The same pattern can be seen in many workplaces as the summer holiday season approaches. Calendars fill up, unfinished matters are cleared from desks, and responsibilities are only resolved at the last minute. The thinking is understandable, but if the situation is managed poorly, the consequences quickly become visible in the form of excessive workload, an increased risk of errors and unnecessary bottlenecks. From a company’s perspective, effective holiday planning is not merely a soft employee benefit. It is a practical way to manage work in a more controlled manner.
Workplaces often make the same mistake in the run-up to the summer holidays. The assumption is that everyone should make one final push to complete as much as possible before going on leave. In practice, this means full calendars, delayed arrangements for substitutes, rushed decisions and employees starting their holidays only after their workload has already become excessive.
In most cases, however, the holiday is not the problem. The problem is how the work has been managed during the spring.
For a company, this is not only a question of employee wellbeing. It is also a matter of management, risk management and business continuity. If holidays are not planned in good time, decision-making slows down, responsibilities become unclear and the same key individuals continue to be relied upon even when they should be away from work and recovering.
A holiday cannot fix structural workload problems from the spring
The summer holiday provides an important opportunity for recovery, but the entire management model for the spring should not be built around it. The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health has emphasised that recovery cannot be saved up for a holiday. Employees need opportunities to detach themselves from work, take breaks, rest and get enough sleep throughout the year, not only in July. According to the Institute, the positive effects of a holiday on wellbeing also tend to be relatively short-lived.
It is therefore not particularly sustainable to assume that employees can stretch themselves further during the spring because they will be able to rest in the summer. If the volume of work, allocation of responsibilities, division of duties or decision-making practices are already causing excessive strain before the holiday season, a holiday may provide temporary relief, but it will not remove the underlying cause.
In day-to-day work, excessive strain rarely results solely from having too much work. It is often intensified by changing priorities, unclear responsibilities, constant interruptions and decisions being expected at too low a level within the organisation. When these factors accumulate just before a holiday, employees do not only take a sense of urgency with them. They also carry unfinished matters and uncertainty. As a result, recovery does not begin immediately at the start of the holiday, but only after a delay.
Why is this also a legal issue?
Under the Finnish Occupational Safety and Health Act, an employer’s obligations are not limited to physical hazards. Employers must identify and assess risks and hazards arising from the work, working hours, work arrangements and working environment. This obligation also covers workload factors. If an employee is found to be experiencing a workload that endangers their health, the employer must use the means available to investigate the situation and reduce the risk.
In practice, this means that psychosocial workload also falls within the employer’s area of responsibility.
Time pressure, unclear responsibilities, an unmanageable workload, constant interruptions and inadequate prioritisation are not merely side issues in working life. They may create excessive strain that the employer is required to address. This does not mean that work may never involve demanding periods. What matters is the overall situation. If signs of excessive workload recur, the volume of work is unrealistic or tasks are routinely completed by employees constantly stretching beyond reasonable limits, the situation can no longer be regarded as a temporary peak. The employer must then assess what changes are needed in the allocation of work, resourcing, schedules or management practices.
For this reason, excessive workload before the holiday season should not be addressed solely through discussions about wellbeing. For the company, it is simultaneously an employment law, operational and financial issue.
Annual holidays must be planned in advance
The same principle is reflected in the Finnish Annual Holidays Act. As a general rule, the employer must notify the employee of the timing of their annual holiday no later than one month before the holiday begins. If this is not possible, the notice must be given no later than two weeks before the holiday. The structure of the legislation makes the underlying principle clear. Holidays are intended to be based on advance planning, not last-minute improvisation. Under the Annual Holidays Act, the holiday season runs from 2 May to 30 September.
If responsibilities, substitute arrangements, approval processes or customer-facing practices for the summer are still unresolved immediately before the holiday season, the holiday is usually not the problem. The problem is that the organisation has not prepared for a foreseeable period of absence sufficiently early.
The consequences often become visible quickly. Decision-making slows down, important matters become congested at the wrong time, and employees who were supposed to be away from work are contacted during their holidays. At worst, this creates an operating model in which the organisation is nominally on holiday but, in practice, still relies on the same key individuals.
What should employers do before the holiday season?
The first task is to prioritise genuinely. Many organisations talk extensively about prioritisation, while the practical message remains that everything should ideally be completed before the holidays. This is precisely what drives employees into an unreasonable final push.
Management should communicate three matters clearly: what genuinely needs to be completed before the holiday season, what can be postponed until the autumn and what will not be done at all. This often reduces workload more effectively than any general reminder about the importance of recovery, because employees are also given permission to focus on what truly matters.
