Zora Health / Employer guide / Spain
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 Spanish HR leaders should know
- Spain’s total fertility rate was 1.10 children per woman in 2024, and births rose about 1% to an estimated 321,164 in 2025, a provisional figure (INE).
- About 1 in 10 births in Spain in 2023 came from assisted reproduction: 39,555 babies from 168,372 IVF cycles (Ministry of Health and SEF registry).
- The public health system (SNS) funds up to 3 IVF cycles for women under 40 and up to 4 inseminations with a partner’s sperm under 38, for people without a healthy child. Single and lesbian women have qualified since November 2021.
- Royal Decree-law 9/2025 gives each parent 19 weeks of paid birth and childcare leave, or 32 weeks in single-parent families, from 31 July 2025. Spain has no statutory fertility leave.
- A fixed annual allowance for what the SNS leaves out, such as treatment after 40 or elective egg freezing, keeps the employer’s 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.
The World Health Organization estimates that about 1 in 6 people worldwide are affected by infertility. We found no Spanish survey on how many employees keep treatment from their employer.
- Resignations. 39% of employees in Ferring‘s 2025 survey of more than 3,600 people in Australia, France, Japan, Poland and the UK had left or were considering leaving their job during fertility treatment.
- Lower performance. 36% in the same survey felt pressure from their employer to be at work during treatment, and 17% took sick leave because they lacked flexibility.
- Waiting lists. In December 2024 the average wait for public IVF in Catalonia was 274 days, with about 3,000 people on the list, according to press reports (Ara, December 2024).
- Uneven access. Criteria vary by region and hospital (reproduccionasistida.org, December 2025). In November 2023 Andalusia’s health department accepted the Ombudsman’s recommendation to assess each woman in a same-sex couple on her own criteria, after it refused a woman whose partner had already had public treatment (Defensor del Pueblo).
What employers gain
Keep the people you spent the most to develop
Replacing an employee costs one-half to two times their annual salary (Gallup). The mean age of mothers in Spain was 32.61 in 2024 (INE) and public IVF stops at 40, so treatment often coincides with moves into senior roles. A written policy, paid time off and a funded allowance remove some of the reasons people leave.
Stand out to skilled candidates
73% of employees with fertility challenges in the Ferring survey said a role with fertility support would attract them, and 65% of the 5,000 people in Carrot’s 2023 survey (Canada, India, Mexico, the UK and the US) said they would change jobs for fertility benefits. Companies in Spain with 50 or more employees must negotiate and register an equality plan (Royal Decree-law 6/2019), and a fertility policy can sit within it.
Make fertility support financially predictable
Employers can set annual or lifetime allowances and decide which treatments qualify. Zora helps structure benefits around local costs, SNS rules and workforce needs, within an agreed budget.
Want to see what this would look like for your Spanish workforce?
What IVF costs, and what the state pays
The SNS funds IVF with own eggs for women under 40 when treatment is indicated, up to 3 stimulated cycles, and insemination with a partner’s sperm under 38, up to 4 cycles. Applicants must have no healthy child, or for couples no shared healthy child (Ministry of Health, Orden SSI/2065/2014). One patient information site puts the average public wait for IVF at about a year (reproduccionasistida.org, December 2025). In a resolution signed on 6 February 2026, the Valencian regional ombudsman recorded the hospital’s own figures: a 20-month IVF waiting list at Hospital Clínico Universitario de Valencia, against 8 months at La Fe (Síndic de Greuges de la Comunitat Valenciana, complaint 2504214).
| Item | Typical private cost (€) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Insemination with partner’s sperm | 700 to 1,100 | Medication about 300 to 600 extra |
| IVF or ICSI with own eggs, one cycle | 3,500 to 5,500; from 5,725 at Eugin | Medication about 600 to 1,200 extra |
| IVF with donor eggs | 6,500 to 9,000 | Exclusive donation; shared donation is cheaper |
| Egg freezing, one cycle | 2,500 to 4,000; 2,695 at Institut Marquès | Medication about 1,000; storage 300 to 400 a year; the Institut Marquès price includes 2 years of storage |
Sources: reproduccionasistida.org, treatment prices, updated 23 January 2026; Eugin price page, updated 15 October 2026; Institut Marquès price page, consulted November 2026. Clinic prices exclude medication.
