3.5 Finland

Finland has the highest use of mobile phones in the world (2 million, with a population of 5.1 million). The boom in the use of mobile phones has liberated the working community geographically and more and more people are working on the move or at a distance. This is happening in an unregulated environment and is not being formalised, and it has paved the road for wide-spread informal telework.

 Trends in employment figures show that 44% of the labour force worked in jobs connected with information (1995) and core industries in the information sector accounted for 33% of new jobs and this is growing.

 According to latest OECD statistics there are only two countries in the world with positive bit rates (more bits exported then imported via the Internet), U.S.A. and Finland. The high number of Internet hosts (62 per thousand, the highest in the world) maybe partly due to the availability of high speed inexpensive leased line network connections to the Internet. For the individual user, Internet access is readily available at a modest price. Low access prices as well as the wide spread computer literacy and knowledge of English have facilitated the use of computers in business as well as in homes.

'Etätyö', the Finnish word for telework is well known in the country. Finland is currently seeing a lively discussion about the distribution and restructuring of the labour market, with on the one hand an urgent search for flexible solutions but on the other a natural concern by those with jobs about future uncertainty. Unemployment has been above 20 % in the mid-'90s, but is now estimated to around 15 %.

Finland's Advisory Committee for Rural Policy was responsible for drawing up the country's Telework Development Programme in 1994. Among the Programme's suggestions were to encourage the public sector to adopt teleworking arrangements, to start provincial telework projects, to initiative a national 'Telework for the disabled' campaign, and to undertake a national marketing campaign to promote teleworking.

 The government is actively interested in telework issues. The Telework Theme Group brings together representatives of the Ministries of the Interior, of Labour, of the Environment, and of Communications, together with the Association of Finnish Local Authorities, Telecom Finland and a number of universities. The Telework Theme Group maintains a web site (http://www.uta.fi/telework), sponsored by the Ministry of the Interior and the University of Tampere.

 There is no association of teleworkers as such, but the Finnish Flexiwork Forum is active in research and in organising seminars. The Finnish Flexiwork Forum also maintains a telework web site (http://www.tkk.utu.fi/joustotyo). There is also a telecottage association, FITEC (Finnish Telecommunication Centres Association), which is currently not particularly active.

Finland has about 40 telecottages, some of which are more active than others, with most of them found in rural areas.

In terms of telework resources, Finnish teleworkers now have a booklet on the subject (recently published both in paper and Internet formats). A parallel publication for telework employers is published in June. There is no current telework magazines, but the national press shows a deep interest in any economic advantage that telework can bring.