October 2003   In This Issue...   Front Page   Argentina   Canada   Europe   Finland   Hong Kong   Ireland   South Africa Regulatory   Update Research   Review Interact   Survey Questions   Member Exchange     Forum Feedback	Finland: Experimenting With EAPs to Address the Worker Shortage Hannu Ekholm, Lic.Pol.Sc., Executive Director, EAP – Finland® Oy, Helsinki, Finland Finland is at the very beginning of broad-brush employee assistance work. An EAP conference was held in Helsinki in 1990, with expert knowledge provided by two organizations from the United States--Caron and Hazelden. A couple of Finnish companies that participated in the meeting started their own EAPs after the conference, but the economic recession of the early 1990s blocked the general development of EAPs in Finland. Since then, interest in the productivity and performance of the workforce and the increasing tendency of workers to retire early have prompted the creation of numerous national projects aimed at solving these problems. The problem of early retirement is especially severe. Though the official retirement age is 65 years, the average age of retirement today is 59 years. Early retirement has been an active policy for years, and at the end of the 1990s, when the economic recession was pronounced, retirement pensions were granted even to persons of 55 years of age. This policy is no longer attractive. There are real concerns about the cost of large-scale retirement for both national insurance organizations and companies. The baby boom generation is on the verge of retirement age; beginning in 2005, more people are expected to leave the workforce than enter it. Whereas today there are four people of working age for every person over 65, in 2050 there will only be two. If this trend continues there will be a considerable workforce shortage, causing problems for the welfare state. Fresh labor will need to be recruited, both to high-tech fields and for jobs that require little training. The possible “new groups” might be foreigners (Finland currently has fewer than 100,000 foreign residents), people over 45 (i.e., aging workers), poorly educated people, and youngsters. These are groups that have very specific personal needs to be met. In Finland there is a tendency--indeed, almost a tradition--to search for help for personal problems at a very late stage, and the borderline between work life and private life is very strict. Finnish people take care of their own concerns. Aging populations, the growing cost of pensions, and the shortage of labor all make a new approach advisable. One such approach is employee assistance. A national EAP program was started in 2000 and will last until the end of 2005. It is financed by the European Social Fund, the Ministry of Social Affairs of Finland, UPM-Kymmene Corporation, and the Labour Union of Salaried Employees. The organization selected to conduct the program is EAP – Finland Oy, together with the National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health of Finland. Because the EAP concept is unknown in Finland, we need to find ways to present employee assistance as being consistent with the welfare tradition of Finnish culture. At the same time, it must be as cost-effective and economically successful as possible. The basic idea of the project is to create a model that is suitable for Finnish workplaces. This is being done in cooperation with businesses, government, insurance companies, and labor unions. After the feasibility study has been completed, the Finnish EAP will be defined and then enlarged step by step to cover the whole of Finnish society. The basic question to be answered by the project is whether EAPs are actually needed in Finland, where all the basic welfare services are delivered by local authorities (over 400 cities, towns, and rural municipalities). The tax-paid public welfare system is supplemented by private services. Since the 1960s there has been almost full coverage of services of fairly good quality, offered by our Nordic welfare system. On the other hand, companies are not familiar with providing for their employees, because benefits traditionally belong to the public sector and are already paid for by taxes. Companies are obliged to arrange occupational health care only. At its best, employee assistance could offer a solution both to the public sector, which is struggling with how to maintain a high level of social security efficiently, and to the entrepreneurial sector, which is struggling with the problems of workforce productivity. DISCUSSION (Member Exchange Forum)   Back Issues   Top of Page   Contact EAPA   © 2003 Exhange On-Line is a publication of the Employee Assistance Professionals Association, Inc. (EAPA). Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is expressly prohibited. Publication of bylined articles does not constitute endorsement of personal views of authors. Appearance of paid advertisements does not constitute endorsement by EAPA.	Vol. 1    No. 2