Expert opinion

Flexibility in the work life of Finnish parent employees   by Charlotta Niemisto, Hanken School of Economics, Finland - 12 October 2010 In the field of work/life we often group the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) together and label them the "best of the best" in relation to work family policies. Is that really an accurate assessment for individual countries? What are the points of similarity and difference? What can we learn from individual approaches? In August we profiled an opinion by Swedish expert Professor Linda Haas and in this expert opinion Charlotta Niemisto (Hanken School of Economics, Finland) talks about the Finnish approach.

Setting the scene

The flexibility of Finnish workplaces has three aspects or drivers: firstly the parental leave system; secondly collective agreements and thirdly individual corporate policies. What is the nature of these pressure points and how do they intersect?

The parental leave system

The parental leave system, which includes parental employee rights that continue long after the first years of the child, is stipulated by legislation, and therefore binds employers regardless of the individual work contracts. This system is supported from the national tax revenues. In short, the family leave system in Finland is similar to the other Nordic countries. Maternity leave precedes parental leave, lasts for approximately three months (105 days), and has to be taken by the mother. Parental leave lasts for 158 weekdays, and can be divided among the parents according to the parents' joint decision. The division can be done either periodically or by simultaneously shortening the working time and partly being on leave. Additionally, fathers are entitled to 18 weekdays of paid fathers' leave with an additional bonus of up to 12 days, if the father takes up at least 12 days of parental leave at the end of the parental leave period. After parental leave, and even during it, the parent employee has the choice of applying for a place for the child in public or private day care, or staying on care leave. Care leave is an optional extension to parental leave, giving a legislated choice to stay home to take care of the child up to three years of age, without losing the employment. It is also possible for the parent employee - or both parents simultaneously - to shorten their weekly or daily working time. This means that parents can choose to take a part-time child care leave, to reduce their working time until the end of their child's second year of school. The specific arrangements of the leave must be agreed with the employer. Either of the parents can stay home for a maximum of four days and take care of a child (up to 10 years of age) who has fallen ill.

Collective agreements

Finland has a tradition of tripartite collective labour market agreements between the state, and both employer and employee representatives. By these, some additional improvements to the statutory parental rights have been made for parent employees. Additionally, flexible work time has widely been negotiated into these collective labour agreements. According to the results of my doctoral thesis, "Work/family reconciliation: Corporate management, family policies, and gender equality in the Finnish context" which is currently in pre-reading, 40.5% of the respondent companies (n=98) had flexible working hours accessible for all employees and in 52.4% of the companies flexible working hours were a negotiable policy.

Corporate policy and practice

In spite of strong state level steering, flexibility in work organisations operating in Finland can increasingly be an organisational level policy or practice. Work-time banks, enabling an employee to 'save' overtime to be taken later as days-off, can in some cases be negotiated in collective labour agreements, but can also be introduced as a specific organisational policy. Other current alternatives that appear to be increasing are teleworking, which was reported to be negotiable in approximately 70% of the respondent companies in my study, and a nurse for an employee's child who has fallen ill, which was available in approximately every fifth of the more proactive respondent companies. These policies seem to be growing in popularity among Finnish employers. Additionally, informal shift-changing and other informal practices create additional flexibility for employees.

Conclusion

As there is a strong tradition of state intervention in work/family issues in Finland, and welfare state policies such as day-care legislation dates from the early 1970s, the operative questions of work/family reconciliation have been issues dealt with outside of work organisations. Traditionally, there are ambiguous relations between national gender equality and family policies strategies. The relation between family policies and gender equality agendas is relatively unpronounced in society, but still reforms in Finnish family policies have since the 1990s been towards de-familialisation. Even if policies are often presented in a 'gender-neutral' way, the questions and realities of work/family issues are still highly gendered. On one hand, Finnish mothers are expected to work full-time; on the other hand, the care responsibilities are very much accumulated to mothers.

With parental rights of employees having had a state level legitimacy, this has steered the everyday life of organisations. However, according to my results the importance of corporate level work/family policies seems to be increasing. Important factors for developing corporate level work/family policies were the importance for company image and perceived importance in recruitment. This was especially visible in knowledge sector companies. The existence of written company policies for reconciling work with family could be seen as a result of a human resource management movement towards a more proactive style and striving for a competitive advantage. This is all very interesting, as it is creating a new arena for negotiations and debates about flexibility, values and priorities within both organisations and society as a whole.

Charlotta Niemisto, M.Sc. (Econ.), Doctoral candidate, HANKEN School of Economics, Department of Management and Organisation, Helsinki, Finland.