Kela monitored 2,000 employees’ work time, Yle finds
Sunday 8th November 2026 on 16:31 in
Finland
Finland’s benefits agency Kela monitored how about 2,000 employees used their working time in summer 2023, including detailed records of their activity, an investigation by Yle’s MOT programme found. The monitoring led to reprimands, warnings and dismissals for dozens of employees, and some workers said it felt distressing.
Managers reviewed employees’ time records, completed tasks and use of working hours, looking back over periods of two to six months. The investigation also found guidance that listed petting a rabbit and going to the toilet as permitted breaks.
Kela said it had become concerned about a rise in misuse of working time. In 2024, it dismissed 10 employees on that basis. In spring 2026, the Labour Court ruled that the dismissal of one long-serving benefits handler had been unlawful. It said the reports used to monitor remote work did not reliably show how the employee had used their time.
After that ruling, Kela’s head of human resources, Pasi Lankinen, said the agency had ordered monitoring reports only in a few individual cases. He said there had been no broad review or monitoring of entire workplaces.
Yle’s MOT received several contacts after Lankinen’s comments from people who said the monitoring had been more extensive than Kela had acknowledged. The programme interviewed seven current and former employees and reviewed documents obtained through information requests.
One employee, identified as Noora, said her manager called in autumn 2023 and asked her to account for her use of working time over the previous nine months. Her report marked breaks of more than half an hour between processing benefit applications with orange lines. Noora said she also had specific work targets and felt there was no room for idle time.
Another employee, identified as Suvi, had recently started work as a benefits handler when the monitoring began. She said she only understood its scope when the results were reviewed: the records showed mouse clicks, when she took a task from the queue, made a decision or left work pending. She described the detail as distressing.