Financial support for going back to work

Yes. You can get partial sickness allowance. This means that you work normally part of the time, and the rest of the time you are on sick leave. You may be entitled to partial sickness allowance if you are going back to work after a serious illness, an accident or, for example, an operation. You can also get partial sickness allowance if you have a long-term illness, such as depression or rheumatoid arthritis.
 
You may also get partial sickness allowance if you shorten your working hours because of lowered capacity for work. In this case, your part-time working hours as an employee or a self-employed person may be 40–60% of the normal working hours.
 
The amount of the partial sickness allowance is one half of the usual sickness allowance.

You can get it for 150 days at most, and the aim is that you can go back to full-time work.

Kela may grant extra days after your sick leave. When you have been at work for 30 days, you can get sickness allowance for another 50 days. After this, you have to be able to work for at least a year before you can get sickness allowance again for the same illness.

Yes. If you are an employee or a self-employed person, you can get a partial disability pension if your ability to work is not good but you can still work part time. The condition for getting a pension is that the illness has reduced your capacity for work by at least 40%.
 
You can apply for a partial disability pension when you are still at work. If the pension is given granted to you, you have nine months to consider whether or not to take to pension.

The amount of partial disability pension is one half of the full pension. If your partial disability pension is given to you for a fixed term, it is called partial rehabilitation allowance.

If you are an unemployed jobseeker, you can apply for a partial disability pension, in addition to which you can work part time.

Yes. If Kela so decides, it can pay you rehabilitation assistance when you take to a job or a work placement where you get paid clearly less than before when you come back to work after sick leave or rehabilitation. The maximum amount of rehabilitation assistance is the same as the rehabilitation allowance, and you pay tax on it.

No. Your employer must be ready to make reasonable arrangements to support you when you return to work. An employer with many employees and work tasks may offer you part-time work. The employer has no obligation to do so.

The employer may receive a subsidy from the TE Office for rearranging working conditions when you go back to work. This subsidy will allow an employer to get new tools or furniture, make changes to a workstation, or hire another employee to supplement your work because you cannot work full time.

Yes. When you are on a full disability pension, you can earn at most 40% of the normal average of the pay you used to get. It is based on your earnings during the last five years before you went on a disability pension.

If this 40% is less than EUR 922,42, you may earn at most this amount, and you still get your full disability pension. If you earn more, your full disability pension may be replaced by a partial disability pension. Contact the institution that pays your pension.

You can try going back to part or full time work at any time. In this case, you can work for at least three months and at most two years, and then go back on a disability pension if you need to.