What notice period applies when an employer ends employment in Finland?

Unless a collective agreement or the employment contract says otherwise, the employer's notice period is set by how long the employment has continued: 14 days up to one year, one month from one to four years, two months from four to eight years, four months from eight to twelve years, and six months beyond twelve years. An employee resigning gives 14 days up to five years of service and one month after that. The parties may agree different periods, but never longer than six months, and the employee's period may never exceed the employer's. Where a collective agreement sets its own notice periods, those apply instead of the statutory ones unless the agreement itself permits departing from them. Employment continues to the end of the notice period, and the employee keeps their normal pay throughout it — including usual benefits in kind such as a phone or car.

Do you have to give a warning before dismissing someone in Finland?

Usually yes. Where an employee has breached or neglected obligations arising from the employment relationship, you may not dismiss them until you have given a warning and a genuine opportunity to correct their conduct. The single exception is a breach so serious that continuing the relationship cannot reasonably be required of you. That is a high bar and it is assessed case by case, so treating it as a routine shortcut is how employers lose these cases. Dismissal is also not permitted for minor shortcomings or isolated mistakes, however irritating. Before ending the employment you must additionally give the employee a chance to state their own view of the reason, and they have the right to bring an assistant to that hearing. Document both the warning and the hearing — in a dispute you carry the burden of showing they happened.

Can you dismiss an employee in Finland for long-term illness?

Only in narrow circumstances. Illness, injury and accident are not in themselves proper grounds for dismissal. They become grounds only where the employee's capacity for work has been reduced substantially and for the long term, to the point where continuing the relationship cannot reasonably be required of you. Even then you must first establish that the duties or working conditions cannot be adapted to the capacity the employee still has, and that you have no other work anywhere in the company to offer them. The assessment of how long the reduction will last, and what it means for coping with the job, is made by healthcare rather than by you. Note also how narrow the redeployment duty is here: the obligation to look into placing the employee elsewhere attaches specifically to situations where their conditions for working have changed. Dismissing someone while they are on sick leave, without that medical basis and without exploring adaptation, is among the most reliably expensive mistakes a Finnish employer can make.

Terminating employment in Finland: a guide for employers

Q: What is the re-employment obligation after a redundancy in Finland?

If you make someone redundant on financial or production-related grounds and then need an employee for the same or similar duties within four months of the employment ending, you must offer that work to the person you dismissed. Where their employment had run continuously for at least twelve years, the window is six months rather than four. The obligation only covers former employees who are registered as jobseekers with the public employment services, and you are expected to check with the authority or contact them directly. From 1 June 2026 the obligation applies only to employers with at least 50 employees, so smaller companies now fall outside it. Note the ordering: laid-off employees are recalled first, and part-time employees must be offered additional hours, before the re-employment duty comes into play. You are not obliged to offer the old terms, but the new ones must still meet statutory and collective-agreement minimums, and in a dispute you carry the burden of showing the obligation was met.

Your notice period runs from 14 days (under a year of service) to six months (over twelve years) — the employee’s runs 14 days up to five years and one month after that.
Before dismissing for a breach of obligations, you must give a warning and a real chance to correct it, unless the breach is so serious the relationship cannot reasonably continue.
Illness only becomes grounds for dismissal once the reduction in capacity is substantial and long-term, adaptation is ruled out, and you have no other work to offer.
Make someone redundant and need the same work back within four months (six months after twelve years of service), and you must offer it to them first — but only if you have at least 50 employees, once the June 2026 threshold takes effect.
Cancellation ends the employment immediately and needs an extremely weighty reason; ordinary dismissal runs to the end of the notice period instead.

You are about to end someone’s employment, and the question you need answered is not what the law says in the abstract. It is whether this particular reason will hold up, what you have to do first, and how long it takes.

Three things decide that. The grounds you are relying on, the procedure you follow before you tell them, and the notice period that runs afterwards. Get the grounds right and the procedure wrong and the dismissal can still fail.

Finnish law separates two families of grounds, and they behave completely differently. Grounds relating to the person cover conduct and capacity. Financial and production-related grounds — redundancy — cover the disappearance of the work itself. You cannot mix them: dismissing for redundancy when the real reason is performance is how employers end up paying compensation.

