Zora Health / Employer guide / Czech Republic
Support employees through fertility treatment, and keep the talent you have invested in.
Fertility treatment rarely fits around a work calendar, and most employees go through it quietly, often while doing some of their best work. Zora Health helps you build practical fertility support, from policies and manager guidance to confidential care navigation and access to 128+ partner clinics in 16 countries, around your workforce and budget. Companies including Hilton, LinkedIn, Sanofi, HSBC, Mastercard, Carousell and Singapore Management University work with us.
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Five things Czech HR leaders should know
- The Czech total fertility rate was 1.28 in 2025, and 6.4% of 2024 live births followed assisted reproduction.
- Public health insurance pays for basic IVF until a woman’s 40th birthday: 3 cycles, or 4 if one embryo was transferred in each of the first two.
- Act No. 373/2011 limits treatment to a woman and a man applying together, with the woman no older than 49. A September 2026 health ministry draft would open it to women without a partner; the labour ministry opposes it.
- Maternity benefit lasts 28 weeks at 70%, paternity benefit 2 weeks. There is no fertility leave.
- A fixed annual allowance can cover drugs, ICSI, frozen transfers, egg freezing and treatment after 40, and keeps the budget predictable.
Why fertility is a business problem for employers
Fertility treatment does not fit around a work calendar. A clinic sets the date of a scan the day before. Egg collection happens when the body is ready, usually about 36 hours after a final trigger injection. Then comes a two-week wait, and for many couples, another cycle. Your team feels it: missed meetings, unexplained absences, a strong performer who suddenly goes quiet.
About 1 in 6 people worldwide are affected by infertility (World Health Organization), and a physician at the Prague clinic ISCARE puts it at 1 in 5 Czech couples, a clinic claim with no published data behind it (ISCARE, June 2024). In Carrot’s 2023 survey of 5,000 people in Canada, India, Mexico, the UK and the US, 79% felt uncomfortable discussing fertility at work (Carrot).
- Resignations. 39% of employees with fertility challenges had left or were considering leaving their job during treatment, in Ferring’s 2025 survey of more than 3,600 employees and employers in Australia, France, Japan, Poland and the UK (Ferring).
- Lower performance. 55% of respondents in the same Carrot survey said fertility challenges had hurt their work performance (Carrot).
- Appointments in work hours. Paid time off for a medical visit covers only the time needed at the nearest facility contracted with the employee’s insurer that can give the care, and only if the visit could not be outside working hours (Government Decree No. 590/2006).
What employers gain
Keep the people you spent the most to develop
Replacing an employee costs one-half to two times their annual salary, according to Gallup. Czech women were about 29.2 on average at their first birth in 2025 (Czech Statistical Office), and 74.2% of women aged 15 to 64 were in the labour force in the second quarter of 2026 (OECD), so treatment often falls in the years when careers build.
Stand out in a tight labour market
73% of employees with fertility challenges would be attracted to an employer offering fertility support, in the same Ferring survey (Ferring). 65% in the Carrot survey said they would change jobs for fertility benefits (Carrot). We found no published example of a Czech employer funding IVF.
Make fertility support financially predictable
Employers can set annual or lifetime allowances and choose which treatments qualify. In 2026, non-cash health benefits are exempt from employee income tax up to CZK 48,967 per employee a year, the average wage (epravo.cz, May 2026).
Zora helps employers structure benefits around local costs and insurance cover, so HR can run the programme within an agreed budget.
Want to see what this would look like for your Czech workforce?
