female, about the continuum of women's health so that everybody is on the same page and understands these are the reasons why we offer the benefit. People have to be able to use it.

Morganne B. Francois (20:02):
Thank you. And to your point, Tammi, talking to and listening to every one of your employees, how do you get that information? You have to hear it. I get cursed out on a daily—maybe it's just my world of long-term healthcare—from nurses, LPNs, and CNAs who don't get their benefits the way they want to, or the plan isn't fitting, or they thought they had this plan and it's that plan. So how do you collect that information so that you're ensuring that you are implementing a program or a benefit for your culture? Because it's all about inclusivity.

Tammi Wortham (20:51):
I think you said it perfectly. It's always recognizing that the biggest job that we have is listening. They're always telling us. Are you listening? Are you tuned in to what those needs can be? And then coming up with creative solutions. Ideally, I think someone said you need to be always curious. You need to always be asking questions. I did not realize how much innovation is happening in this benefit space. You guys need to be up on the tech because everyone is thinking every day how creatively to solve some of the most challenging issues facing the workforce. So the innovation is actually happening here, and it comes from what you do so well: bringing the data to bear, listening to employees, listening to your inclusion networks, and understanding what's available out there in the industry. It's going to be the thing that drives you. When I think about our menopause benefit with Progeny—she didn't pay me to say that. One of the things that we had, we had partnered initially with Progeny, which was great on our fertility benefits, which for us, we were so very proud of. Progeny said, "have you ever thought about menopause? And maybe that might be something that you're thinking about." And lo and behold, it was that exact right thing for me—who knows about the rest of my employees?

(22:35):
But what I loved is when you partner with the right individuals, when you partner with those thinking innovative organizations, they bring to bear the holistic thought. One of the things that we talked about is: are we also understanding how women are not a monolith, that every woman doesn't experience menopause or fertility the same way? Well, when you partner with a great vendor, they know the nuances that are associated with that. For women of color, for example, we tend to experience menopause in a different way than non-women of color—having longer hot flashes, et cetera. Who knew? I didn't know that. But it's something that in partnering with Progeny and other groups, they are educated. The individuals that you're working with are talking to you about your particular situation. So it's not only making sure that you are always listening, but also curious in question asking.

Lisa Coulson (23:11):
The only other thing I'd add is it's like building any good habit: it's putting the infrastructure in place. And so we have an internal benefits administration committee, so we have forums where we talk about what we're hearing. Having that additional bit of infrastructure with the listening program just allows us to have different inputs to think through how things are going or how we'd make changes.

Cassandra Pratt (23:48):
We do something similar. We share our stories in our town halls, we share stories in onboarding, and we also have a series of leadership round tables where we will, again, share the stories because we want to normalize those conversations. We also want leaders to really understand the impact of supporting the employees and that the outcomes are there and performance improves when you are supporting your workforce.

Morganne B. Francois (24:16):
I know my boss actually listens to me and he actually agrees with something, I'm like, oh, I might work a little later today. You're more engaged, you're excited. As we're talking about benefits, GLP-1s has been always a conversation starter for the past year, and other issues and trends. What are you seeing right now in women's health that employers should be paying attention to? When GLP-1s came on the market, we saw all the celebrities losing weight. And so every woman was like, "oh, I can finally get in it for the summer. I don't have to work out. Let me take this shot real quick." Then the GLP-1s became extremely expensive. But then you started to see other trends and other people picking it up on TikTok—now they have GLP-1 patches. What other trends do you see? How do you handle that? How do you make sure that you're bringing all of those benefits into your organization?

Lisa Coulson (25:28):
To me it becomes all about wellness. Return to office probably could also talk about GLP-1s all day because it is a hot topic. From my perspective, we try to focus on wellness with our employees. What does that look like? We do offer the GLP-1s as part of our program, but we have some programmatic items that allow us to use them responsibly for the right cases. We have a wellness center with exercise classes. There's one of those machines where you can stand and it tells you your body composition. Not something you want to do before you come to Las Vegas and eat and drink. Related to that, we did have a group that came up through a listening session that was really, really interested in plant-based eating. I'm not sure if over time it will become part of our overall program, but they ended up creating an employee resource group.

(26:47):
We did some funding for the pilot. We had a doctor and then we had a dietitian that helped run the program. Anyone that participated submitted their medical information in an aggregate way. It was amazing to see lifestyle choices and changes. Since they were all motivated and committed, their data was amazing. I don't know if I'm advocating for plant-based eating, but for those that would like to do that, it was interesting for us. It was interesting for us to be able to listen, try something, and then relate it to what I would call overall general wellness, which is underneath some of the GLP-1 stuff.

