Changing holiday bonus into free time

When you agree about changing your holiday bonus into free time, follow these instructions. If your collective agreement has other rules, follow them.

• Talk to your employer (your supervisor) about changing the bonus into free time.
• Make a written agreement with your supervisor. You can use the forms here (links on this page).
• The agreement must have this information:
• How the holiday bonus is changed into free time
  • The information that the number of free hours in each calendar week is the same as the number of weekly working hours in your work contract
  • When you will have the free time
  • The information that the free time will be counted as working time when counting your right to other free time:
    • when counting your annual free days (vuosivapaat) and annual holiday (vuosiloma)
    • when counting your overtime (ylityö) and extra work (lisätyö), and the pay you get for them
  • The information that if you get sick, the rules of the Annual Holidays Act (Vuosilomalaki) will be used.

Counting your free time

One way of counting the free time you will get is this: the agreed holiday bonus sum is divided by your hourly wages. The result will be the number of hours that you will have free. When the free time is counted like this, it must be taken between Monday and Friday.

Another way of counting the free time is this: the number of your free days will be half of the number of annual holiday days that you have according to the Annual Holidays Act. For example, if you change the holiday bonus for 24 holiday days into free time, you will get 12 free days. This will be used between Monday and Saturday, so it means two weeks of free time.

Agreements on changing holiday bonus into free time

• Form for changing holiday bonus to free time in the Commercial sector (in Finnish)
• Form for changing holiday bonus to free time in the Hotel, Restaurant and Leisure industry (in Finnish)
• Form for changing holiday bonus to free time in other sectors (in Finnish)

Read more:

• How are the wages, holiday pay and holiday bonus paid?
• You get annual holiday days for each month that you work