What IVF costs, and what the state pays
Public health insurance pays for basic IVF for women from 22 (18 with both fallopian tubes blocked) until their 40th birthday: 3 cycles with embryo transfer, and a 4th if only one embryo was transferred in each of the first two. The upper limit rose from 39 to 40 on 1 January 2022 (VZP).
| Item | Private price (CZK) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| IVF cycle with stimulation, retrieval and transfer | 39,800 to 40,000 | GYNEM and ISCARE; excludes drugs and laboratory methods |
| IVF laboratory package | 58,800 | GYNEM; includes ICSI, extended culture and assisted hatching |
| Stimulation drugs | 15,000 to 35,000 | Per cycle (Forbes) |
| ICSI | 11,000 to 12,000 | For 2 or more eggs; paid by the patient even in an insured cycle (Forbes) |
| Frozen embryo transfer | 12,900 to 13,000 | Not covered by insurers (Forbes); ISCARE adds 6,000 for thawing |
| Freezing embryos or eggs | 9,000 to 9,500 | Storage 3,000 to 3,500 a year |
| Egg freezing cycle | 34,000 to 35,000 | ISCARE (with 12 months of storage) and Gennet (Forbes); drugs add 15,000 to 25,000 |
| PGT-A genetic testing | 8,000 per embryo | GYNEM adds 12,000 for embryo biopsy |
Sources: GYNEM price list, Prague, from 1 February 2025; ISCARE price list, Prague, from 15 September 2026; Forbes Česko, February 2026. Prices vary by clinic and city.
| Item | Public support (or own savings) | What the employee still carries |
|---|---|---|
| Public health insurance, IVF | Basic services for 3 or 4 cycles, until the 40th birthday | Part of the drug cost, ICSI, freezing, frozen transfers and extended culture |
| Intrauterine insemination | Up to 6 times in a lifetime, outside the IVF limit | Any drug co-payment |
| Women aged 40 to 49 | None | The full private price |
Sources: VZP, updated August 2024; Forbes Česko.
Age is one of the strongest predictors of IVF success. The Czech registry’s 2023 report shows that 2,851 of 11,412 IVF cycles, and 3,995 of 5,663 cycles with donated eggs, were for women aged 40 or over (ÚZIS, National Register of Assisted Reproduction). In Germany’s national registry, the birth rate per fresh embryo transfer in 2023 was 30.9% for women aged 30 to 34, 26.3% at 35 and 9.3% at 41 to 44 (Deutsches IVF-Register).
Insured cycles count only against the woman’s own limit, so a woman who separates after treatment for her partner’s infertility may have no cover left with a new partner (Seznam Zprávy, September 2026). The size of an allowance, and when employees can use it, matter as much as whether you offer one.
Give Employees Access to Fertility Specialists
Help employees navigate fertility care with access to doctors and clinics, treatment information, and clear guidance on IVF, egg freezing and other fertility options. Employees can explore their options privately, without needing to go through HR.
Fertility support that fits your workforce and budget
You do not need to overhaul your existing health insurance to support employees through fertility treatment. Start with awareness and manager education, add confidential one-to-one support, or introduce a funded allowance across your offices. There is no minimum company size.
Where included in the employer programme, eligible employees can use talks and care navigation without paying Zora a separate fee. Care navigation allowances are set in each proposal. Treatment and other third-party costs are paid separately, either by employees or through the fertility allowance their employer provides.
Companies starting the conversation
Essentials
Expert-led talks for employees and managers, fertility and menopause policy templates, manager guides and full access to the Zora app. Up to 2 talks a year.
Employees supported one to one
Navigation
Everything in Essentials, plus confidential one-to-one care navigation and access to our partner clinic network.
Large and multi-country teams
Complete
Everything in Navigation, plus quarterly anonymised reporting, a dedicated account manager and scheduled review meetings with HR.
Optional add-ons can be added to any programme, subject to availability: hormone and fertility diagnostics and telehealth with specialists. Pricing is tailored to your headcount, your countries and the services you choose. Most companies start with a single talk.
Request a proposal See how Zora works for employers
Comparing fertility benefit providers? Use our RFP question bank
Our RFP question bank has 40 questions, with why each one matters, what a good answer looks like and a scoring sheet for three providers. Six of the questions for the Czech Republic:
- Are local-plan employees covered, or only staff on international health plans?
- Do you require an infertility diagnosis before support starts?
