Good Work Programme – Creating more appeal and staying power in the healthcare and social welfare sector
Mounting service needs driven by an ageing Finnish population, higher rates of chronic diseases, evolving expectations and new technologies – as well as rising mental health challenges – are putting significant pressure on services and personnel in the healthcare, social welfare and rescue services sectors.
In 2024, the Finnish Government launched a three-year Good Work Programme to ensure the sufficiency and availability of personnel in healthcare, social welfare and rescue services.
The Good Work Programme (2024–2027) contains both long-term and short-term measures to make sure that we will have enough personnel in healthcare and social welfare in the future. It is based on the Programme of Prime Minister Orpo’s Government.
The purpose of the programme is to attract more employees to health, social and rescue services and encourage them to stay. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health is implementing the programme together with the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, the Ministry of Finance and other key stakeholders.
Programme with six content areas and many tools
The programme has six content areas, each including several measures. All the measures aim to make sure that there will be enough personnel available in health, social and rescue services in the years to come.
More personnel have become available over the course of the programme implementation. However, with the general population and personnel aging, we must also prepare for future needs. Special emphasis is being placed on the personnel’s ability to work and cope at work.
Knowledge base and foresight
The purpose is to secure a sufficient knowledge base and a capacity to foresee future needs for personnel, education and training at the national level.
More student places and better structures in education and training
More student places will be made available in Finnish and Swedish, particularly in sectors and regions where there is high demand for labour. Measures will be taken to make sure that as many students as possible complete their studies, graduate and find work.
Education and training structures in healthcare and social welfare will also be restructured to better meet the needs of working life. Changes will be made to the content of the studies and how they are implemented to support students in professional specialisation, competence development and career advancement.
Fewer tasks
Steps will be taken to allow professionals to focus on work with clients and to reduce the amount of paperwork. One way this can be done is by issuing recommendations for reducing the number of different kinds of statements and certificates.
Clearer division of work between personnel
Professionals should be allowed to focus on tasks that match their skills. This can be achieved by making better use of support services and assisting personnel.
Pilot projects on the division of work
Wellbeing services counties received discretionary government grants in 2024 and 2025 for pilot projects on the division of work.
In 2024, the pilot projects focused on the following three areas:
Departmental secretaries: These projects involved transferring non-care tasks from professionals to departmental secretaries, which freed up professionals’ time for patients.
Professionals in the cultural sector: These projects brought in experts from other fields to support healthcare and social welfare professionals. Their contribution was considered important, especially in terms of introducing a human-centred organisational culture.
Rehabilitation: These projects streamlined the guidance paths for rehabilitation and created models that can be used to better support the needs of clients and find viable solutions for everyday challenges.
In 2025, the pilot projects focused on the following three areas:
Practical nurses: These projects piloted and gained experience of various job descriptions of practical nurses within the framework of current legislation. The purpose was to restructure the division of work between practical nurses and support services (nutrition, logistics, sanitation etc.), between practical nurses and social pedagogues and between practical nurses and registered nurses.
Social workers and social instructors: These projects helped reorganise the division and structure of tasks between social workers and social pedagogues working in the wellbeing services counties.
Job description of registered nurses with limited prescription rights as part of the continuity-of-care model: These projects helped model and pilot the job description of nurses with limited prescription rights as part of the continuity-of-care model at health and social services centres.
Reforming legislation on healthcare and social welfare personnel
The legislation on healthcare and social welfare personnel is being reformed.
The purpose is to update the legislation so that in future it will only apply to those professions in the healthcare and social welfare sector where regulation is needed to safeguard client and patient safety.
An assessment is being made to determine the scope of regulation needed on professional groups. Dismantling excessively detailed regulation would allow professionals to perform tasks that match their education, training and skills while enabling a flexible division of work between them.
More appeal and staying power: ability to work and cope at work
Steps are being taken to make health, social and rescue services better attract and retain employees, and to support employees in their ability to work and cope at work.
Coaching on how to better attract and retain employees
The ability of the work units of the wellbeing services counties to attract and retain employees and the ability of the personnel to work were improved in 2024–2025. This was achieved by organising relevant coaching in four collaborative areas for healthcare and social welfare per year.
The coaching is based on a systematic approach to developing practices and procedures, the Breakthrough Collaboratives model. This model has been used in Finland for around 15 years to provide smoother client processes and improve the availability of care.
A total of 57 multiprofessional teams from work units in the health, social and rescue services sectors participated in the coaching sessions. Those selected for the coaching included units that had challenges with personnel coping at work, with a high turnover of personnel or with recruitment.
The final assessment of the impact of the coaching will be completed in 2027, but the preliminary results are promising. The coaching helped create a large number of employee-oriented practical experiments that responded to actual needs and were considered useful. In addition, wellbeing at work, the organisational climate and the participants’ opportunities to have a say improved, as did their professional competence and development orientation.
National project on occupational safety in rescue services
The purpose of the national project on occupational safety in rescue services is to enhance occupational safety, support coping at work and maintain work ability in rescue services through an extensive cooperation network. The project, which is coordinated by the Ministry of the Interior, organises workshops that help identify occupational safety challenges, propose concrete solutions and operating models, and further refine and share good practices for use by rescue service organisations.
Youth Academy
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the Youth Academy have published a learning game for young people titled Sote- ja pelastusalan Imuvoimaa (Attraction power of health, social and rescue services). The purpose of the game is to raise interest among young people who are planning to start studying to work in health, social and rescue services.
Broader scope for recruitment
This action encourages professionals who have a degree in healthcare or social welfare but who have retired or transferred to other jobs to return to the care sector. Steps are also being taken to examine how smoothly the licensing process for international recruitment runs and establish whether uniform language training can be organised for foreign-language-speaking professionals working in healthcare and social welfare.