For employers: If you are hiring an employee from Ukraine

On these page, you will find information about hiring employees who have fled from Ukraine, their right to work and other instructions related to working.

Right to work
How to verify an employee’s right to work
Employer’s obligations
Submit an employee announcement
Online service Enter Finland for Employers
The employee’s right to work ends if an incomplete application for temporary protection leads to an expiry decision or a negative decision

Right to work

A person who has fled to Finland from Ukraine may work in Finland if he or she:

has applied for or been granted temporary protection;
has a valid certificate for seasonal work;
has a valid residence permit for seasonal work; or
has a valid residence permit that gives the permit holder the right to work.
- Read more about residence permit holders’ right to work

In some cases, an employee might not need a residence permit. In that the case, the employee has a restricted right to work in certain fields of work for a maximum of 90 days. Read more about working without a residence permit.

Temporary protection

Those fleeing to Finland from Ukraine can be granted a residence permit on the basis of temporary protection. Your employee's right to work and study begins as soon as the employee registers his or her application for temporary protection with the police or a border control authority.

When your employee visits the police or the border authorities to apply for temporary protection, the police or the border authorities will print out a certificate of a pending application for your employee. The certificate will state that your employee has the right to work. If your employee has applied for temporary protection, his or her right to work is unrestricted, meaning that your employee may find employment in any field.

Residence permits granted by the Finnish Immigration Service on the basis of temporary protection are currently valid until 4 March 2025. On 25 June 2024, the Council of the European Union decided to extend the temporary protection mechanism until 4 March 2026.

If you employ someone who has applied for temporary protection, submit an employee announcement.

When you hire someone fleeing Ukraine to do seasonal work

Seasonal work requires your employee to have one of these permits:

Residence permit on the basis of temporary protection: Your employee's right to work and study begins as soon as the employee registers his or her application for temporary protection with the police or a border control authority.
- If you employ someone who has applied for temporary protection, submit an employee announcement.
- Read more about payment of wages to employees who do not have a bank account.
- Check the estimated processing time for applications for temporary protection.
Certificate for seasonal work: A certificate for seasonal work allows the employee to do seasonal work for up to 90 days.
- With a certificate for seasonal work, the right to work is valid for as long as the employee has visa-free days left or until the certificate expires.
  - This means that the right to work may end sooner if the employee has arrived in Finland before the certificate for seasonal work became valid.
Residence permit for seasonal work: A residence permit for seasonal work allows the employee to do seasonal work for 3 to 9 months. The residence permit application must be submitted to the Finnish Immigration Service. If the work takes 6 to 9 months, an Employment and Economic Development Office will first make a partial decision on the application.

When you hire someone fleeing Ukraine to do other work (not seasonal work)

If your employee has applied for temporary protection, his or her right to work is unrestricted, meaning that your employee may find employment in any field.

Residence permit on the basis of work

If your employee applies for a residence permit on the basis of work, the right application depends on what type of work your employee will be doing. Your employee’s right to work does not begin until he or she has received a positive decision on the residence permit application, unless your employee already has the right to work on the basis of some other permit. Read more about residence permits on the basis of work.

Residence permit on the basis of family ties

If your employee is granted a residence permit on the basis of family ties, he or she may work in Finland without restrictions. Your employee’s right to work does not begin until he or she has received a positive decision on the residence permit application, unless your employee already has the right to work on the basis of some other permit. Read more on the page Right to work.

Residence permit on the basis of studies

If your employee has a residence permit for studies, he or she may work in any field for a maximum of 30 hours per week on average. Read more about the residence permit for studies.

Other residence permits

How to verify an employee’s right to work

Check that your employee has the right to work in Finland.

If your employee has applied for temporary protection

To verify your employee’s right to work, check your employee’s residence permit card or the certificate of a pending application that the police or a border authority gave your employee when he or she applied for temporary protection.

If your employee has a certificate for seasonal work

To verify your employee’s right to work, check his or her certificate for seasonal work. The certificate states the time period when the employee is allowed to do seasonal work.

If your employee has some other residence permit

To verify your employee’s right to work, check the residence permit card or the residence permit decision. They will state what type of right to work your employee has.

The right to work may be unrestricted or restricted to certain fields of work. See the page Right to work for information about what type of right to work the holders of a certain residence permit have.

If your employee has applied for asylum but not for temporary protection

An asylum seeker's right to work is based on Finland's Aliens Act. Under the act, an employee does not need a certificate of the right to work. You can ask about your employee’s right to work by sending an email to the Finnish Immigration Service. See further instructions on the page Information about the right to work.

If you employ someone who has applied for an extended permit

Asking about your employee’s right to work by sending an email to the Finnish Immigration Service

You can ask whether your employee’s right to work is valid by sending an email to the Finnish Immigration Service. The service is free of charge.

See the instructions on the page Information about the right to work.