- How does the allowance sit alongside public health insurance, so employees use insured cycles first and claim drugs, ICSI, frozen transfers and other extras from the allowance?
- Can employees aged 40 to 49, or those who have used their insured cycles, use the benefit, and how do you apply Act No. 373/2011 to each request?
- Which clinics in Prague, Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň and other cities do you work with, and can the benefit be paid as a non-cash health benefit within the 2026 tax-exempt limit?
- How do you handle health data as special category data under the GDPR and Act No. 110/2019, and what will the employer see?
Your download link appears here as soon as you submit. Zora Health may contact you about employee benefits; see our privacy policy.
Plan your fertility benefit budget
Fertility benefit budget planner
Model the annual claims budget for a fertility allowance. Change any number.
This is a claims budget, not a Zora quotation. Zora’s programme fees, implementation and optional services are separate.
Illustration only. Utilisation is an editable assumption, not observed Zora data. The calculation assumes each user claims their full annual allowance, and excludes programme fees and setup costs. For a tailored model, request an employer proposal.
Estimate the potential workforce impact of fertility challenges
A rough planning scenario. It applies a global infertility estimate to your headcount, so it is not a prediction for your workforce, a measured loss or a forecast of savings from any programme.
Range: CZK 2,706,000 to CZK 7,656,000 a year, depending on replacement cost.
Assumptions: infertility affects about 1 in 6 adults (World Health Organization, 2023), applied to employees aged 25 to 44. Replacing an employee costs one-half to two times their annual salary (Gallup, 2019); the headline uses the low end. Absence is valued at salary divided by 250 working days. Exit rate and days lost are your own assumptions.
This is a hypothetical cost scenario, not a prediction of actual employee departures, an estimate of Zora’s financial impact or a guaranteed saving from fertility benefits.
Already have corporate health insurance? Here is where Zora fits
Your medical plan may cover some consultations and tests, but fertility treatment is often limited or excluded, so check your policy wording. Employees still need to understand their options, the public funding they qualify for and which clinic suits them.
Zora works alongside your existing insurance and benefits. We help employees get reliable information, navigate their care options and reach suitable specialists, and we give HR manager guidance, policy templates and, on the Complete programme, anonymised reporting. You strengthen fertility support without replacing your medical plan.
How Zora works
For your employees
Employees join the Zora app with a company code, or single sign-on for larger teams. They can learn about fertility and egg freezing, understand what your benefit covers, book a confidential care navigation call and find partner clinics and specialists.
For HR
- Kick-off, week 1. Agree goals, countries and which employees are eligible.
- Policy and benefit design, weeks 2 to 4. Draft or update your fertility policy using our templates.
- Launch, typically weeks 4 to 6. A launch talk for employees and managers, plus a communications pack for HR to send.
- Live support. Employees book care navigation calls and use the Zora app.
- Reporting, every 3 months, on the Complete programme. Anonymised usage, common themes and our recommendations, reviewed with your account manager.
Privacy
Employee privacy is central to our programmes. On the Complete programme, routine employer reports contain aggregated engagement and utilisation information, with safeguards to prevent identification of individual employees. On every programme, personal health information is not included in standard HR reporting, and employees can get help without telling their manager. Where eligibility checks or claims administration need individual-level data, access is limited to authorised parties for defined purposes, as agreed in writing before launch. Employee data is handled in line with Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act and the Czech Republic’s application of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Act No. 110/2019 Coll. on personal data processing, which treat health data as special category data.
Clinics and doctors in the Czech Republic
Zora’s clinic and doctor directory does not list providers in the Czech Republic yet. It lists 421 clinics and 1,185 doctors across 25 countries, mostly in Asia Pacific and the Middle East (browse clinics or browse doctors). Employees in the Czech Republic can still use Zora’s education and the Zora app. Ask us how your team in the Czech Republic would use Zora before you launch. See Zora’s employer guides for every country.
