Sickness absence in Finnish municipalities

Monitoring of sickness absence information that can be used to develop measures to reduce and shorten sick leave. The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health's statistics show the development of sickness absence among municipal employees in the 2000s.

Description

The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health's Kunta10 study is Finland's longest-running and most extensive study tracking the work and well-being of municipal sector staff, where sickness absence has been monitored since the early 2000s in 11 municipalities. The social and health care reform that came into effect at the beginning of 2023 significantly changed the municipal personnel structure, as except for Helsinki, the personnel from social, health, and rescue sectors moved to the service of welfare regions. Before the reform, sickness absence monitoring covered about 90,000 person-workyears annually, and even after the reform, about 70,000 person-workyears.

What the indicators show

Monitoring of sickness absence days is done directly from the municipal personnel registers for individuals participating in the Kunta10 study. The calculation method is uniform: the number of sickness absence days divided by person-workyears (pw). A separate figure has been calculated for each subgroup (e.g., profession). The calculation includes full-time municipal employees. Only days of absence from work due to the individual's own illness are counted.

The data is updated annually. The sickness absence data for one municipality is missing for 2021 and for another municipality for 2022. For the years following the reform, 2023 and 2024, sickness absence data from all 11 municipalities is included, but for 10 municipalities, social and rescue sector personnel are no longer included. Post-reform, specific results for social and rescue sector professions are no longer presented.