- Labour legislation
- Employment contract and employment relationship
- Working time and annual holiday
- Improving and maintaining employees’ competence
- Non-discrimination and equality in working life
- Protection of privacy at work and working with children
- Co-operation procedure and other personnel representation systems
- Key points of the Co-operation Act
- Negotiation obligation
- Content and timing of negotiation obligation
- Duty to inform representatives of personnel groups
- Undertaking’s general plans, principles and objectives
- Personnel and training plan
- Matters to be handled in the co-operation procedure
- Co-operation procedure when the use of personnel is reduced
- Confidentiality and sanctions
- Co-operation within a Finnish group of undertakings
- Co-operation within a community-wide group of undertakings and an undertaking
- Employee Involvement in European Companies (SE) and European Cooperative Societies (SCE)
- Personnel funds
- Key points of the Co-operation Act
- Collective agreements and mediation in labour disputes
- Contractor’s obligations and liability
- Employee’s position if employer becomes insolvent
- Working life development
- Integration of immigrants
- Employment
- Support and compensations
- Employment Bulletin and Employment Service Statistics
Improving and maintaining employees’ competence
Study leave
An employer may take study leave to participate in studies subject to public supervision in Finland or abroad. All employees are entitled to study leave when the full-time employment relationship with the same employer has lasted for at least one year in one or more periods.
The maximum length of study leave in the same employer’s service is two years over a period of five years. If the employment has lasted for less than a year but at least three months, the maximum length of study leave is five days.
Study leave and the prerequisites for using the leave are laid down in the Study Leave Act and Study Leave Decree.
Further information:
Law drafting: Seija Jalkanen, seija.jalkanen(at)tem.fi
Financially-supported development of employee's professional skills
Under the Employment Contracts Act, an employer is obligated to see to maintaining and improving the competence of personnel in an employment relationship so that they can perform their work even when the operation of the enterprise, the work task or working methods change.
The employer is also obligated to arrange training for temporarily laid-off employees and employees who are offered other work as an alternative to termination, if training is necessary for accepting the new assignment.
When arranging training to improve professional competence for employees in employment relationships, the employer may receive financial support. The financial support and prerequisites for receiving the support is laid down in the Act on Financially-Supported Development of Professional Skills.
Further information:
Law drafting: Nico Steiner, nico.steiner(at)tem.fi
Guidance and supervision of labour legislation: Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha)
Job alternation leave and compensation
Job alternation leave provides
- employees with an opportunity to improve their coping at work
- unemployed jobseekers with a chance to gain work experience and to maintain and improve their labour market skills
- employers with more flexibility and an opportunity to introduce new skills into the work community.
An employee’s job alternation leave is subject to an agreement between the employer and the employee. The employee can use the leave as he or she sees fit. During the job alternation leave, the employee’s employment relationship is dormant.
The employer must hire a substitute for the duration of the job alternation leave. Only a person registered as an unemployed jobseeker in an Employment and Economic Development Office (TE Office) may be hired.
The employee taking the job alternation leave receives a job alternation compensation for the duration of the leave. The compensation is paid by an unemployment fund or the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela).
More detailed information concerning the conditions for job alternation leave is available from the TE Office, unemployment funds and Kela.
Related websites
- Study Leave Act
- Employment Fund
- Act on Financially-Supported Development on Professional Skills
- Act on Compensations for Training
- The Unemployment Insurance Fund: Training compensation
- Employment and Economic Development Services (TE Services), Job alternation leave
- Unemployment funds (tyj.fi), Job alternation leave
- Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela), Job alternation compensation