I want to develop the skills of my staff

There are many ways to broaden the competence of your employees. As an employer, you can offer your employees various courses or training and coaching sessions. You can also support employees' own studies. Job rotation also offers an opportunity to develop the expertise of your staff. It means that the employee is transferred to work on other tasks within the organisation for a fixed period. In addition to learning new tasks, the employee's knowledge of the organisation's activities is expanded.

For your organization to succeed, it is essential that you encourage your employees to learn new things. Encouraging your employees to have discussions together and share their experiences improves their sense of belonging there and they can learn from each other as well. As an employer, you can create an atmosphere that encourages everyone to learn new things.

Joint purchase training

You can get help with improving your staff’s expertise from the TE Services. Joint purchase training enables you to train your current or new employees in cooperation with TE Services. TE Services provide help in organising training, and as an employer, you participate in funding the training and student admissions. New or current entrepreneurs as well as temporary agency workers working in the company can also participate in the training.

Read more about joint purchase training on the ELY Centre’s website.

Finnish and Swedish at the workplace

Workplace Finnish Training and Workplace Swedish Training are training programmes aimed at promoting the ability of staff with a foreign background to cope with their everyday tasks in either Finnish or Swedish. The trainings will be tailored to the needs of your organisation and the trainees, and they can be implemented in the form of TäsmäKoulutus (Targeted Training), RekryKoulutus (Recruitment Training) and MuutosKoulutus (Change Training).

Are people feeling well in your work community? The values and operating environment of the organisation and its management affect the well-being of the work community and individual employees.

As an employer, it is your responsibility to take care of occupational safety. To ensure employee well-being at your workplace, anticipate potential problems, set clear goals, and build trust. Also make sure that management works, and that you treat employees equally. When you manage them fairly, openly, and with encouragement, you improve the well-being of your work community, and your employees can succeed better in their work.

What can you do as an employer?

• Be flexible whenever possible.   
• Make clear agreements with your employees on objectives and roles.  
• Provide your employees opportunities for developing their expertise, and encourage them to learn new things.
• Make sure that your work community follows the instructions and that it is easy and safe for your employees to report faults and deficiencies.
• Treat each of your employees equally.

You can ask the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for advice and instructions on matters related to health, safety, and terms of employment in the workplace. In addition to this, you must notify occupational health and safety of certain dangerous jobs, confirmed occupational diseases and serious work accidents.

Maintaining work ability at the workplace

If you notice that your employee's work ability has deteriorated or the sick leave limit (more than 90 days) is exceeded, it is your responsibility to raise the issue and discuss it with your employee.

You can have an early support conversation with your employee to find solutions to support their work ability. It is a good idea to continue discussing the situation in the occupational health discussions, which will be carried out together with occupational health care. If you notice reductions in work performance that you cannot fix by your own means at the workplace, you can guide your employee not only to the occupational health discussions but also to an assessment of their ability to work.

As an employer, you are obliged to provide at least preventive occupational health care services for each employee in an employment or public service relationship. You can purchase these services from a public or private service provider or arrange them yourself. It is also recommended that you get occupational health care when you are an entrepreneur, even if it is not compulsory.

Occupational health care works in cooperation with your organisation to promote the health and work ability of your employees at all stages of their careers. Support for work ability is based on the practices agreed upon in your work community. The practices agreed between management, HR management, employees and occupational health care services are recorded in the workplace's work ability support model.

If your employee's illness or disability prevents them from working, you can make adjustments at your workplace. Adjustments refer to changes at work in which the job description is modified to better correspond to and support your employee's expertise and work ability.

If your new or current employee has a disability or illness and coping with work tasks requires, for example, the purchase of tools or changes made at the workplace, you can apply for a subsidy for arranging working conditions from the TE Office or the local government employment pilot.

Rehabilitation may help your employee when the disability or illness complicates their work or coping at different stages of life.

From working life to family leave and back

‘From working life to family leave and back – family leave guide for employers’ contains information that you can use as an employer to facilitate the reconciliation of work and family in your work community and to promote the well-being of the entire work community.

The guide summarizes the key issues regarding family leave, the law regarding which was renewed on August 1, 2022. It tells you what you should consider before the employee's family leave, during it, and when the employee returns to work from the leave. 

When you are looking for special skills for your organisation, finding the right employee can be difficult. Take your time to think about what kind of skills are necessary for success at work and what skills you can be flexible about if necessary. Make a job posting carefully to ensure the best possible recruitment. Be prepared to not find a suitable employee in an instant. Instead of ready-made expertise, you can emphasise a readiness to learn and acquire new skills in the recruitment.

The following tips may be useful when recruiting people with special skills:

• Keep the list of requirements at an appropriate length. Too long a list can drive away good applicants. In a large group of candidates, you are most likely to find a skilled and committed employee.
• Ensure that the recruitment process is a smooth and pleasant experience for the candidates. A lengthy process can deter good applicants. Currently, in some sectors, there is a labour shortage, which has made the recruitment process speedier in general.
• Also see the potential in younger job seekers. You may find an employee among them who is willing to develop their professional skills.

You can search for a specialist in a particular field when you log in to Job Market Finland. You can create a job posting or browse the profiles published by job seekers by using different search criteria.

If you cannot find a suitable employee, you can, for example, train a specialist to meet the needs of your organisation, commission work from an entrepreneur, or look for a suitable person abroad.