Are you a self-employed person about to hire your first employee?

Did you know that you as an employer have to take care of many matters relating to Kela’s benefits and reimbursements? We have compiled a checklist for you.

Some of the links lead to pages that have not yet been translated into English.

Keep the following in mind when hiring a new employee

1. Arrange preventive occupational health care for the employee. Employers are required by law to arrange preventive occupational health care such as medical examinations for their employees. You can also offer the employee health care, in other words, the possibility of visiting an occupational health physician. Kela will reimburse your business for approximately half of the occupational health care costs. Read more about which types of occupational health care costs Kela will reimburse. To get started, check out the quick guide to reimbursements for occupational health care costs.
2. Kela can pay allowances to your business. If you pay wages or salaries during an employee’s sick leave, parental leave or rehabilitation, Kela can pay the allowance to you. This applies to allowances such as sickness allowance, partial sickness allowance, allowances for parents and rehabilitation allowance. If your employee is on parental leave, you can apply for compensation for annual leave costs. Employers of female employees can also apply for family leave compensation. 
3. Applying for benefits and reimbursements online is easy. Apply for reimbursements for occupational health care costs in the e-service for reimbursements for occupational health care costs. Apply for allowances and other reimbursements in the e-service for employers  (both e-services in Finnish or Swedish only). You can apply for sickness allowance, parental allowance, rehabilitation allowance and family leave compensation in the Incomes Register of the Finnish Tax Administration.
4. Remember to report your employee’s wages or salaries to the Incomes Register within 5 days of the date of payment. Also pay the employer’s mandated health insurance contribution.
5. You can ask for assistance in the chat service, by phone or via secure email. You can also check out the guides (in Finnish) with information on how to apply for benefits and reimbursements.

Good luck with the employee selection process!

Are you hiring an employee from abroad or planning on sending an employee on a posting abroad?

If you hire an employee from abroad, that employee can qualify for Kela benefits right from the start of the employment if they move to Finland on a permanent basis or work in Finland on a wage or salary amounting to at least 800.02 euros per month (as of 2024). The employee must handle their own Kela-related matters. If necessary, you can handle some matters on your employee's behalf. This is only possible if your employee issues a power of attorney authorising you to do so.

If you send an employee on a posting to work abroad, inform Kela or the Finnish Centre for Pensions of this. Whether you need to inform Kela or the Finnish Centre for Pensions depends on the country to which you are sending the employee. The country also affects other things, such as whether you need to apply for a certificate A from the Finnish Centre for Pensions. If you need a certificate A, remember to apply for it for every new foreign assignment, even if it is short.

Read also Recruiting an employee (Suomi.fi)