Cassandra Pratt (27:34):
I'll tell you something we're doing now and then where I hope it goes in the future. So we have launched advocacy-based benefits recently: leave navigation for employees as well as doula, which helps employees understand costs and other implications in a complex and sometimes biased system. As more advocacy-based benefits come out, I think it's really important because benefits in general are really complicated to navigate. When something happens, someone needs support now. Where do you go to get access to that? When do you know: is it a different health condition, or is it perimenopause, or is it an acute medical issue where you need to go to the hospital? So having someone who can really support you on an ongoing basis is really important.

(28:39):
That leads into what I would love to see, which is a much larger continuum of women's health so that we're no longer treating single conditions like episodic care, but taking that several steps further in understanding that women's mental, physical, and emotional health over the course of many decades is really important. Seeing it on a full continuum, not just in these different life stages. I think that is still a little ways off, but that would be great because then you are also treating things more proactively. It could help reduce overall medical costs because if you catch things earlier, you're preventing perhaps more serious concerns later in life.

Morganne B. Francois (29:30):
Absolutely, on our pre-conference call, you mentioned the sandwich generation.

Cassandra Pratt (29:35):
Yes.

Morganne B. Francois (29:35):
If you can just embellish on that.

Cassandra Pratt (29:38):
Yeah, I think caregiving in general is at a really interesting point. Regardless of your politics, this big beautiful bill actually had a number of things around childcare, which we had been working towards for a long time. It increased dependent care FSA from $5,000 to $7,500. And then I believe it's F-175, which is the employer tax credit. If you offer benefits to qualify childcare facilities, then you can get an employer tax credit. That has also been significantly increased. It also increased not just for the money you give to an employee, but administrative costs for administering the platform. Many of these platforms aren't just focused on childcare; they're focused on caregiving in general. And so the individuals, as Tammi talked about earlier—predominantly women—that are caring for children and older family members at the same time are able to take advantage of some of these different tools where maybe in the past they were very segmented. So I'm very excited to see that because it takes the stress and emotional burden off employees and really allows people to come to work or understand they have the flexibility. You need the flexibility: if I have to go for that treatment or to care for one of my loved ones, I have to be able to leave for an hour or two and understand how to make that possible with my team.

Tammi Wortham (31:15):
Yeah. I don't know if I have too much more to add—no kidding, I always have something to add. It might not be relevant, but it'll be added. I think one of the things that has occurred to me over these past couple days is how much work and how much thinking we all put in to the right benefit at the right time, but also making sure that our employees have an awareness and an activation to take care of themselves. And we are still working on that. We have so many great benefits and point solutions. Millions of solutions. But fundamentally, it's that relationship with your employee to say, "this is where I know when I come to you, you are going to be able to help me in real time in real life."

(32:07):
For example, we offer a navigation service to our employees that helps them from finding a primary care doctor to second opinions for diagnosis, to navigating the available physicians in a certain specialty area. We had an employee whose daughter unfortunately was in a freak accident and scratched her eye and she just didn't know where to go or what to do. Well, she reached out to our health navigation services and they helped her get to the right ophthalmologist at the right time, which helped her daughter immensely. She didn't even know where to begin. So being there for your employees at that space is such an important and key aspect. But also, we also struggle because I always realize on a panel, we always sound like experts. Nah, I know I'm not an expert.

(32:58):
I want to be just like all of you. I still need to get people to realize that it's there or it's available. Menopause benefits. How many times I go in a room and Devin knows I always have my fan with me. Still to this day, people will say, "oh my gosh, I feel so free to be able to talk about it or perimenopause." We're just not bringing it up enough and making these cultural spaces to say, "I need help with that." For some reason, we feel like we don't know enough or we should know. So creating that leap to understanding your own healthcare and what's important—and that it's the most important thing to us as a business—can all be a smooth transition, but something in there is missing. And I guess that's why I came here for the past two days: to try to figure out how to bridge that gap. Because I can create the best solutions, I still need to make sure that I'm activating my employees to use them. Even them knowing that it's an important thing—and something that's important to me and to us—is the first step.

Morganne B. Francois (34:00):
I agree. Lisa, do you have—

(34:06):
I agree. I think it's really important, and Tammi discussed this on our call, women—we're not just taking care of our children. I don't have kids, so I am a parent to my parents right now. "Parenting my parents" is what we say. So I'm having to tell them, "call me before you go to the store." They went to Vegas in August, and my mother just went crazy. And I said, "uh-uh, you can't travel by yourself anymore." You turn 70 years old and you just lose your mind. So you're having to take on so many different aspects of supporting the whole woman, or the whole donut that we are. So as you're doing these benefits and these programs, have you had a story or any stories that you can share with the group where these benefits actually did apply and it was successful, and you walk away and you're like, "hell yeah, I did that. And I was able to be there for my employee, and they knew that I supported them."

