TE offices, which used to be the responsibility of the state, will be closed, and employment services will become a statutory duty of every municipality and part of their basic services on 1 January 2025.
This change will bring employment services closer to residents. When employment services, municipal education services, and business development services are all organised by the same operator, they can better support the goals of gainful employment.
In January, these services will be arranged by the municipalities or cooperation committees formed by groups of municipalities. A total of 45 employment areas will be created in Finland.
An encompassing change requires significant preparation
The six largest cities in Finland, Helsinki, Vantaa, Espoo, Turku, Tampere and Oulu, will gain 200,000 new jobseeker customers. The municipalities are busy making careful preparations for the changes in January.
“We have an excellent starting point to provide targeted services that suit the needs of local employers for our customers. We are also well positioned to better consider the businesses’ competence needs, as well as to guide unemployed residents to vocational education and training. Our aim is a smooth transfer of the employment services so that all the key functions and services are ready as soon as 2025 rolls in,” emphasises Juhana Vartiainen, Mayor of Helsinki.
“Municipalities all have the capability and will to handle this transition period as smoothly as possible. However, this change does include challenges for all of them, with some of them independent of the municipalities. By carrying out our preparations properly, we will aim to guarantee functioning services in all situations during the transition.”
Transfer of state customer information systems to municipalities requires precision
A particular need for preparation arises from the state KEHA centre’s TE service customer information system. This autumn, there have been multi-day outages and functional issues in the system, for which the city is preparing next year.
Among other services, customer services is preparing for new challenges, as the municipalities will be receiving thousands of new customers. The new year is a busy time as it is for employment services, with an influx of new customers. Many of the ongoing change negotiations are expected to also result in new customers for us.
In addition, a months-long queue of certain types of payments will be transferred from the KEHA centre to the municipalities, which may cause delays in customer service and processing times.
At the same time, the cities’ employment services will see an influx of thousands of new employees, who must learn how their new employers operate. There will be changes to personnel job descriptions, but no cooperation talks regarding new employees can be held until 2025. The municipalities will prepare for personnel changes and their associated challenges as well as they can.
Stronger employment services and boost to the cities’ vitality
Most of all, the top six cities see the TE service reform as an opportunity to develop employment services and boost their vitality. During the new year, the focus will be on the smooth transfer of services and systems. The top six cities aim to develop employment services so that they better meet the needs of the growing cities and their diverse target groups.
“The TE reform creates an opportunity for the holistic development of employment promotion measures, and at this early stage, brings the services closer to residents, making it easier for us to target them at the people who need them,” says Minna Arve, Mayor of Turku.
“This is a significant change, and while we currently face challenges and uncertainties that arise from the transition, we believe that after the reform, the cities will be able to operate better and more effective employment services that reinforce the cities and their businesses’ vitality and employment.”
The six cities – Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Tampere, Turku and Oulu – are the six largest cities in Finland. Approximately two million Finns live in these cities, i.e. more than a third of the entire country's population. The six largest cities account for over 40% of Finnish jobs and 55% of Finland's GDP.
