Egg-freezing may be a Silicon Valley perk too far

Firms are always looking at ways to attract and retain talented employees. Nowhere more so than in Silicon Valley, where America’s leading technology businesses live or die by the brain cell. Now, two of the district’s most influential residents, Apple and Facebook, have taken this so-called “perk arms race” to a new pitch.

As part of a drive among traditionally male-dominated Valley firms to attract more female talent, both are offering benefits to women who devote more of their childbearing years to building their careers. Both companies already offer financial benefits for fertility treatment and adoption, and Facebook famously gives new parents “baby cash” — US$4,000 (S$5,100) that they can spend in whatever way they like. But the firm has gone further. It recently began paying for female employees to freeze their eggs — a procedure that allows women to defer childbirth until later in life. Apple plans to follow suit and will offer the perk to United States-based staff from January.

SENDING A WRONG MESSAGE

It could be argued that this is simply another option to help women juggle their personal and working lives. Egg-freezing is an expensive and relatively novel treatment. Costs typically amount to US$10,000 at the minimum for each round of egg-harvesting, plus up to US$500 a year for storage. Both companies have undertaken to cover costs up to a cap of US$20,000.

This is financially generous and may be a perk that some women will welcome. But if it is open to all female employees and not only those experiencing fertility problems, there are doubts about the wider message that it sends.

Benefits are social indicators. When companies offer entitlements such as paternity leave and assistance with childcare, they reflect what we value as a culture. The offer to assist with egg-freezing sends just such a signal. It implies that women should consider deferring childbirth if they want to do well in their jobs.

Female participation in the workforce has been rising steadily in Europe and the US. In part, this reflects policy choices that have obliged firms to be more flexible in how they treat female staff, ensuring rightly that childbirth is no longer the career-defining event it once was. In part, it reflects changing social norms and the natural desire of firms to attract the most talented and capable staff. Inducing employees to freeze their eggs to defer motherhood takes this social dynamic into an altogether different direction.

Setting aside the invasive and uncertain nature of the treatment, it implies that employees should adapt their lifestyles to fit in with the desire of firms for a disruption-free office. This change of behaviour can be secured in return for the payment of a one-off fee. Some women may choose quite legitimately to freeze their eggs to defer pregnancy and pursue their careers. It is one reason these services have developed.

The concern is that once a company begins to offer this as an off-the-shelf benefit, the message will go out that this is not so much an option as a preferred solution. Given the intensely personal nature of the decision of when to start a family, this feels both intrusive and creepy.

Companies will always seek to find ways to encourage their employees to fit in with the demands of the business in what is an evermore competitive landscape. But managers should be wary of intruding too far.

Women should be making decisions about when and whether to have children entirely of their own free will — not because of a nudge they might have received from their employers.