Employers’ obligation to notify the occupational safety and health authority of an employee’s death during a voyage was expanded on 1 July 2024. Now, an employee’s death has to be reported to the occupational safety and health authority in addition to the next of kin.

Under Chapter 13, section 12 of the Seafarers’ Employment Contracts Act, if an employee dies during a voyage, the employer must notify the employee’s next of kin and the occupational safety and health authority of the employee’s death without delay. The occupational safety and health authority must be informed of the circumstances resulting in the death if they are known to the employer, alongside any other information available about the event of death requested by the occupational safety and health authority.

The employer’s notification obligation applies to an employee’s death during a voyage regardless of the cause. The notification obligation does not apply to situations where an employee dies while taking time off, is on annual leave, family leave or laid off, or offboard the vessel for some other similar reason.

If an employee’s death has been caused by an occupational accident, the employer must also comply with the obligations laid down in section 46 of the Act on Occupational Safety and Health Enforcement and Cooperation on Occupational Safety and Health at Workplaces. For more information on reporting an occupational accident, visit the Serious occupational accident page.

Employee’s death is reported with free-form notification

The employer must notify an employee’s death to the regional occupational safety and health authority. The correct occupational safety and health authority depends on the registered office of the company. See the Contact information page for the contact details. If the operating region of a company is unclear, the notification can be submitted to the registry of the Occupational Safety and Health Division of the Regional State Administrative Agency for Southwestern Finland.

If you submit the notification via email, it is recommended that you use the secure email of the regional state administrative agency. Use secure email at least for sending documents with confidential or otherwise sensitive data. For more detailed instructions, see the instructions for sending secure email to the regional state administrative agency (pdf, in Finnish).

What information should be recorded in the notification

The occupational safety and health authority has to be informed of the circumstances leading to death if they are known to the employer. The employer has to state how the death came to the employer’s attention and what kind of observations may have been made when the deceased person was found.

The following information should be included in the notification:

• information on the type of death (accident, medical emergency, other)
• information on the type of vessel and its gross tonnage
• information on where the death occurred (at sea, in port, at anchorage) and
• information on the seafarer’s gender, age, professional status and department.