| Item | Public support (or own savings) | What the employee still carries |
|---|---|---|
| IVF with own eggs | SNS funding under 40, up to 3 stimulated cycles | The wait, medication co-payment, time off |
| Treatment with donor sperm | SNS funding under 40, including for single and lesbian women; up to 6 inseminations and 3 IVF cycles | The wait and time off |
| IVF with donor eggs | Under 40 only for set medical reasons, such as ovarian failure before 36, and rarely done in public hospitals because donors are scarce | Usually the full private price of 6,500 to 9,000 |
| Treatment at 40 or over, or with a shared healthy child | None; own savings (not a subsidy) | The full private price |
| Elective egg freezing | None; the SNS funds it only on medical indication | 2,500 to 4,000 a cycle plus yearly storage |
| Tax relief | We found no national tax relief for fertility treatment | Not applicable |
Sources: Ministry of Health, SNS assisted reproduction portfolio (Orden SSI/2065/2014); Orden SND/1215/2021, BOE, 9 November 2021; reproduccionasistida.org, December 2025. Criteria and waits vary by region and hospital.
Age is one of the strongest predictors of IVF success. In Spain’s 2023 national registry, for IVF or ICSI with fresh own eggs, the delivery rate per embryo transfer was 33.1% under 35, 25.6% at 35 to 39 and 13.4% at 40 or over. The estimated cumulative pregnancy rate per cycle, including frozen transfers, was 43.5%, 33.9% and 18.1% (SEF registry, 2023 data).
An employee who joins the public list at 38 may get only one or two funded attempts before 40, so the size of an allowance, and when it can be used, matter as much as offering 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 Spain:
- Are local-plan employees covered, or only staff on international health plans?
- Do you require an infertility diagnosis before support starts?
- Which private clinics in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and other cities can employees use, and how do you check their prices and registry results?
- How does the allowance work alongside SNS funding, for example while an employee is on a public waiting list, after the 40th birthday or after 3 public IVF cycles?
- How do you support single women, lesbian couples and employees using donor eggs or sperm under Law 14/2006?
- How is employee health data handled under the GDPR and the LOPDGDD as special category data, and what does 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: €150,333 to €425,333 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 Spain’s application of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Organic Law 3/2018 on data protection (LOPDGDD), under which health data is special category data.
Clinics and doctors in Spain
Zora’s clinic and doctor directory does not list providers in Spain 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 Spain can still use Zora’s education and the Zora app. Ask us how your team in Spain would use Zora before you launch. See Zora’s employer guides for every country.
Rules and eligibility in Spain
Who can use assisted reproduction
Any woman over 18 with full legal capacity can receive treatment, regardless of her marital status or sexual orientation. Egg and sperm donation is anonymous and may not be commercial; donors receive only compensation for inconvenience and expenses, and no more than 6 children born in Spain may come from one donor. Surrogacy contracts are void, and the woman who gives birth is the legal mother (Law 14/2006, BOE).
Public cover for single women and lesbian couples
Since 10 November 2021 the SNS has covered women without a partner, lesbian women and trans people who can gestate. The woman must be under 40 and the man under 55 when the study begins (BOE, November 2021).
Legal privately, publicly funded only for medical reasons
Law 14/2006 lets eggs be frozen and kept until doctors judge the woman no longer clinically suitable for treatment, with no age limit for freezing (Law 14/2006, article 11). The SNS pays only on medical indication, such as before gonadotoxic treatment (Orden SND/1215/2021). In April 2026 Congress voted by 306 votes to take into consideration a PSOE bill amending Law 14/2006 that would let a woman end the storage of her frozen eggs on her own stated wish, without medical reports, and would set her lifetime as the maximum storage period; it is not yet law (Menorca.info, April 2026; Vida Fertility).
19 weeks of leave for each parent
Since 31 July 2025, each parent has 19 weeks of birth and childcare leave, and single-parent families have 32. The first 6 weeks follow the birth full-time; 11 can be used until the child is 12 months old and 2 until age 8. Social Security pays 100% of the regulatory base. Parents of children born from 2 August 2024 can claim the extra childcare weeks. Congress validated the decree in September 2025 (BOE, July 2025, BOE, September 2025, Social Security). Spain has no statutory leave for fertility treatment.
