Intreo Employer Services
Work with Intreo to meet your recruitment needs.
Are you struggling to source skilled talent into your business?
Attracting and retaining skilled labour is an ongoing issue for companies across all sectors. Businesses in Ireland and internationally are operating in an extremely tight labour market where employers are competing fiercely for new employees. In support, the Department of Social Protection is providing details on the Intreo offers that are available to help you build your workforce.
In a nutshell, Intreo offers a range of supports to reduce recruitment and salary costs and to build new talent pipelines.
Intreo Services for Employers
Pathways to Work, the Irish government’s national employment services strategy, sets out the national framework for labour activation and employment. It commits Intreo, Ireland’s public employment service, to work with employers to assist in labour supply. Intreo also encourages the recruitment of unemployed jobseekers, in addition to other clients who are in receipt of welfare payments.
Intreo Employer Relations Teams
Intreo has a dedicated Employer Relations Team to support employers across the country at every stage of the recruitment process. They can help you to post your job vacancies on www.jobsireland.ie - Intreo’s free online job advertising vacancy posting and jobs matching service for employers and job seekers. These job vacancies are presented to registered jobseekers and are also uploaded to the EURES jobs portal, so they are visible across the EU/EEA, giving your job vacancies greater visibility. The Intreo Employer Relations Team also run tailored recruitment campaigns for sector or specific roles and organises recruitment events, large job fairs and information roadshows.
Financial incentives
There are financial employment supports available to companies to develop new talent pipelines, such as the JobsPlus recruitment subsidy and Wage Subsidy Scheme for Persons with a Disability. These schemes can provide valuable support for businesses looking to attract new workers and manage wage overheads.
1. JobsPlus
JobsPlus (www.jobsplus.ie) encourages and rewards employers who recruit certain welfare clients. It includes those who have been unemployed and on the Live Register for a period, those parenting alone in receipt of One Parent Family Payment and jobseekers with refugee status. Depending on the age of the new recruit and the time they have been unemployed, employers can receive from €7,500 to €10,000 over 2 years directly into their bank account (that’s €312.50 to €416.66 each month)
2. Work Placement Experience Programme (WPEP)
Where jobseekers don’t have the immediate skills that you need in your business, but they have the right motivation, employers can use the Work Placement Experience Programme (www.gov.ie/WPEP) to host a trainee for 6 months. Over these six months, you pay them nothing, but the jobseeker continues to receive their usual welfare entitlements with an attractive increase so that it is broadly equal to minimum levels of pay. Then you help them to build skills and experience and gain accredited training in the sector for 30 hours per week over the six months.
3. Wage Subsidy Scheme
To drive a more inclusive labour force and promote much needed new opportunities for work among job seekers with disabilities, the Department of Social Protection provides the Wage Subsidy Scheme for Persons with Disabilities (WSS).
This scheme is easy to use and provides financial support to employers in the private sector to recruit a person with disability or to pay towards the costs of accommodations necessary to retain a person with a disability.
The subsidy for employers under WSS is structured under three separate strands. Further details on this scheme, and the three strands, are detailed in the WSS document.
EURES
EURES is the European network of employment services covering all EU countries as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland (see www.gov.ie/EURES). This free service helps employers who are having difficulties recruiting to broaden their talent search. EURES advisors, who operate within the Intreo Employer Relations team, specialise in advising on advertising vacancies on the EURES Jobs Mobility Portal and offer tailored European recruitment campaigns. EURES Ireland aims to capitalise on Ireland’s unique selling point as the main native English-speaking country in the EU which can enhance a jobseekers’ career prospects.
Subsidies from the Department of Social Protection to support the recruitment of jobseekers with disabilities.
In Ireland, only one out of three persons with disabilities has a job, one of the lowest proportions in Europe and the OECD area. At the same time, more than one out of ten Irish adults receive a disability payment, including many young people. This is one of the highest shares in OECD countries.
To drive a more inclusive labour force and promote much needed new opportunities for work among job seekers with disabilities, the Department of Social Protection provides the Wage Subsidy Scheme for Persons with Disabilities (WSS).
This scheme is easy to use and provides financial support to employers in the private sector to recruit a person with disability or to pay towards the costs of accommodations necessary to retain a person with a disability.
The subsidy for employers under WSS is structured under three separate strands, but companies can benefit under more than one strand simultaneously.
Strand 1: Wage Subsidy Payment
Sometimes a disability can restrict an employee's productivity compared to other staff, regardless of their ability to do a job. In this case, Strand 1 of the Wage Subsidy Scheme makes up the shortfall in productivity directly to the employer when the employer employs the worker with a disability for between 21 and 39 hours per week and pays them accordingly.
The Department of Social Protection (DSP), the employer and the employee must agree on the productivity shortfall.
Strand 1 grants are based on the employee’s level of work productivity and the number of hours worked. The employer pays the employee the going rate for the job. Where there is an employee with a disability whose productivity is assessed as being below 80% of normal performance, the maximum annual subsidy would be €12,776 per annum based on a 39-hour week.
This translates to a subsidy of €6.30 an hour per hour worked. This is paid to the employer every four weeks directly to their bank account for as long as the worker continues to have a shortfall in productivity and remains in employment.
Strand 2: Additional Management and Supervisory Costs
Strand 2 is intended to cover the additional supervisory, management and other work-based costs which may derive from the firm’s decision to specifically employ more than two jobseekers with disabilities. This increase or “top up” amounts to a percentage top up of the wage subsidy only and will be based on the overall number of employees with disabilities employed. This payment will be made on a four-weekly basis.
Under Strand 2 grants, an employer can receive additional subsidies based on the number of additional employees with a disability on the scheme. This ranges between an additional 10% of the normal subsidy if there are 3-6 employees with disabilities (increasing the payment rate to €6.93 for each employee) up to an additional 50% if there are 23 or more employees with disabilities on the scheme in employment (increasing the payment rate to €9.45 per hour for each employee).
Strand 3: Employment Assistance Officer
Strand 3 helps employers who have 25 or more employees who are on the Wage Subsidy Scheme as a contribution towards the employment of an Employment Assistance Officer (EAO). The grant for this Strand is €30,000 per annum, per EAO employed, based on the employment of 25 employees with disabilities per month.