The second task is to treat holiday planning as a resourcing issue, rather than merely a scheduling exercise. Who will be responsible for customers, contracts, approvals and urgent exceptional situations? Who will make decisions while the responsible person is absent? Who will act as a substitute, and is that arrangement genuinely workable in practice?
The third task is to agree in advance on the rules concerning availability. In which situations may an employee on holiday be contacted, and in which situations should they not be contacted? If this is not resolved beforehand, the organisation may easily shift the consequences of its own inadequate planning onto individual employees and expect them to remain flexible during their holidays.
The fourth task is to take signs of excessive workload seriously before they result in sickness absences, key-person risks or employees considering leaving the organisation. If the workload is not manageable, the problem cannot be solved merely by reminding employees to take breaks or recover. The organisation must examine the volume and allocation of work, schedules, decision-making practices and the actual ability of supervisors to manage the situation.
Ultimately, the management team should ask itself a simple question: has the organisation genuinely decided what needs to be completed before the holidays and what does not? If management does not make this prioritisation, it will in practice be carried out through employees stretching themselves. That is an expensive way to manage an organisation.
A successful summer holiday is built before it begins
From the company’s perspective, the most important lesson is simple. The summer holiday is an employee’s right and an important period of recovery, but it is not a tool for compensating for a structurally excessive workload during the spring.
At its best, managing workload before the holiday season produces results quickly. Employees do not take unfinished chaos with them on holiday. Supervisors are not left alone to compensate for shortcomings in the organisation’s systems. Employees are genuinely less available during their holidays, not only on paper. The autumn begins in a more controlled manner because the work has already been organised more effectively.
A successful summer holiday does not happen by chance. It is built by deciding in good time what is essential, what can be postponed and how employees will be given a genuine opportunity to detach themselves from work. When an organisation succeeds in this, employees are more likely to return from their holidays rested, capable and ready to get back to work. The benefits usually become visible quickly in the smooth running of work, the quality of decision-making and the overall energy of the business.
Satu Edberg
HR- ja toimistopäällikkö
+358 40 531 1542
As I write this article, I notice myself returning to the same thought again and again. Should I add disclaimers? Those just-in-case paragraphs in which I explain in advance what I do not mean before I dare to say what I actually mean. That this is not an argument against taking discrimination, racism, harassment or other serious misconduct seriously. There can and should be no compromise on those issues. Yet this very need for caution feels like an essential part of the phenomenon that inspired this article. If every discussion must begin with a pre-emptive explanation, we are already quite far into a world in which evaluating shared structures is easily perceived as an attack on an individual’s experience.
The tension between individuality and community
The idea for this article arose from Liisa Keltikangas-Järvinen’s recently published book Itsekkyyden aika, or The Age of Selfishness. The book is not about working life or HR, but it provides language for a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly visible in workplaces. Individuality has long represented freedom, opportunities and rights. Gradually, it has also begun to turn into a demand. Everyone is expected to listen closely to themselves, avoid discomfort and refuse to compromise. The result is paradoxical. Shared norms used to feel restrictive, but now excessive individualism has become the source of pressure.
In working life, this can be seen in situations where shared rules are readily perceived as restrictions and an individual’s experience increasingly becomes the starting point for demanding an immediate external solution. At the same time, HR is expected to demonstrate both understanding and firmness, react quickly while following a careful process, and combine situational awareness with equal treatment. Because HR operates within the framework of employment law obligations, this is not only a question of workplace culture or wellbeing. It is also a question of the legal protection of both the employer and employees.
When therapeutic language enters the workplace
One of Keltikangas-Järvinen’s most interesting observations concerns the way in which principles associated with therapeutic discourse have spread into wider public discussion. In a therapeutic setting, all emotions are real and valid, and the professional does not impose norms or value judgments. This is a virtue in care work. Working life, however, is not a therapeutic space. It is a shared system that also contains right and wrong solutions, obligations and boundaries.
In practice, this can be seen in workplaces when an experience begins to define the act itself. If something feels bad, the situation is interpreted as being wrong. Proportions become blurred, and matters are increasingly assessed according to how they feel at that particular moment rather than what actually happened and how similar situations have previously been handled. Working life cannot, of course, be a place where emotions are ignored. However, if responsibility for emotional regulation is outsourced to the system, HR and formal processes, the system begins to become overloaded.
