Employee rights during IVF treatment

CIPD HR-inform. Croner-iStacie Cheadle, Croner-i technical writer, looks at the rights your employees have during IVF treatment

According to research from the social enterprise Fertility Matters at Work, around 63% of employees undergoing IVF take sick leave to undergo treatment. Why are they doing this? Because there is no statutory right to time off for this treatment, but there have been calls to change that. Stacie Cheadle, Croner-I Technical Writer, looks at the statutory rights of employees undertaking IVF treatment and what employers can do to enhance them.

My client is in the manufacturing industry. One of their engineers has told them that they are planning to undergo IVF treatment. Is there anything that my client should be aware of during this time, and do they have any legal rights my client must be aware of?

In vitro fertilisation, commonly referred to as IVF, is a medical technology available to individuals who are experiencing difficulties conceiving a child. In many cases, the IVF procedure will require multiple medical appointments, including pre-screening tests, before the eventual implantation takes place. Where the person undergoing IVF is employed, this can lead to the need for absence from work.

Fertility, and the treatments connected to it, are not explicitly covered under the Equality Act 2010. There are no statutory provisions giving those undergoing IVF or other treatments any right to time off, or protections against detriment or dismissal, in connection with them. This means that it is down to the discretion of the employer as to what entitlements, including for time off, they extend to their employees.

There have been calls to change this situation and introduce paid leave for IVF treatment. This is not currently part of the Government’s legislative agenda, but in November 2025 Alice MacDonald MP announced their intention to introduce a Bill to bring in the legal right to time off for fertility appointments. If this gains government backing, it could eventually lead to this right coming into law.

In its Employment Statutory Code of Practice, which provides guidance on the Equality Act 2010, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) encourages employers to treat requests for time off for IVF or other fertility treatment sympathetically and consider adopting a procedure to cover this situation. This could include allowing annual or unpaid leave to be taken to receive treatment.

Your client should therefore consider how they might adapt their medical appointment and sickness absence rules to accommodate fertility treatment, and whether they are able to allow leave, paid or otherwise, to employees undergoing IVF. If they decide to do so, this must be offered consistently to all employees. One way to do this is to introduce a ‘Fertility Journey Policy’.

Whilst fertility issues and treatment do not fall under the Equality Act, women undergoing these treatments should not be discriminated against, and your client should take to prevent this from happening. For example, agreeing as a one-off request a week’s annual leave for a male worker who wants to undergo cosmetic dental surgery but later denying his female colleague’s request for a week’s annual leave to undergo IVF treatment, even if she has enough remaining leave, could amount to sex discrimination.

Your client also needs to understand that an employee will be considered pregnant once the implantation has occurred and therefore protected from detrimental treatment on this basis. Implantation is defined as the process by which the fertilised egg is placed in the employee’s womb.

Employees will retain this protected status up until the point that the IVF treatment has proven to be successful or unsuccessful. Individuals are typically told to complete a pregnancy test two weeks after the implantation to evidence this. If the treatment is a success, then the employee will continue to be protected against discrimination on these grounds up until the end of their maternity leave. However, if the treatment is unsuccessful then the protected period will only last for a further two weeks.

If your client’s employee becomes pregnant following IVF, they must make the relevant accommodations and carry out regular assessment of the risks they face at work. This includes protecting the employee from discrimination or harassment at work, whilst also ensuring that any pregnancy-related sickness is discounted from absence measuring procedures. In addition, they must ensure that they provide staff with the same rights to maternity leave and pay as other pregnant employees.

By Stacie Cheadle, technical writer, Croner-i