Flexible work and discrimination protection
Employees can ask to adapt their hours or work remotely to care for children up to 12, and a refusal needs objective reasons (Royal Decree-law 6/2019). Royal Decree-law 5/2023 added paid time off of up to 4 days a year for urgent family reasons and up to 8 weeks of unpaid, non-transferable parental leave until the child turns 8 (BOE, June 2023). Law 15/2022 bans workplace discrimination on grounds including sex, sexual orientation and health, and bars employers from asking applicants about their health (Law 15/2022). The Workers’ Statute also protects marital status (Estatuto de los Trabajadores, article 17).
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 Spain?
No. Spain has no statutory fertility leave. Since 31 July 2025, each parent has 19 weeks of paid birth and childcare leave, or 32 weeks in a single-parent family, and employees can ask to adapt their working hours. Time off for treatment appointments depends on collective agreements and company policy.
Does the public health system pay for IVF in Spain?
Yes, within limits. The SNS funds IVF for women under 40, with up to 3 stimulated cycles, and insemination with a partner’s sperm under 38, with up to 4 cycles, for people with no previous healthy child. Single women, lesbian women and trans people who can gestate have been eligible since November 2021. Waits for IVF are often about a year, and in February 2026 the Valencian regional ombudsman recorded a 20-month list at one Valencia hospital. Criteria vary by region.
Can employees freeze their eggs in Spain?
Yes. Egg freezing is legal at private clinics and the law sets no age limit for it. The SNS pays only when there is a medical reason, such as cancer treatment. A private cycle typically costs 2,500 to 4,000 euros plus about 1,000 euros of medication and 300 to 400 euros a year in storage.
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 Spanish 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 Spanish team. No obligation.
Not ready to talk yet? Explore how Zora works
Sources
- INE, Movimiento Natural de la Población, Indicadores Demográficos Básicos 2024, November 2025
- INE, Estimación Mensual de Nacimientos, provisional 2025 data, February 2026
- Funcas, Focus on Spanish Society, press release, May 2026
- Sociedad Española de Fertilidad, Registro Nacional de Actividad 2023, IVF and insemination report
- Sociedad Española de Fertilidad and Ministry of Health, Registro Nacional de Actividad 2023 press release, December 2025
- Sociedad Española de Fertilidad, online magazine, April 2026
- El Independiente, Uno de cada diez españoles nace por reproducción asistida, December 2025
- Ministry of Health, SNS common service portfolio for assisted reproduction (Orden SSI/2065/2014)
- Orden SND/1215/2021, BOE, 9 November 2021
- reproduccionasistida.org, Reproducción asistida en la Seguridad Social española, updated December 2025
- reproduccionasistida.org, Precios de tratamientos de reproducción asistida, updated January 2026
- Ara, waiting list for IVF in Catalonia, December 2024
- Defensor del Pueblo, Acceso a la aplicación de tratamientos de reproducción asistida, November 2023
- Law 14/2006 on assisted human reproduction techniques, consolidated text, BOE
- Royal Decree-law 9/2025 extending birth and childcare leave, BOE, 30 July 2025
- Resolution of 9 September 2025 on the Congress validation of Royal Decree-law 9/2025, BOE
- Seguridad Social, Nacimiento y cuidado de menor
- Royal Decree-law 6/2019 on equal treatment and opportunities in employment, BOE
- Royal Decree-law 5/2023, BOE, 29 June 2023
- Law 15/2022 on equal treatment and non-discrimination, BOE
- Estatuto de los Trabajadores, consolidated text, BOE
- Organic Law 3/2018 on data protection and digital rights (LOPDGDD), BOE
- Síndic de Greuges de la Comunitat Valenciana, resolution on complaint 2504214, Hospital Clínico Universitario de Valencia, 6 February 2026
- Eugin, Precios de tratamientos, updated 15 October 2026
- Institut Marquès, Treatments costs, consulted November 2026
- Menorca.info, El Gobierno cambia las normas: las mujeres podrán decidir cuándo destruir sus óvulos congelados, April 2026
- Vida Fertility, Change to the assisted reproduction law on frozen eggs, 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.