The healthcare benefits gap costing your business its top women
58.3% of women aged 30–45 are considering leaving or cutting their hours over inadequate health benefits. That’s exactly the career stage where firms build their future partners.
Key findings
- Mental health is the thread that runs through every career stage. It’s the top priority for 30–45 year olds, and 17.3% of women would put their entire healthcare budget into enhanced mental health support, a need standard PMI covers only partly.
- The hidden cost is presenteeism. More than half of women are working at reduced capacity because of an unmet health need, on top of an estimated £1.1m a year in absence costs for a 1,000-person business.
- This is the strongest retention lever in our research. 91.7% of women say tailored benefits would make them more likely to stay, and 63.6% say “much more likely”.
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Tech has the largest workforce in our research, with 2,588 people surveyed, and the clearest message: 55.6% paid out of pocket for healthcare last year.
Mental health appears more consistently here than in any other sector. It’s the top priority for 30–45 year olds and makes the top three at every age, alongside fertility for under-30s and men’s health beyond 45.
For women, the impact shows up as presenteeism more than absence. 51.4% say an unmet health need reduced their productivity at work, the highest of any sector we surveyed. Retention risk is also steady across the whole workforce. Around four in ten women in every age group are considering leaving or cutting hours.
But tech also offers the biggest opportunity. More than nine in ten women say the right benefits would keep them, and almost two thirds say “much more likely”. This report shows what your people are asking for and what it’s worth to get it right.
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