Blog/Guides
Parental leave in Finland: a guide for employers
320 parental allowance days per child, 160 per parent, and up to 63 transferable. What you must hold open, when leave starts, and how much of it accrues annual leave.
An employee tells you they are expecting. The questions that follow are practical: when do they go, how long for, how much of it can the other parent take, and what are you obliged to hold open?
Finland answers most of that with a day count: 320 parental allowance days per child, split 160 apiece where there are two parents. A pregnant employee gets 40 pregnancy allowance days on top, and up to 63 of a parent’s own days can be handed to the other.
TL;DR
- Parental allowance totals 320 weekdays per child, split between the two parents
- Where a child has two parents, each parent gets 160 weekdays of their own quota
- A pregnant employee gets 40 pregnancy allowance days on top, taken before parental allowance starts
- Up to 63 of a parent’s own days can be transferred to the other parent, another guardian, or either parent’s spouse
- Parental leave can be split into at most four periods, each at least 12 weekdays long
- Annual leave keeps accruing during leave only up to 160 days per parent under the 14-day rule, or 182 calendar days under the 35-hour rule
When does leave start?
Pregnancy leave begins 30 weekdays before the estimated date of delivery.
You and the employee may agree to defer it, but not indefinitely — it must begin at the latest 14 weekdays before the estimated date. So the flexibility is a fixed window of about three working weeks, not an open negotiation.
After pregnancy leave the employee moves on to parental leave.
Next: get the estimated due date in writing and set the leave start date 30 weekdays before it, adjustable to as late as 14 weekdays before if you agree a deferral.
How are the days divided?
| Days | |
|---|---|
| Parental allowance per child, total | 320 weekdays |
| Where the child has two parents, each parent | 160 weekdays |
| Pregnancy allowance, additional, for the pregnant parent | 40 weekdays |
| Additional per extra child in a multiple birth or simultaneous adoption | +84 weekdays |
| Transferable from one parent’s own quota | up to 63 weekdays |
The right to parental allowance belongs to a parent of the child who is the child’s guardian. “Parent” here means legal parents, and it covers biological and adoptive parents alike.
The transfer right is wider than most people assume. A parent may give up to 63 of their own days to the other parent, to the child’s other guardian, to their own spouse, or to the other parent’s spouse. So the two people taking leave are not necessarily the two people on the birth certificate — worth knowing when someone tells you their partner is taking days.
Next: when someone announces a pregnancy, ask early whether days will be transferred. It changes your cover planning by up to three months.
How can the leave be split?
Parental leave may be taken in at most four periods, each at least 12 weekdays long.
The days stay available until the child turns two, or until two years have passed since an adopted child was taken into care.
Both facts matter for planning, and together they defeat a common assumption. An employee cannot take odd days here and there — the 12-day minimum blocks that. But nor is the absence necessarily one continuous stretch you can plan cover for once. A parental leave arrangement can legitimately span two annual leave years and two working-time balancing periods, with returns in between.
Next: do not build cover plans on the assumption of a single continuous absence. Ask which of the four periods they intend to take, and when.
What about a hazard at work?
A separate route exists where the workplace itself is the problem. An employee may be entitled to special pregnancy leave where a chemical agent, an infectious disease or a comparable factor endangers her health or that of the foetus.
Three conditions attach to the allowance: the pregnant employee must be fit for work, it must not be possible to arrange other work for her, and she must not be in other work either.
The assessment of the health significance of the working conditions is made in occupational health care, and Kela — the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, which administers and pays out these allowances — decides on the allowance. Neither judgement is yours — but whether alternative work can be arranged is, because that is a question about your organisation.
The allowance is payable for the time the employee is prevented from doing her work because of the hazard, at most until her right to pregnancy allowance begins. It is the same amount as pregnancy allowance and does not reduce it. It ceases if the working conditions are made safe — or if the employment ends. In a fixed-term relationship it is only available for the duration of that relationship.
There is also a protective rule on what work may be done. For 14 weeks from the start of pregnancy leave, the employee may — with the employer’s consent — only do work that does not endanger her, the foetus or the newborn.
Next: if a pregnant employee works with chemical agents or infection risk, start the occupational health assessment early. Arranging alternative work is the step that keeps someone at work on full pay.
Does annual leave accrue while they are away?
Up to a cap, and the cap is where this goes wrong.
Time on pregnancy and parental leave counts as time equivalent to time at work under the Annual Holidays Act — but only up to:
| Accrual rule | Maximum counted |
|---|---|
| The 14-day rule | 160 days of pregnancy and parental leave per birth or adoption for the parent entitled to pregnancy leave, and correspondingly 160 days of parental leave for the other parent |
| The 35-hour rule | 182 calendar days |
Beyond that, the absence stops generating annual leave. Long absences are where employers most often overshoot, because the accrual simply continues in the spreadsheet.
Which of the two rules applies to a given employee is not a matter of full-time or part-time status — it turns on the contractual number of working days, and it is covered in How does annual leave accrue?
An employee may not be dismissed on the ground that she is pregnant or is using her right to pregnancy or parental leave. That protection is provided for separately in the Employment Contracts Act, and it sits alongside the ordinary grounds covered in Terminating employment in Finland.
Next: find the person in your organisation with the longest current family leave and check whether their annual leave accrual has been capped. If it has not, it is over-accruing now.
What else counts as family leave?
Pregnancy and parental leave are the long ones, but the Act provides several others that arrive with less notice — child-care leave, partial child-care leave, temporary child-care leave, carer’s leave, and absence for other family reasons.
They matter operationally for a different reason: they are shorter, more frequent, and more likely to be handled informally by a line manager and never recorded. That is fine until someone asks how many days were taken.
Next: put child-care leave, partial child-care leave, temporary child-care leave, carer’s leave and other family-reason absences into the same attendance record as parental leave, not a manager’s private note.
How does Taito.ai help with this?
Taito.ai is a people operations system. It sets up parental leave as a policy — tracking days used, transfers, and the 160-day annual-leave accrual cap — and keeps it maintained automatically as each period is taken.
Sources
- Employment Contracts Act 55/2001, Chapter 4 — family leave
- Annual Holidays Act 162/2005, section 7 — time equivalent to time at work
- Occupational Safety and Health Administration — family leave
- Pregnancy and parental leave
- Kela — parental allowances for employers
Finlex publishes these acts in Finnish and Swedish only. There is no citable official English translation, so every rule here is paraphrased rather than quoted. Where the exact wording matters, follow the link and read the Finnish or Swedish text.
Disclaimer
Taito.ai does not provide legal, tax or accounting advice. This article is general information about the law as it stood on the date above, not advice on your situation, and it is not a substitute for it. Rates and thresholds change. Check with a qualified adviser before acting on anything here.
