Health
To make people as productive as possible at work, to reduce their sickness levels and thus help them stay longer in the labour market, their health needs to be taken care of. Every day of sickness reduces the creation of added value and reduces both national tax revenues and people’s own incomes. In short, everyone loses out – the worker, the employer and the wider Estonian state.
In the light of the labour shortages that increasingly plague the Estonian economy, workers’ health and the lowest possible number of sick days are vital. Therefore, creating a healthy work environment and increasing the contribution of all labour market actors to ensuring good health is critical.
Focus topics in the Employers’ Working Party on Health:
- Sustainable care through a smart medical system:
- ensuring free movement of patients, i.e. encouraging competition;
- measure and finance health outcomes, not activities and inputs;
- additional resources from both workers and employers can be mobilised through private insurance;
- tax exemptions must be applied to the employer’s medical expenses and tax relief to the employees’ own medical expenses.
- Extending healthy life years and reducing sick days:
- The actions in the PHP must also take into account the suggestions and opportunities of employers.
- People need to be given more rights, and also more responsibility, to look after their own health.
Want to get involved and contribute to the Health Task Force? Let our Task Force Coordinator know!
Piia provides legal advice to the Employers “Confederation and its governing bodies and participates in the drafting of legislation affecting its members. Piia coordinates the work of the Estonian Employers” Confederation’s labour market and health working groups. As a representative of the Confederation of Estonian Employers, she is a member of the Board of the Estonian Standards Centre, a member of the Advisory Committee on Freedom of Movement for Workers of the European Union, an alternate member of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work and the European Advisory Committee on Safety and Health at Work. Previously, Piia has worked in the International Law Department of the Ministry of Justice and for a long time as General Counsel of a large infrastructure management and transport company. Piia graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Tartu. In her free time she enjoys all kinds of exercise (from yoga to boxing), studying medical literature and watching motorsport.
Piia Zimmermann
Legal Counsel
+372 699 9306