Sickness absences incur significant costs for both the employer and society at large. Reducing sick days is feasible when employees have optimal working tools and furniture that support overall ergonomics. Investing in a company’s most important asset, its employees, is profitable for many reasons.

The calculator is indicative and based on national data. It accounts for salary costs, indirect costs, and ancillary labor costs. Salary cost is calculated based on the tax-free salary prior to the absence, per workday. Indirect costs include, for example, hiring substitutes, overtime costs, decreased productivity, and additional administrative work related to absences. These can vary by company and also depend on the employee's role. Ancillary labor costs are the employer's statutory payments, also during the employee's sickness absence in addition to the normal salary. These payments include unemployment, health, and pension insurance premiums, accident insurance and group life insurance premiums, occupational health care, holiday pay, and training costs.

In 2019, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) recorded 83,755 new sickness allowance periods due to musculoskeletal disorders, with an average duration of 50 days, totaling 4,187,750 days and approximately 14,000 person-years annually (Suomen Tule ry. 2021). Using the Confederation of Finnish Industries' (EK) general cost of €350 per employer per sickness day, the sickness days recorded by Kela in 2019 resulted in nearly one and a half billion euros (€1,465,712,500) in costs for employers. (Sari Hautaviita 2021)

Source: Kela's health insurance statistics 2019 / Official Statistics of Finland https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/681fc835-3a8c-442d-9a57-01529f826cde/content