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Published on
4/11/2026
The LivingCare Group
National Fertility Awareness Week returns to the UK from Monday 2 to Friday 6 November 2026, with this year's campaign built around the theme Fertility Unfiltered: honest conversations about what fertility treatment actually involves, including the parts that rarely make it into a job description. At LivingCare, we've partnered with fertility experts at JIVA Fertility to help patients balance treatment with their working lives, because for many individuals the biggest unanswered question may not be clinical, it's what they can realistically ask their employer for.
Key takeaways
When over 865 fertility patients were surveyed in May 2016, the numbers told their own story: 6% had already left their job because of treatment, another 13% had cut their hours, and just one in four worked somewhere with a policy that actually supported them. Multiply that experience across the roughly 3.5 million people in the UK who face fertility problems (about one in six of us, at some point), and the scale of the gap between need and workplace policy becomes clear.
That gap is partly because fertility treatment does not pause for office hours. Monitoring scans often fall early in the morning, cycle-specific days dictate when a procedure happens, and clinics often only give a day or two's notice. The result, for many patients, is a constant logistics exercise layered on top of the emotional weight of treatment itself: scheduling around medication side effects, deciding how much to tell colleagues, and wondering whether being honest about treatment will change how they are seen at work. Despite affecting millions of people, many still find fertility treatment one of the hardest things to raise with an employer.
Start with what is not covered. UK law does not give anyone a specific statutory right to time off for fertility treatment itself, whether paid or unpaid, and that stays true for most of a treatment pathway. The ACAS guidance is clear that the protections built around pregnancy and parental leave only switch on once a patient reaches the embryo transfer stage of IVF. From that point, the same statutory rights as a pregnant worker apply, including paid time off for appointments, and if the transfer does not result in a pregnancy, those protections continue for a further two weeks from the point the patient finds out.
For everything earlier in the pathway, ACAS simply asks employers to treat a fertility appointment like any other medical appointment, and any related sickness absence like any other sickness absence. That is guidance, not a legal duty, but it sits next to a real one: refusing a woman's request for IVF-related time off more harshly than an equivalent request from a man can amount to unlawful sex discrimination.
Here is what the law actually covers:
Flexible working sits in a different category entirely. Since 6 April 2024, every employee in Great Britain has had a day-one statutory right to request flexible working, regardless of how long they have been in the job. The ACAS Code of Practice caps this at two requests in any 12-month period, and employers have two months to decide each one, including any appeal, refusing only on one of eight specified business grounds. Nothing in the request has to mention fertility treatment at all, which is exactly what makes it such a practical route to the adjusted pattern treatment often calls for.
There is no UK statutory right to time off for fertility treatment itself. There is, since April 2024, a day-one right to ask for flexible working, and that distinction matters more than it might first appear.
As a primary care and private healthcare provider, LivingCare often sees patients at the point they are first trying to make sense of a fertility concern, before any formal treatment pathway has even started. That early contact, whether a routine appointment, a health assessment or simply a confidential conversation, can be the difference between a patient, or their manager, feeling equipped for the weeks ahead and feeling blindsided by them.
None of this requires an overhauled HR policy. In practice, what helps most is usually small and consistent: a manager who treats a fertility appointment as unremarkable rather than unusual, confidentiality by default rather than by request, and genuine flexibility over how and when hours are worked. Appointments tend to arrive at short notice and in clusters, so the easiest thing a manager can do is expect that pattern rather than react to it, and then let the employee set the pace of what they choose to share. Beyond that one-to-one conversation, workplaces that go further tend to offer access to wellbeing or counselling support, a written fertility policy that covers everyone rather than one group, and an acknowledgement that treatment affects both partners, not just the person attending the clinic.
When employees feel supported, they are more likely to remain engaged, productive and loyal to their organisation.
A handful of habits tend to make the weeks easier. Build slack into your diary around treatment cycles rather than trying to work around appointments at the last minute. Decide early who you can lean on, whether that is a manager, someone in HR, a colleague or your partner, so you are not figuring it out mid-crisis. Treat sleep, breaks and professional support as part of the treatment plan, not optional extras. And it helps to remember that fertility problems affect roughly one in six of us, so there is a good chance someone else in your workplace understands more than they have ever said out loud.
Time off for fertility treatment itself is not a legal right, though it is treated like one from embryo transfer onwards. Until that stage, there is no statutory entitlement to paid or unpaid leave for appointments, scans or procedures. From embryo transfer, the same statutory protections as a pregnant worker apply, including paid appointment time, extended by two further weeks if the treatment does not succeed.
Discrimination law still has teeth even where fertility-specific rights do not. An employer who deals with a woman's IVF-related request more harshly than it would deal with a comparable request from a man is exposed to a sex discrimination claim, regardless of what any internal fertility policy says.
Asking for flexibility does not need to wait for a formal policy, or for long service. Every employee can submit a flexible working request from their first day, up to twice in any 12-month period, and an employer must respond, including to any appeal, within two months, using only one of eight permitted business reasons to say no.
This Fertility Awareness Week, our message at LivingCare is a simple one: you do not have to work out the clinical side and the workplace side of fertility treatment on your own. If you are unsure about your options, or how treatment may be affecting your work and wellbeing, speak with a LivingCare professional first. We will guide you through your options and, if needed, connect you with our trusted partners at JIVA Fertility for specialised fertility care.
Book a consultation with our team, or find out more about our fertility services.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not replace medical advice. Always speak to a healthcare provider about your individual health needs.
Medically reviewed by: Dr Harish Bhandari, Consultant Gynaecologist, Fertility Specialist & Sub-Specialist in Reproductive Medicine & Surgery. Last reviewed: 04/11/26.
