Accident prevention is primarily the employer’s responsibility. Employers must ensure that all work equipment provided for their employees is safe to use and teach their employees to follow safe procedures.

Prevention is crucial for mitigating the consequences of accidents. All hazards in the workplace must be identified and their impact on health assessed. It is the employer’s responsibility to carry out systematic and comprehensive risk assessments that also take into account potential accidents, faults and special circumstances.

There are a range of tools available for managing occupational safety risks. External experts can also be consulted if necessary.

There are always lessons to be learnt from accidents and close calls. It is therefore important to analyse each incident and communicate the findings to employees.

Emergency planning

It is the employer’s responsibility to ensure that adequate first aid can be administered in the workplace. Employees must be shown the correct responses in the event of an emergency so that losses can be minimised. The scope of the instruction needed depends on the nature of the work and the working conditions.

Every workplace must have adequate first-aid supplies for dealing with the most typical accidents associated with the work. First-aid supplies must be easily accessible and their location clearly indicated. Workplaces where particularly dangerous work is performed may also need to have a designated area for administering first aid.

Reporting serious occupational accidents to occupational safety and health authorities

There is a special form for reporting occupational accidents to occupational safety and health authorities.

For more information, see
Permits and notifications: Reporting serious occupational accidents (in Finnish)
Occupational health and accidents: Occupational accidents