SuPer considers labour-based immigration in the social and healthcare sector necessary – adequate professional language skills must be ensured
SuPer regularly examines how employees are doing in the workplaces that employ our members. It is important for us to obtain an honest picture of our members’ daily working life as it truly is – not as we might wish it to be. The aim of the 2024 language skills survey was to highlight the reality of everyday work and to seek solutions to the problems that were identified.
The findings of the survey have been used in public immigration critical political debate. This has not been SuPer’s intention. SuPer considers labour based immigration necessary. In the coming years, the need for workforce in the social and healthcare sector will increase significantly.
Recently, political decision makers have highlighted shortcomings in the language skills of qualified social and healthcare professionals. These issues have, however, been known for a long time, and the points being raised now do not contain any new information.
Decision makers should now present concrete proposals for solutions. SuPer wishes to ask them: What level of language proficiency is sufficient? How should it be tested? And who will pay for it? This is also in the interest of employees with a foreign language background.
At SuPer, we have taken concrete measures, for example by providing training for multilingual work communities. We have also openly highlighted the actions that are needed both at the political level and in workplaces: Regulation and oversight are required to ensure ethical international recruitment. The state must allocate funding to secure adequate professional language skills. Employers, in turn, have the responsibility of ensuring, when recruiting, that an employee possesses the necessary professional competence – including sufficient professional language skills.
Closing the borders is not the solution. Finland will need labour based immigration – particularly in the social and healthcare sector. Nevertheless, the government’s decisions, such as redundancies and weakened staffing levels, are undermining the entire system at the same time that the shortage of nursing staff threatens to grow into the tens of thousands. When we are competing for international nurses, for example with Sweden, it is clear that only by investing in high quality language training and integration can Finland be seen as a credible and safe option.
SuPer’s message is clear: language skills have an enormous impact on client and patient safety. Language related challenges are not the fault of individual employees – they are a structural problem.
“Regulation and oversight are required to ensure ethical international recruitment.”
Päivi Inberg
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