This can be seen in everyday HR work, for example, when an employee feels that they have been treated unfairly after a supervisor has made a normal management decision. The issue may concern work schedules, the allocation of responsibilities or feedback that does not feel pleasant but does not breach the law, a collective agreement or the organisation’s internal policies. Even so, there is often an expectation that the experience must lead to a formal investigation and a documented process. HR must balance between identifying a genuine legal protection issue and recognising normal friction in working life.
Equal treatment and the principle of reasonableness
The employer’s obligation to treat employees equally is not a matter of opinion or an operating model chosen by HR. It is a legal requirement. This means that individual solutions cannot be made in isolation from the wider context. Every exception also creates a precedent, and every precedent shapes what other employees may reasonably expect.
For this reason, HR often faces situations where an employee’s experience is genuinely negative, but no legal error has occurred. No one has breached the law, an agreement or an internal policy, yet the employee still feels distressed. The natural human reaction is to think that the experience itself must be enough and that a solution should be found quickly. However, if every experience results in a burdensome process, the consequences begin to become disproportionate. This is not because the experience should be dismissed, but because these processes have been created to protect employees from serious misconduct and arbitrary treatment.
Reasonableness is a surprisingly difficult word in this discussion. It is easily interpreted as coldness, even though it is actually a form of responsibility. Reasonableness means ensuring that consequences are proportionate to the conduct in question and that different situations are handled using different tools. Not every disappointment is an injustice, and not every uncomfortable experience is evidence of inappropriate treatment. Working life inevitably includes conflicts and frustration, and the ability to compromise is a social skill without which a community cannot function.
Empathy and fairness
At this point, it is worth challenging one of the strongest assumptions of our time. We have begun to confuse empathy with fairness. A solution that feels empathetic in an individual situation is easily assumed to be automatically correct. In working life, this can lead to situations where one individual’s experience overrides the wider context and the position of other employees. Empathy without boundaries is not neutral. It may become unfair to others. From the perspective of employment law and the workplace community, fairness sometimes also requires decisions that feel uncomfortable.
What does this mean for the workplace community?
The overemphasis of individuality does not undermine a workplace community through one major crisis. It happens gradually. When exceptions become routine and solutions appear to be made on a case-by-case basis, trust erodes. Employees’ legal protection is largely based on predictability. If practices change from one situation to another depending on who expresses the strongest experience, equal treatment is placed at risk and the shared foundation disappears.
HR has a particular and often uncomfortable role in this. HR is expected to support the individual, but its task is also to protect the functioning and fairness of the community. Boundaries are not set against employees. They are there to protect them. Without boundaries, working life becomes a continuous negotiation over rights and positions, which ultimately burdens everyone.
The disappearance of shared responsibility
Perhaps the most difficult question is whether working life is moving towards a situation where individual experience begins to displace shared responsibility. At this point, it is worth looking beyond working life for a moment. In the world of sport, it is self-evident that disappointment cannot be removed through a system. Defeats, failures and setbacks are part of development. They are not seen as disruptions, but as part of learning. The ability to tolerate discomfort, process disappointment and return to the task is an essential skill.
It is reasonable to ask why this idea feels so difficult in working life. Why has the ability to tolerate disappointment become an almost disappearing resource precisely in an environment where people work together and inevitably encounter conflicts? If every form of discomfort is addressed through external measures, the community does not become stronger. It becomes more fragile.
Defending what is shared has become surprisingly radical. Yet working life cannot function without shared rules, boundaries and reciprocity. The interests of the community are not opposed to the interests of the individual. They are a precondition for them. When this is forgotten, working life begins to reinforce the very phenomenon it is trying to correct. Keltikangas-Järvinen argues that our culture now rewards behaviour that would previously have been regarded as immature. Emotions are allowed to spread regardless of time and place, compromises are seen as weakness, and setting boundaries is interpreted as a lack of empathy.
And that brings me back to disclaimers. I cannot resist including one. This article is not an argument that individual experience is irrelevant. It is an argument about what happens to working life when shared structures begin to give way to individual experience.
Sustainable working life is created when experiences are heard, but decisions are also made on the basis of the community, equal treatment and reasonableness. There is nothing inhumane about this. Quite the opposite. This phenomenon does not yet appear in the same way in every organisation, but that is precisely why it should be discussed while structures and operating practices can still be strengthened in a controlled manner, rather than only once they begin to fail.
