GroupHEALTH's Lindsey Gage-Cole explains how employers can structure benefits for women’s full life cycle
Ahead of International Women’s Day, Benefits and Pensions Monitor is recognizing the critical issues women face in the pensions, investment and benefits space and those who aim to better the industry. Happy Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day!
Traditional group benefit plans were not built with women's full life cycle in mind. From fertility through menopause, the gaps women face are real as they also notably carry costs plan sponsors can no longer afford to ignore.
Lindsey Gage-Cole, chief transformation officer at GroupHEALTH Benefit Solutions argues that employers need to stop treating fertility support as something that must always be hard-wired and funded directly within the benefits plan.
Because in many cases, she noted the real value comes from giving women clear, easy pathways to external expertise, particularly in a system where access to a family doctor is often limited.
That’s why she emphasized the need for employers to ensure women can reach a physician and other specialists who can explain their options and guide them through what is often a complex and emotionally charged process. She sees the employer’s role as building an ecosystem of support around women’s fertility needs, rather than fixating narrowly on how to pay for every element of treatment.
“It's those life transition stages that can be supported by the various components that go in through a concierge system,” said Gage-Cole. “It's often about education, and you want to educate to get people to the resource and not necessarily feel responsible to provide the resource. I think it's an ecosystem of support that employers can be filling in and not necessarily focusing on just ‘How do I cover the dollars all the time?"
Gage-Cole frames the problem in two parts. There are core benefits like health and dental and then there are ancillary benefits that complement them.
While increasing core coverage for specific groups can drive up costs fast, the more practical route, she argues, should include ancillary pieces like modernized EAPs and wellness concierge services that guide members through life transitions, from fertility to mental health, without threatening plan sustainability. The real value for Gage-Cole lies in leaning into a benefits ecosystem.
Beyond paramedical coverage for things like nutrition and holistic medicine, she points to activity-based programs that can replace costly gym memberships or subscriptions, making it easier for families to stay active during high-demand periods of life. The broader goal, she argues, is to reframe how plan members think about their benefits altogether.
To that end, Gage-Cole notes that benefit design is shifting toward a genuinely family-centred model. Early in their careers, employees may focus on using their own paramedical coverage, but once they have children, their priorities change and they look for support that protects the whole household. That means plans need to balance a basic sense of security with enough flexibility to follow families as their needs evolve.
She points to tools like health spending accounts and wellness spending accounts as key to that flexibility. And as children grow, the mix of expenses changes - from medical needs to things like sports gear. These accounts let parents redirect limited benefit dollars to what matters at each stage. While employers can’t control everything happening at home, they can create options that ease financial and mental strain, even in small ways, by giving families room to decide how and where to use their coverage, she noted.
When it comes to motherhood, she emphasized the importance of recognizing maternity leave. Gage-Cole believes that employers underestimate the mental and logistical load women shoulder when they juggle careers and family, especially around maternity leave.
“It’s not really a pause. Your careers aren’t linear, they’re a journey,” she said.
For her, the real work starts well before a woman steps away from the workplace. Employers should treat leave as a planned transition by discussing what time away will look like, whether the employee wants to stay connected or fully unplug, and how she wants to engage with the organization while she is supporting her family.
That acknowledgement, that ambition and ensuring long-term career goals remain intact, matters as much as any formal benefit, noted Gage-Cole.
On the return side, she sees the priority as integration, not special accommodation. That means early planning for re-entry and building the practical and psychological supports women need to come back in a sustainable way.
"It's not about accommodation. It's about integration and making sure that women have the support that they need to come back into the workplace," she said.
Gage-Cole rejects the idea that women are asking to be “accommodated.” Rather, they’re asking for the right supports at the right time, and those supports should start with honest, ongoing conversation. When careers, family plans, or health needs shift, what needs to change is not a woman’s ambition, but the form of support around her. She stressed that every woman’s situation is different and that the life plans people imagine in their twenties rarely play out as expected.
That means employers need to get comfortable asking what support looks like now, and again when circumstances change, rather than treating flexibility as a favour or exception. Gage-Cole underscored these life stages shouldn’t be “start-stop or stop-start” interruptions but part of a continuous, evolving journey that workplaces need to respond to in a more fluid, individualized way.
While broader policy environment already provides strong baseline protections for women, particularly around time to raise and care for families, Gage-Cole acknowledged there is growing recognition of later-life transitions too. The real gap, in her view, lies inside organizations, asserting employers need to build workplaces where support is grounded in human relationships and tailored to where women are in their lives.
Still, she puts responsibility on both sides. Employers should deliberately foster open, ongoing dialogue and make conversations about fertility, caregiving, and midlife changes feel normal rather than awkward or exceptional.
Consequently, she urges women to actively shape that culture by owning their narratives, rejecting the idea of a neat, linear career path, and clearly signalling what they need. Gage-Cole believes achieving real progress depends on two-way engagement: women using their experience and ambition to push for change, and employers responding by listening and adapting, rather than defaulting to rigid rules.
"Leverage the experiences of people in your workforces to understand,” she said. “Both are good experiences, and we often learn from the negative ones, too.”
