Employers initiated a zero bureaucracy project to simplify hiring foreign employees

Estonian Employers’ Confederation is inviting employers who have hired foreign employees and foreigners already working in Estonia to send it their experiences, problems and obstacles in relation to bureaucracy. It is also welcoming ideas on simplifying the working and settling of foreigners in Estonia both from the legal and the organisational viewpoints.

Based on the information gathered, the Confederation will develop specific proposals and submit these to the Government and other institutions that have the competency to reduce the bureaucracy relating to the foreign workforce.

Free-form stories on the experiences and suggestions are expected until 20 September in Estonian, English or Russian at the e-mail address liisi@employers.ee.
According to Toomas Tamsar, the head of the Estonian Employers’ Confederation, Estonia has become more attractive in recent years to employees from abroad, and the government has also slowly but steadily simplified hiring foreigners by relieving the Aliens Act.

“However, both the employers and the employees find themselves in a tangle of unexpected obstacles and red tape all too often, especially when they have no prior experience in hiring from abroad. Reviewing the entire process and making it smoother is what we aim to do,” Tamsar explained. “People coming to work in Estonia should feel necessary and welcome. This is why we started our zero bureaucracy project on foreigners.”

The Estonian Employers’ Confederation has made the issue of the foreign workforce one of its priorities as it sees it as an opportunity to alleviate the ever increasing shortage of labour supply. The amount of workforce, that is the number of taxpayers, is decreasing in Estonia at an increasingly rapid pace due to low birth rate, ageing population and continuously high emigration. The shortage of workforce, however, increasingly influences the entrepreneurs who are unable to extend their operations and thus leave Estonia altogether. The diminishing tax base will make it difficult in the future to maintain the quality of state-financed public services like education, medicine, social security, infrastructure, etc.

The Estonian Employers’ Confederation brings together most of the important Estonian employers that provide jobs to a total of almost 150 000 people. The Estonian Employers’ Confederation is the only business organisation acknowledged as a social partner in Estonia.