Finnish Institute of Occupational Health media release, 19 October 2022
In 2020, there were 86,595 workplace accidents in Finland. This is a decrease of more than 16,000 accidents, compared with the preceding year (103,156).
“COVID-19 affected the ways of working and the amount of work and mobility. This reduced workplace accidents across many industrial sectors. However, the statistics do not yet reveal the long-term impact of remote or hybrid work,” says Database Analyst Janne Sysi-Aho from the Finnish Workers' Compensation Center.
Construction workers (11,131), personal care and health care workers (8,918) and metal, machinery and related trades workers (7,956) suffered the most workplace accidents. In all of these occupational groups, the accidents were most commonly directed at the upper extremities of the body.
In the Work-Life Knowledge service, the occupational accident data can be diversely browsed by profession, injured body part, events preceding the accident, cause of the accident and type of injury.
In addition to numbers and amounts, the charts depict the course of the events. The data has been connected into chains that can be examined with various combinations and classifications of variables. The chain model makes it clear that the most common event preceding an injury to the upper extremities of construction workers was stepping on or getting caught on a sharp object. The accident was most commonly caused by substances, supplies or equipment and the injury was most commonly caused by a cutting, coarse or sharp object.
“From the perspective of preventing accidents, it is important to be able to identify the chain of events that usually precedes accidents,” says Janne Sysi-Aho from the Finnish Workers' Compensation Center.
The Work-Life Knowledge service contains charts depicting workplace accidents between 2014 and 2020. The charts are based on the open data of the Finnish Workers' Compensation Center. The data is based on wage earner accidents at work and during working time which are compensated for by an insurance company. The total number of cases is 687,000.
View the data
- Workplace accidents | Work-life knowledge service | www.worklifedata.fi (tyoelamatieto.fi)
- The data is available in Finnish, Swedish and English.
Fore more information, please contact
- Janne Sysi-Aho, Database Analyst, Finnish Workers' Compensation Center, janne.sysi-aho [at] tvk.fi, +358 (0)404 504 232
- Pekka Varje, Research Manager, Work-Life Knowledge service of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, pekka.varje [at] ttl.fi (pekka[dot]varje[at]ttl[dot]fi), +358 (0)50 576 8236