Employer’s obligations

As an employer, you also have the following responsibilities:

To meet the obligations of an employer.
To ensure that a foreign employee you hire has the necessary skills and competence needed for the job.
To ensure that a foreign employee you hire has the right to reside and work in Finland.
To ensure that your employees’ terms of employment comply with Finnish legislation and the applicable collective agreement.
To ensure that information on all foreign employees you have hired and on the tasks that they have been performing is available at the workplace for inspection by occupational safety and health authorities. For more information on what data needs to be stored, see the website of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in Finland (tyosuojelu.fi).
To inform the shop steward, the elected representative and the occupational safety and health representative of the foreign employee’s name and the applicable collective agreement.

Submit an employee announcement

An employer who hires a foreign national must submit an employee announcement when employing a person who is not an EU citizen or comparable person or is not a family member of such person.

However, an employee announcement is not needed if the employer will submit, or already has submitted, the employee’s terms of employment in connection with the employee’s work-based residence permit application.

Read more on the website of the TE Office.

Enter Finland for Employers

When an employee of yours is applying for a residence permit on the basis of work, you need to supplement the employee's application by filling in the terms of employment.

Fill in the terms of employment online in Enter Finland for Employers.
If you cannot use Enter Finland for some reason, fill in a paper form. Depending on the type of employment, you will need to fill in either the Terms of employment form or, in the case of seasonal work, the form TY6_plus.

See the page Enter Finland for Employers for user instructions.

Read more about how to fill in the terms of employment.

The employee’s right to work ends if an incomplete application for temporary protection leads to an expiry decision or a negative decision

The processing of an application for temporary protection will end if the applicant does not provide all the information that is required for a decision and for a residence permit card. We will then issue an expiry decision or a negative decision due to missing information. In such a case, your employee’s right to work on the basis of temporary protection will end on the day when the decision is served on him or her.

If your employee has applied for temporary protection but has not received a decision within 2 weeks of submitting the application, it is likely that some necessary information is missing from the application. Usually, this information is the address where the employee is currently living, or a photograph. If possible, please remind your employees to send the required information to the Finnish Immigration Service.

We need the correct address to make a decision

Your employees must always ensure that the Finnish Immigration Service knows their current addresses. Your employees must send their exact address details to the Finnish Immigration Service as soon as their address changes or if they have stated your company’s address as their address without including your company’s name in the address details. If an employee has stated your company’s address as his or her address, the employee must also state the name of your company, such as the name of your farm, as part of the address so that letters will reach the right place and recipient.

If your employees are reception centre clients, they must tell their own reception centre their current postal addresses. If an employee of yours is not registered as a client in a reception centre or does not know in which reception centre he or she is a client, the employee should send his or her address details to the Finnish Immigration Service. In that case, your employee must send his or her address details by encrypted email to migri@migri.fi using the Finnish Immigration Service’s securemail.migri.fi service.

See the page Temporary protection for more detailed instructions on how your employee should notify us of his or her current address.

How to send a photo

When the police or the border control authorities register an application for temporary protection, they usually take a photo of the applicant. However, sometimes no photo has been added to the application or the photo that was taken does not meet the quality requirements. If an applicant’s photograph is missing from the application, we will ask the applicant to visit a photo shop to have their passport photo taken. We will ask the applicant to send the photograph retrieval code to the Finnish Immigration Service. The photo shop will give your employee the photograph retrieval code when the photo is taken. The code consists of 7 characters. The photo shop will charge your employee a fee for the passport photo.

If your employee is a reception centre client, the Finnish Immigration Service will request the photograph retrieval code through the reception centre.
If your employee is not registered as a reception centre client, the Finnish Immigration Service will request the photograph retrieval code by letter directly from the applicant. We will need your employee’s current address so that we can send him or her the letter, and later, the decision and the residence permit card.

The request will state the date by which your employee must send the photograph retrieval code. It is very important that we receive the photograph retrieval code for the passport photo by the date we have stated in the request so that we can issue a decision on the application. Otherwise, the processing of the application will end.

Processing of application will end if we do not receive the necessary information

If your employee does not send us the information that we are requesting, we will issue an expiry decision or a negative decision on the employee’s application for temporary protection.
Ukrainian citizens are allowed to stay within the European Union area for 90 days without a visa. We will issue an expiry decision or a negative decision if we have not received the required information and when at least 90 days have passed since your employee applied for temporary protection.

If we cannot notify your employee of the decision because we do not have his or her current address, we will use service by publication. Each week, we publish on the page Service by publication a list of customer numbers to whom we have not been able to deliver a decision. The list is available on the page for 37 days. If you or your employee find your employee’s customer number on the list, your employee can call the service number mentioned on the list and ask for further details.

Your employee has the right to apply for temporary protection again if necessary.

Any questions? Call the Finnish Immigration Service’s service number for Ukraine-related questions: 0295 790 605. The number is open from Monday to Friday at 8.30–12.00.