Rules and eligibility in the Czech Republic
Who can use assisted reproduction
The Specific Health Services Act allows treatment for an infertile couple: a woman and a man who apply together in writing, with the woman no older than 49. Marriage is not required. Donation is anonymous, egg donors must be 18 to 35 and sperm donors 18 to 40, and donors have no right to payment beyond reasonable, documented expenses (Act text, sections 3, 6, 10 and 11).
Elective freezing is offered, donors are compensated
Clinics offer elective egg freezing, and insurers pay only for cancer patients (ISCARE, 2025). Using the eggs later is IVF, which the Act allows only on the joint request of a woman and a man (section 6). Clinics pay egg donors about CZK 25,000 to 37,000 in expense compensation. A 2025 government bill for a flat CZK 28,000 and a limit of 6 donations per donor was never debated in the Chamber of Deputies before the 2025 election; the ministry said it would resubmit it in the next term (Seznam Zprávy, August 2025). In 2023, foreign women had 46.5% of frozen embryo transfers and 84.6% of cycles with donated eggs (ÚZIS).
Access for women without a partner under debate
A Ministry of Health draft amendment to Act No. 373/2011 would allow assisted reproduction for women without a partner, without public insurance cover on that basis. In the September 2026 comment procedure, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs opposed it and proposed limiting IVF to married couples and social egg freezing to medical cases. The final text may change (Seznam Zprávy, September 2026).
Maternity, paternity and parental support
Maternity benefit runs for 28 weeks, or 37 for twins and more, at 70% of the reduced daily assessment base, starting 8 to 6 weeks before the due date (portal.gov.cz). Since 1 January 2022, paternity benefit lasts 2 weeks, starting within 6 weeks of birth (ČSSZ). For children born from 1 January 2024, parental allowance is up to CZK 350,000 for one child, drawn until the child turns 3 (ČSSZ, May 2024). For children born from 1 January 2027, it rises to CZK 400,000, following a government proposal that the Senate approved on 29 July 2026 (MPSV, July 2026; Finance.cz).
Discrimination and flexible work
The Anti-discrimination Act treats discrimination for pregnancy, maternity or paternity as sex discrimination and covers sexual orientation (Act No. 198/2009). The Labour Code adds marital and family status, and bans notice during pregnancy, maternity and parental leave (Labour Code, sections 16 and 53). Pregnant employees and parents of children under 9 can request remote work, and employers must give written reasons for a refusal (Taylor Wessing).
Surrogacy
Czech law does not regulate or prohibit surrogacy, but paying for a pregnancy, birth or handover of a child is a crime carrying up to three years’ imprisonment, and surrogacy contracts are invalid, so paid arrangements are unlawful (Portal of Public Administration). The woman who gives birth is the legal mother, so intended parents must adopt. A 2024 Justice Ministry plan for court-approved altruistic surrogacy has not become law (Radio Prague International, 2024).
Why employers choose Zora
Companies including Hilton, LinkedIn, Sanofi, HSBC, Mastercard, Carousell and Singapore Management University work with Zora Health. We work alongside your existing insurance, helping employees use the cover they already have and find suitable specialists based on their needs.
Trying to conceive with a heavy workload took a toll on my husband and me. It helped us understand our options.
Questions HR teams ask us
Is fertility leave mandatory in the Czech Republic?
No. Czech law has no fertility leave. Employees get paid time off for a medical examination only for the time it would take at the nearest facility contracted with their insurer, so longer clinic visits depend on the employer’s policy or the employee’s own leave. Once an employee is pregnant, the Labour Code bans notice of dismissal, and maternity benefit lasts 28 weeks.
Does public health insurance pay for IVF in the Czech Republic?
Yes, for basic services. Insurers cover 3 IVF cycles with embryo transfer, or 4 if only one embryo was transferred in each of the first two, for women from 22 (18 with both tubes blocked) until their 40th birthday, plus up to 6 inseminations. Patients still pay part of the drug cost and for ICSI, freezing, frozen embryo transfers and other added methods.
Can employees freeze their eggs in the Czech Republic?