A note on recent changes. The Employment Contracts Act was amended on 1 January 2026, and the amendment lowered the threshold for dismissing on grounds relating to the person where an employee breaches their obligations. Guidance published before that date is out of step with the current position — including much of what is still ranking on the Finnish web.

When can you dismiss someone for reasons relating to them personally?

When they have breached or neglected their obligations, or their capacity to do the job has substantially changed — and, in the first case, only after a warning.

The occupational safety and health administration lists the kinds of breach that qualify: neglect of duties, unjustified absence, working carelessly or against instructions, inappropriate behaviour, and repeated lateness. The other limb is different in kind — a substantial change in the employee’s ability to meet the requirements of the work.

Nothing here is decided in the abstract. The assessment weighs your headcount, the circumstances of both parties, the employee’s position and the nature of their duties, and — this one surprises people — your own conduct. Whether you gave instructions, and whether you intervened when things first went wrong, is part of the test. An employer who said nothing for a year and then dismissed has a weaker case than one who managed the problem.

Some grounds are excluded outright. Under the Act a proper reason is not:

illness, injury or accident, unless capacity is reduced substantially and long-term
taking part in industrial action
political, religious or other opinion, or participation in societal or association activity
using the legal remedies available to them

And dismissal is not permitted for minor shortcomings or isolated mistakes. The bar is a pattern, or a serious single breach — not a bad week.

The warning is not optional

Where the employee has breached an obligation, you may not dismiss before giving a warning and a real chance to correct the behaviour. The only way past this is a breach so serious that continuing the relationship cannot reasonably be required of you.

That exception is narrower than it sounds and it is assessed case by case. Treat the warning as the default and the exception as something you would want to defend in court, because that is where you will be defending it.

Illness needs a medical basis, not a judgement call

Dismissing on the basis of illness, injury or accident is possible only where the reduction in capacity is substantial and long-term, the duties or working conditions cannot be adapted, and you have no other work to offer. The assessment of duration and of the effect on coping with the job is made in healthcare — not by you and not by the line manager.

Worth noting how narrow the redeployment duty is here: your obligation to look into placing the employee in other work applies specifically to situations where their conditions for working have changed. It is not a general obligation attached to every personal-grounds dismissal.

Next: before you draft anything, check whether a written warning exists on file, dated, with the conduct described. If it does not, you are not yet at the point of dismissal.

When can you make someone redundant?

When the available work has diminished substantially and permanently for financial, production-related or reorganisation reasons — and you have nowhere else to put the person.

“Substantially and permanently” is the whole test. A bad quarter is not it. The authority is explicit that reorganisation which produces no actual reduction in work is not grounds at all — moving boxes on an org chart does not create a redundancy.

Two things defeat the grounds outright:

You hired someone into similar duties, whether before the dismissal or after it.
The reorganisation did not actually reduce the work.

Redeployment comes before dismissal

You cannot dismiss on these grounds if the employee can be placed or trained into other duties. The order is fixed: first work matching their employment contract, then other work matching their training, professional skill and experience.

The training duty covers what is needed for the new duties and can be considered appropriate and reasonable for both parties. It is not a duty to fund a career change, but it is more than a formality.

The procedure itself sits in the Act on Co-operation within Undertakings rather than the Employment Contracts Act, so check whether your headcount brings you inside it before you start.

The re-employment obligation, and who it still applies to

Make someone redundant and then need the same or similar work done again, and you may have to offer it back to them.

Situation	Window
Employment ended on financial or production-related grounds	4 months from the end of employment
Employment had run continuously for at least 12 years	6 months

Two limits matter. The duty only covers former employees registered as jobseekers with the public employment services, and you are expected to check with the authority or contact them directly rather than wait. And from 1 June 2026 the obligation only applies if you have at least 50 employees — smaller companies now fall outside it entirely.

Even where it applies, it sits third in a queue. Laid-off employees are recalled first. Part-time employees must be offered additional hours next. Only then does the re-employment duty bite. And in a dispute, you carry the burden of proving you met it.

One more thing runs alongside the notice period: an employee dismissed on these grounds has a right to paid employment leave during it, to draw up a plan and look for work.