Cassandra Pratt (35:02):
Morganne knows I have a story. One of the really interesting benefits about working at a women's health company is that people share a lot more information than they ever have at previous companies. I've been at tech companies, financial services companies; I never received this much information. One of our employees before she joined us had gone through multiple unsuccessful rounds of IVF and a withdrawal of a surrogacy. When she joined us, she was at that point where she was ready to be done with the journey and sort of move on. And it was something that was actually really important. So as she and I were talking about it, I encouraged her to talk with another provider in our network, get a second opinion, see what might be possible. She did in fact do that and then ended up going through another round and had a successful pregnancy.

(36:07):
After her successful pregnancy, she was like, "oh, maybe this will work for me." So she decided to start that journey again, and she went to her physician and he said, "well, I can't treat you because you are in fact naturally pregnant with your second child." And when I say a lot of IVF cycles, she went through nine, which is on the extreme end, so understandable why she was at the point of wanting to give up. I think what it shows is that listening to your employees, creating that open dialogue, and giving them access to the right resources at the right time will definitely change outcomes. She's very open with her story, so we have shared her story with other people at our company. We've actually shared it on social media because it goes back to making that an acceptable conversation to have, whether it's about a fertility journey, menopause, or some other health journey. I think people need to be more open to sharing those conversations because then they understand they can ask about the benefits. If you talk to your company about something you're looking for and they don't have it, then you are able to open their eyes and give them more information. It's listening and being curious, and it may be a really interesting benefit that will help many other people in the company.

Morganne B. Francois (37:35):
Thank you for sharing that. I did want her to tell that story. I love it. I also am a woman who has been struggling reproductively trying to have a baby. And so when she told me her story, I was like, oh my God, there is hope. So it was just nice to even hear that story. Thank you so much for sharing that. Lisa, do you have—

Lisa Coulson (37:55):
Yeah, I'd say going back to the "sandwich": for those that either have small children and elder care, if you've ever had a parent that's had their first fall, it opens up all different questions for what support they need. Having resources available—and these aren't things that people talk about very often. I feel like we're starting to talk about it more, but having that available to de-stress situations or provide alternatives when people are just feeling like this has happened and I just don't know what to do.

Morganne B. Francois (38:38):
Absolutely. And then Tammi, you were there for the employee who didn't know what to do with her daughter's eye. Those mothers, they will call you late at night trying to figure something out and you see the number and you're like, "I know what this is... okay, what's going on?" You hear their story and their drama and it's like, my God, how can I help you? I wanted to drive down to the hospital one time for this employee. She had been there for days with her son and was just so tired. She hadn't left; it was just her, a single mom. Her family was out of town and she didn't have anyone. So I took it upon myself—whole woman care, not just for me, but for others. Going down there, I brought her some food, brought her some change of clothes, brought a toy for her son who was in the hospital bed.

(39:23):
So I wanted to help them. And it's just what we do. I think that in HR, yeah, you're resourcing humans, of course, and a lot of them end up being like your children, but you're being there for them in that moment. This woman will be bonded for life now. She's one of my good friends now, and her son and I, we play around all the time. I've adopted him as my own child. Thank you so much everyone, for being a part of this panel. And we have time to open it up for some questions.

Audience Member 1 (39:54):
Question right here. The lovely Lisa on the end, we have to give you a microphone. Okay, down here in the lovely red jacket. Stop at "lovely." You said that you offer up to 16 weeks?

Tammi Wortham (40:27):
Yes, we do.

Audience Member 1 (40:29):
Do you live in a state where you have required paid leave like we do in Washington?

Tammi Wortham (40:27):
Yes, we do have that, yes.

Audience Member 1 (40:29):
Okay. I'm just wondering how you handle that. And secondly, on those 16 weeks, do you offer that on an intermittent basis and how do you manage that?

Tammi Wortham (40:38):
Oh, that's a great question. Individuals can take—they don't have to take the 16 weeks concurrently. They can take a portion of the leave and they can split it up into two sections, but they can't take it in a week here and then back. It's an extended amount of time, but I've got to remember the amount. I apologize, I'll talk to my benefits team though, they'll correct me. But we do allow them; they don't have to take it concurrently. They can go out—a lot of times if they have parental leave for the husband, they'll split the time so that the woman is staying with the child for the extended time, then the husband comes in and stays and they add it.