If you are considering how these boundaries, structures and principles of equal treatment should be assessed in your organisation, please get in touch. The Folks team can support you with both HR work and employment law matters. Learn more at: https://www.legalfolks.fi/ulkoistettuhr and https://www.legalfolks.fi/tyooikeus
Satu Edberg
HR- ja toimistopäällikkö
p. +358 40 531 1542
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Updated: Aug 5
The year 2025 was an exceptional year of change in Finnish employment law, and the pace is set to remain almost as intense in 2026. The reforms affect the everyday operation of workplaces across the entire employment lifecycle, from agreeing on employment terms to terminating employment relationships.
Local agreements, cooperation and industrial peace
In 2025, the scope for local agreements was extended to non-organised workplaces. This gave companies greater opportunities to agree on deviations permitted under collective agreements even without membership in an employers’ association. For example, where a collective agreement permits the parties to agree differently on the pay period, such an agreement may now also be concluded at workplaces where the employer is not a member of an employers’ association. At the same time, the rules governing industrial action were tightened. Political strikes and sympathy action were restricted, and the applicable sanctions were increased with the aim of reducing disruption in the labour market. An export-led wage model was also established as the new general framework for collective bargaining. This means that export sectors will in future set the general scope for pay increases across the labour market. The revised Act on Co-operation within Undertakings significantly reduced the obligations of companies with fewer than 50 employees and shortened the statutory change negotiation periods for all employers falling within the scope of the Act. As a result, negotiation processes relating to organisational changes will become considerably less frequent in companies employing between 20 and 49 people. At the same time, companies with fewer than 50 employees may conduct dialogue with their personnel more informally and in a manner suited to the particular workplace. The information and dialogue obligations relating to transfers of undertakings, mergers and demergers continue to apply to all companies covered by the Act. Companies with fewer than 20 employees remain entirely outside its scope, while companies with fewer than 50 employees are now subject to the Act in a substantially more limited range of personnel change situations.
The reform of the Act on Co-operation within Undertakings will continue during 2026. The threshold for employee representation in company administration is expected to be lowered from 150 to 100 employees. Employee representation refers to the personnel’s right to participate in the employer’s decision-making, executive, supervisory or advisory administrative bodies. In future, representation would be arranged either on the board of directors or in the management team, depending on the employer’s decision. The government proposal is expected to be submitted during spring 2026.
Obligations throughout the employment lifecycle are changing
From the beginning of 2026, a proper reason will be sufficient for terminating an employment relationship on grounds related to the employee. Previously, the reason had to be both proper and weighty. A warning will generally continue to be required before termination is considered, meaning that the employee must be given an opportunity to correct their conduct. Grounds related to the employee may continue to concern not only breaches of employment obligations, but also changes in the employee’s ability to perform the work, such as a substantial and permanent reduction in working capacity. In such cases, the employer must examine whether the employee could be reassigned to other duties in order to avoid termination. Underperformance was ultimately not expressly included in the legislation as a ground for termination. However, it may still constitute a proper reason for terminating employment if the employee fails to improve their performance despite appropriate performance management.
As before, the existence of grounds for termination must always be assessed on a case-by-case basis and in light of the circumstances as a whole. Minor misconduct, such as a single instance of lateness, will not generally meet the threshold for a proper ground for termination.The rules on fixed-term employment agreements are also expected to become more flexible. According to the proposed legislation, the parties could conclude a fixed-term employment agreement for a maximum of one year without a specific justification where it is the first employment agreement between them.
A fixed-term agreement could also be concluded without justification if the parties’ previous employment relationship ended at least two years before the new fixed-term agreement begins. The proposed legislation would allow such an agreement to be renewed no more than twice during the year following the conclusion of the first agreement, provided that the combined duration of the agreements does not exceed one year. A fixed-term agreement concluded without specific justification could also be terminated by either party after six months. It should nevertheless be remembered that an employer would still need statutory grounds for terminating the agreement.
Under the proposal, an employer would also be required to offer work to the employee after the end of the fixed term if the employer recruits additional personnel for the same or similar duties. This obligation would remain in force for a period corresponding to one third of the combined duration of the fixed-term agreements concluded without justification. For example, if the agreements had lasted for a total of one year, the employer would be required to offer work for four months after the end of the fixed-term employment. However, the obligation would not apply if the parties could still conclude another fixed-term agreement without justification under the conditions described above.
It is also worth noting that replacement recruitment would not trigger the obligation. The corresponding position becoming available would need to represent an actual increase in the company’s headcount.
Although the purpose of the reform is to make recruitment more flexible, it appears likely to introduce a new set of deadlines and assessment criteria that employers will need to keep track of.
The statutory lay-off notice period is expected to be shortened from the current 14 days to seven days. Where a collective agreement provides for a notice period longer than the statutory seven days, the workplace could agree locally on a seven-day notice period with either the shop steward or the personnel.
