Frequently asked questions

The Children’s Day at Work is usually held on World Children’s Day in November. However, arrangements for organising the theme day are always made based on a separate agreement during the previous spring. Meanwhile, the Children’s Rights Week is held every November in the week of the World Children’s Day, around 20 November.

So check your calendar to see when the next World Children’s Day takes place and tentatively book the Friday of that week. If the date has been set, you can always find it on the front page.

The purpose of the theme day is to promote family-friendliness at workplaces and better consideration of different family situations at workplaces on the one hand, and children’s right to participate and be seen on the other. Not only is family-friendliness an asset affecting the reputation of workplaces but also an attraction and retention factor that contributes to improving well-being at work and increasing commitment to the employer. It may even reduce employees’ sickness absences.

The Children’s Day at Work is organised annually during the Children’s Rights Week, and one of its objectives is to raise awareness of the rights and inclusion of the child. Children are part of our society and deserve to know and feel it. It can be difficult at times for children to understand what exactly happens at work. The Children’s Day at Work theme day provides them with an opportunity to learn about working life and the different jobs adults have.

As a bonus, the theme day brings joy and shared moments of happiness to children and adults!

The aim of the theme day is not to organise separate help with childcare at the workplace or to provide outsourced entertainment to the children while adults do their work. The goal is to give children an opportunity to get to know what kind of work is done at workplaces – at least in some way that is appropriate for them.

There are lots of opportunities! The goal is to allow children to familiarise themselves with the workplace and adult professions in some way that is appropriate for them. During the day, you can organise any action-based and participatory activities for children: a special meeting or an opportunity to participate in adults’ work or, for example, a presentation of the work that is done at your workplace. The activities organised for children in previous years have included crafts related to the industry of the workplace, job simulations or trying out different work tasks in a manner that is appropriate for the child, as well as workshops and brainstorming sessions. The more participatory the activities, the better!

Click here for ideas and materials. You can also find lots of good ideas from previous years on social media with the hashtag #LapsetMukaanTöihin.

The employer determines the limits set for the theme day at your specific workplace. During the Children’s Day at Work, the adults who brought the children to the workplace are always responsible for the children.

There is no age limit for the Children’s Day at Work. Instead, we would like to offer children of all ages an equal opportunity to participate. You can plan the activities based on the children’s age levels and offer things to do for different age groups. Everyone aged under 18 is a child.

A young person who has turned 18 may also participate if the workplace organising the theme day and the young person’s possible educational institution or workplace agree to it. Young people may have valuable perspectives to share with your workplace. However, the Children’s Day at Work is primarily intended for minor children.

Yes, but their guardians must agree on the matter and submit an appropriate absence notification to the school or day-care centre.

Any workplace that wishes to provide an opportunity for children to get to know working life and work can participate in the theme day. If the nature of the work carried out at the workplace does not enable participation or the work is dangerous for children, the workplace may, for example, send a representative to a local school to talk about the work or arrange a joint session for children in a school hall or break room.

If you intend to bring children to the workplace, you must always agree on it with your employer beforehand. Each organisation decides whether it participates and knows best whether children can participate and how this can be arranged. When planning theme day activities, the workplace must make sure they are appropriate for the workplace environment.

Participating in the event does not oblige the organisation to do anything. You can organise as many activities as you like. The Children’s Day at Work day does not have to be an all-day event. Instead, each organisation determines how children’s participation is organised and how long the activities take place – for example, they can only take an hour. Our website contains ideas for organising the theme day.

The child you bring to the workplace does not have to be yours. Your family member or friend may have a child who cannot participate in their parent’s work day. Could you invite them to visit your workplace?

We also encourage cooperation with a local school or day-care centre. For example, you can visit a group of children to talk about your job and profession. If you cannot make it there in person, the visit can be carried out as a remote meeting or a video message, for example.

We encourage workplaces to collaborate with local schools and day-care centres on the Children’s Day at Work. The workplace can invite groups of children to visit, hear children’s views about their industry or send an employee to a school or day-care centre to talk about work done at the workplace. Children have also participated in the theme day by visiting the workplaces of other close adults, such as their godparents or adults in families they know. If you cannot make it there in person, the visit can be carried out as a remote meeting or a video message, for example.

Schools can participate in the Children’s Day at Work theme day, for example by providing children and young people an opportunity to plan lessons or interview school staff. See the Children’s Rights Week website for tips about how schools can participate in Finnish or Swedish: Children’s Day at Work at schools – Children’s Rights Week (in Finnish).

We highly recommend that you pay attention to diverse participants of different ages and backgrounds when organising the theme day activities. The Children’s Day at Work event can be a particularly important experience for a child with special needs, and we hope that as many workplaces and adults as possible enable the participation of all kinds of children in the theme day. The Children’s Day at Work can provide an excellent opportunity for the entire work community to learn about the special needs and diversity of children as well as the different aspects of their colleagues’ lives.

Ultimately, the person who brought the child to work is responsible for the safety and participation of the child. If a child needs special supervision for some reason, you should disclose this to your employer in advance and agree on related practices.

The theme day may temporarily reduce productivity if this is measured mechanically by the number of outputs produced each day. However, a child-friendly and family-friendly society serves as the foundation for well-being at work and job satisfaction. By taking families into consideration better, workplaces are most likely to get more committed employees with better well-being, which also makes them more productive. So the idea is the same as that for theme days for improving well-being at work.

Nearly 40% of families have children. As a result, family friendliness is a significant attraction and retention factor for workplaces. It can improve well-being at work and thus also improve productivity in the long run.

The Children’s Day at Work does not have to be an all-day event: you can adapt the schedule to suit your organisation and its work pace.

By signing up, workplaces get to promote family-friendliness, get to know more about their employees’ life situations, increase a sense of community, and hear children’s fresh takes on things and ideas related to matters at the workplace. By participating, you can also support social responsibility, such as equality, the rights of the child and well-being at work. By signing up, the name of your organisation will be added to our website, which allows you to also show others that these are the things your workplace stands behind.

The day can also be organised at another time, but it is easier on a jointly agreed date. In addition to the shared theme day, workplaces can also provide their employees with different opportunities for family involvement, but as a nationwide event, the Children’s Day at Work is the most effective way to bring visibility to a child-friendly and family-friendly working life, increase a sense of community and enable children’s involvement. The designated national date also facilitates making any necessary exceptional arrangements in schools and day-care centres and helps them cooperate with workplaces.

To make the day as effective and smooth as possible, we have compiled a set of tips and materials on the event website that help you make arrangements on the theme day. When you sign up through the site, we, as the organisers, will know how many people participate in the theme day and will be able to assess whether the theme day is still worth organising.

Since 2016, the Children’s Day at Work has been organised jointly by the Office of the Ombudsman for Children and the Central Union for Child Welfare.