Cassandra Pratt (41:21):
Can I add to that? We're based in New York and we do something similar, although not quite 16 weeks—I like that idea—24 total. What we have done is we model any of the policies that are required in New York across the entire country. So we have New York's paid family leave for every state in the country where our employees reside.

Tammi Wortham (41:47):
Yeah. And I think the one thing I would add is a lot of times that work—even when we were approaching the work—there was a lot of discussion around "how can we afford that?" and "everyone will be out." Productivity... we went through the whole thing, trust me, it was not like, "let's just think about this and do it." But what we've seen in the amount of attrition and attraction from employees has blown it out of the water. We have maintained a 5% attrition rate for the past five years in our organization. So that was pandemic and after, and even the great resignation. A lot of that is related to the benefits that we provide. When we think about that ROI, we think about the cost of bringing new employees, turnover, et cetera, and we equate that to being able to provide this level of support and it evens out.

Audience Member 2 (42:40):
I'm going to try to set this up the right way. So at my company, we are 85% women more than that, and over 60% of our benefit-eligible women are age 40 plus.

Cassandra Pratt (42:50):
Oh, wow.

Audience Member 2 (42:51):
So to take a play off of the very fabulous TikTok trend—and no offense to the men in the room, sorry. But we as benefit leaders that are women, we do not care about benefits that are just shiny and tick boxes. We want outcomes, we want solutions. There's a really big problem with that though. In the menopause space, only one in five OB-GYN residencies are actually trained in menopause. And when they are trained, they're getting approximately three hours of training. Then the ones that are trained, maybe about 20% of those feel comfortable treating patients. So when I think about this as a benefit leader and I try to rouse people up, I'm trying to figure out how on earth do we lend change in the healthcare space to make this meaningful to them too? Because we need to provide these benefits and there is nobody doing it. Progeny, we signed up with you on purpose. Truly, and it's because you guys stand out in the market because you are talking about this and it is important to talk about it. So I'm just curious to get your perspectives: how on earth do we lend this change and get it moving in the right direction?

Cassandra Pratt (44:05):
I love that question. You're right. There was an Oprah special with Halle Berry. Halle Berry started a company called Respin, which is also helping with menopause coaching, where she shared that her doctor misdiagnosed her with an STD because it was actually a menopause symptom. That's just one very public story; there are thousands of those stories out there. Finding a menopause-based network where physicians are certified... honestly, the UK leads the US in this area because they have menopause doctor and nurse certifications. It's starting to come to the US. Our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Janet Choi, actually went through it. They are building the networks of people that have more than three to seven hours of residency experience where this is what they focus on.

(45:11):
It's incredible to see the duration of care drop because you're getting diagnosed the correct way the first time and you're able to talk about the symptoms. Hair loss happens in perimenopause too. Brain fog—hot flashes is the one that everybody knows about. But there are lots of other micro symptoms that women experience that are misdiagnosed as different conditions and it's not accurate. Then you start going down that path when really you could have just started with someone who's a specialist and they could help you get to the right answer faster.

(45:55):
It has ROI because it's cost savings on your medical plan and your claims. I think it's really important to help people get the right care at the right time. Menopause and perimenopause are hot topics right now, but it's finding that network of qualified physicians and nurses who can help answer your questions quickly.

Tammi Wortham (46:16):
Yeah, I love that. And just to pull that through, because I think it's such an excellent piece: think about the demands on women in the workplace. Strategic thinking. You want to be thinking digitally. You want to make sure that you're innovating with AI. You also want to be laying out five-year plans. All the while you're like, "gosh, something... I'm just not..." I say that in that extreme because this is something that we believed you could just overcome. "Alright, I was hot last night. I'll get a fan, I'll be fine." But the demands of business are only accelerating. It is imperative for us as women to recognize that for us to be ready for what's coming and the business demands, we've got to take care of ourselves. It's not something you need to tough through.

(47:04):
It's not something that you need to say, "a fan will save me," because there are other pieces. Progeny does a great job in saying it's holistic. If your workforce is 70% women—and mine is—40% of those women are perimenopause and older. To activate that workforce for what we need in skills and in the learning space, they need to be ready and open to what that brings. For women during this later time in life, there might be that other little distraction—a little bit of weight gain. Trust me, that'll distract us a lot. But those are the things that really distract our ability to deliver for the workforce. Please say that language. Maybe the CEO is like, "okay, Tammi, I don't get it," but maybe my inability to think through my five-year strategic plan unless I get the right support will matter. That's not my fault. It's not because I'm not capable, it's because I need to go to the right physician at the right time. Women in business drive business outcomes. They're not any side note or side piece; it is the way to outsize business outcomes, and that's the way we should approach this work going forward. With the right partners, I think it's an excellent platform to stand on. Just my last two cents.