Yes. Prague clinics charge about CZK 34,000 to 35,000 per elective egg freezing cycle, plus drugs and annual storage, and insurers pay only for cancer patients. Using the eggs later is IVF, which current law allows only on the joint request of a woman and a man, with the woman no older than 49.
Does Zora replace our health insurance?
No. Zora works alongside your insurance. We help employees understand their options, find suitable specialists and use the cover they already have.
How much does a fertility benefit cost an employer?
It depends on the allowance, eligibility and expected uptake. Use the budget planner on this page for a first estimate, then ask us for a tailored proposal based on your headcount and countries.
How quickly can we launch?
Typically 4 to 6 weeks from contract to launch, depending on scope and countries. Most companies start with a single talk.
Related guides for Czech employers
Build a fertility benefit for your team
Whether you are introducing fertility benefits for the first time or improving an existing programme, tell us your headcount, countries and priorities. We will come back within two working days with suitable services, an indicative budget and a practical rollout plan for your Czech team. No obligation.
Not ready to talk yet? Explore how Zora works
Sources
- Czech Statistical Office, Počet narozených byl loni nejnižší za posledních 240 let, March 2026
- ÚZIS, Asistovaná reprodukce: proměny v čase, October 2025
- ÚZIS, Asistovaná reprodukce v ČR 2021 to 2023 (National Register of Assisted Reproduction)
- VZP, Podmínky pro umělé oplodnění od roku 2022, updated August 2024
- Forbes Česko, Cizince láká, ale pro Čechy je drahé: na kolik vyjde umělé oplodnění, February 2026
- GYNEM, IVF price list, valid from 1 February 2025
- ISCARE, Ceník IVF, valid from 15 September 2026
- ISCARE, Social freezing krok za krokem, 2025
- ISCARE, Asistovaná reprodukce v číslech, June 2024
- Zákon č. 373/2011 Sb., o specifických zdravotních službách (MPSV legal portal)
- Seznam Zprávy, Šest darovaných vajíček a dost, August 2025
- Seznam Zprávy, Juchelkovo ministerstvo chce umělé oplodnění jen pro manžele, September 2026
- ČSSZ and Úřad práce ČR, Příručka pro nastávající rodiče, May 2024
- portal.gov.cz, Peněžitá pomoc v mateřství
- ČSSZ, Změny v otcovské a dlouhodobém ošetřovném od 1. 1. 2022
- Nařízení vlády č. 590/2006 Sb. (epravo.cz)
- Zákon č. 198/2009 Sb., antidiskriminační zákon (Zákony pro lidi)
- Zákon č. 262/2006 Sb., zákoník práce (Zákony pro lidi)
- Taylor Wessing, Work-life balance since the Labour Code amendment, February 2024
- epravo.cz, Zaměstnanecké benefity dle § 6 odst. 9 písm. d) ZDP v roce 2026, May 2026
- OECD via FRED, Labor force participation rate, female, 15 to 64, Czechia
- Deutsches IVF-Register, Jahrbuch 2024, edition for couples
- General Data Protection Regulation, Article 9
- MPSV, Government approves raising parental allowance to CZK 400,000
- Finance.cz, Parental allowance to rise to CZK 400,000, MPs approve
- Portal of Public Administration (portal.gov.cz), Surrogacy
- Radio Prague International, Surrogacy to be included in Czech law, Justice Minister Blažek proposes, September 2024
- MPSV, Senát schválil zvýšení rodičovského příspěvku na 400 000 korun, 29 July 2026
- Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Fertility Matters at Work and This Can Happen, workplace fertility survey, November 2025
- Carrot Fertility, Global Fertility at Work report, 2023
- Gallup, This fixable problem costs US businesses $1 trillion, 2019
- World Health Organization, 1 in 6 people globally affected by infertility, April 2023
Information on this page is correct as of 5 November 2026. Laws, public funding, insurance rules and treatment costs change often, so check current rules with the relevant authority, insurer or a qualified adviser before making decisions. This page is general information, not legal, financial, tax or medical advice.