The employer’s re-employment obligation applies to employees whose employment has been terminated on financial and production-related grounds. It requires the employer to offer the former employee the same or similar work that becomes available, provided that the employee is registered as a jobseeker. The re-employment period is currently four or six months, depending on the duration of the terminated employment relationship. In future, the obligation would apply only to companies employing at least 50 people.
Equality is receiving greater emphasis in employment and pay
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has been preparing amendments to the Act on Equality between Women and Men concerning the equal treatment of employees and family-friendly working life. The work focuses on matters including the prohibition of discrimination against fixed-term employees in recruitment on the grounds of pregnancy, parenthood or family care responsibilities, including in temporary agency work. The aim is also to encourage a more equal distribution of family leave between parents. Concrete legislative proposals are expected no earlier than spring 2026. The amendments are expected to clarify the provisions intended to prevent discrimination on the grounds of pregnancy and family leave, increase the resources of the Ombudsman for Equality and extend the time limits for bringing claims concerning suspected discrimination in recruitment.
The EU Pay Transparency Directive must be implemented nationally by 7 June 2026. The legislative preparations are still ongoing, and the government proposal is expected in spring 2026.
The purpose of the Directive is to strengthen equal pay for equal work or work of equal value. Although the legislation already requires equal pay, the Directive will introduce additional rights for employees to receive information about the average pay levels for the same work or work of equal value and the criteria used to determine pay. Job titles must be gender-neutral, and information about pay must be provided during the recruitment process. These obligations will apply to all employers.
The current Finnish equality legislation requires companies with at least 30 employees to conduct regular pay surveys. On the basis of these surveys, unjustified pay differences between women and men must be assessed and corrective action taken where necessary.
Other current legislative initiatives
Under the Annual Holidays Act, employees may save part of their annual leave to be taken at a later date. At present, the employee may decide when to take this saved leave. The legislation is being amended so that, in future, the employer would determine the timing of saved leave in the same way as other annual leave, unless otherwise agreed. A legislative project is also under way concerning data protection in working life. Its primary purpose is to clarify the processing of employees’ personal data in relation to the EU General Data Protection Regulation.
The national Act on the Protection of Privacy in Working Life regulates matters including the processing of employee data such as health information, technical monitoring in the workplace, and the retrieval and opening of employees’ email messages. During 2025, a working group assessed issues such as the general necessity requirement for processing under the current legislation and the processing of employee data on the basis of consent. No specific legislative amendments have yet been announced.
The limitation periods and time limits for bringing claims concerning working time-related wage receivables are also intended to be clarified. At present, different courts have interpreted the limitation periods and time limits applicable to claims based on collective agreements in different ways, creating uncertainty for both employers and employees. In addition to working time-related claims, annual holiday claims are also being assessed. Legislative proposals are expected no earlier than spring 2026.
The taxation of legal costs and financial penalties paid by an employer on behalf of an employee has changed. From the beginning of 2026, the Finnish Income Tax Act allows an employer to pay, on a tax-exempt basis, an employee’s legal costs and financial penalties arising from civil, criminal or administrative proceedings connected with the employment relationship. In addition to the employer having an interest in the proceedings, tax exemption requires that the proceedings arose in connection with the performance of the employee’s duties and that it was not evident at the time of the conduct that the employee should have understood it to be unlawful. The amendment follows a court case from a few years ago in which criminal proceedings arising from the performance of the employee’s duties resulted in legal costs that were treated as taxable salary income for the employee.
The national implementation of the Platform Work Directive will introduce rules for work performed through digital labour platforms. Key issues include assessing whether the person is an employee or an entrepreneur, the transparency of algorithmic management, the applicable restrictions and obligations, and the legal remedies available to platform workers. A working group operating under the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment is currently preparing the necessary legislative amendments.
Greater flexibility or more employer obligations?
The employment law reforms clearly aim to introduce greater flexibility. At the same time, employers are being required to operate more transparently, and some of the reforms will create entirely new obligations. For employers, the changes therefore bring both opportunities and responsibilities. Companies may, for example, be able to respond more flexibly to changes in workforce numbers. However, equality and non-discrimination requirements will require operating practices to be assessed carefully to ensure that the employer does not unintentionally discriminate against anyone.
HR functions and company management should prepare for the changes well in advance, not simply because regulation requires it, but because anticipation helps ensure that day-to-day operations continue to run smoothly.
Kaisa Salo
Counsel
+35840 168 1418
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