Next: if you are heading toward redundancies, write down the reduction in work you can evidence — in hours or in volume — before you write anything else. That evidence is the case.

How long is the notice period?

By length of service, unless your collective agreement or the contract says otherwise. The statutory periods are asymmetric — the employer’s are longer.

When the employer gives notice:

Length of employment	Notice period
0–1 year	14 days
1–4 years	1 month
4–8 years	2 months
8–12 years	4 months
Over 12 years	6 months

When the employee resigns:

Length of employment	Notice period
0–5 years	14 days
Over 5 years	1 month

You can agree different periods, inside two limits: never longer than six months, and the employee’s period may never be longer than yours. If a collective agreement sets its own notice periods, those apply instead of the statutory ones — unless the agreement itself allows you to agree otherwise. Which agreement binds you is settled in Which collective agreement binds you?

The employment continues to the end of the notice period and the employee keeps normal pay throughout, including usual benefits in kind such as a phone or a car, unless there is a specific obstacle to providing them. You may release them from the duty to work; that does not release you from paying.

If an employee walks out before the notice period ends without an agreed basis, they may be liable for the loss that causes you.

Next: check your collective agreement’s notice table before you use the statutory one. On this point the agreement usually wins.

What is dismissal with notice, and what is summary cancellation?

Dismissal with notice ends the employment at the end of the notice period. Cancellation ends it immediately. The threshold is far higher: an extremely weighty reason, meaning a breach or neglect so serious that the other party cannot be expected to continue even for the length of the notice period.

Probation is its own case. Where a probationary period has been agreed, either side may cancel during it without a notice period — but not on discriminatory grounds, and not on grounds otherwise improper given the purpose of probation. If no probationary period was agreed, there is none; it never arises automatically. How long it may be is covered in What must an employment contract contain?

Next: if you’re weighing cancellation instead of notice, write down why the breach could not have waited even the shortest notice period — that’s the test you’ll have to defend.

What is the correct procedure?

Four steps, in order, and each is a place dismissals fail.

1. Hear the employee first. Before ending the employment you must give them an opportunity to state their own view of the reason. They have the right to bring an assistant, and they must be given time to prepare a position — not asked to respond on the spot.

2. Deliver the notice personally. If that is genuinely not possible, it may go by letter or electronically, in which case it is deemed received at the latest on the seventh day after sending. There is a trap here. If the employee is on annual leave, or on a break of at least two weeks given to even out working time, a letter or electronic notice is deemed delivered no earlier than the day after that leave ends.

3. Put the reason in writing if asked. On the employee’s request you must state, without delay and in writing, the date the employment ends and the grounds you know of. State them clearly and truthfully — vague or shifting reasons are what turn a defensible dismissal into a litigated one. The occupational safety and health administration publishes a form for this.

4. Settle up on the last day. You owe final pay on the last working day unless otherwise agreed, and you must provide a work certificate if the employee asks for one.

Notice can be given orally and remains valid, but do it in writing. In a dispute the person who gave notice has to prove it was given.

Next: map these four steps against your own calendar for this dismissal — the hearing date, the delivery date, and the last working day — before you send anything.

What does getting it wrong cost?

Unfounded termination leads to a liability to compensate. Beyond the money, two practical asymmetries are worth internalising: you carry the burden of proof on the re-employment obligation, and case law turns heavily on documentation you either created at the time or did not.

The Supreme Court of Finland’s decision KKO:2014:98 is a useful calibration. A salesperson’s low margin percentage did not by itself show that they had materially breached or neglected their obligations — a number moving in the wrong direction is not, on its own, a ground.

Next: gather the dated documentation you already hold — warnings, hearing notes, correspondence — before a dispute forces you to reconstruct it from memory.

How does Taito.ai help with this?

Taito.ai is a people operations system. It sets up and keeps maintained the employment records a Finnish termination turns on — length of service, warnings, hearing notes, and notice-period dates — so what applied to a given employee, and from what date, is always current.

Sources

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.

People directory

Time‑off and attendance

Docs and eSign

Performance

People agents

MCP use cases

For founders

For people leads

For operators