You recruit a strategic employee? You receive €25,000!

The entrepreneur who wishes to realise his/her ambitions for growth by renewing his/her activities or focusing on foreign markets often needs to recruit someone who possesses the necessary knowhow. Because the growth of our SMEs is necessary for the Flemish economy, the entrepreneur in question can receive a subsidy up to €25,000 for this strategic recruitment.

“The new force”

This strategic profile, for whom the organisation can receive a subsidy, must be a third party from the perspective of the organisation. This means that the person may never have worked in, cannot have any financial ties with or fulfil a boardroom role at the organisation submitting the application. The reason for recruitment must be that what characterises the recruit is that he/she possesses knowledge that the organisation could not previously possess. Due to this last fact, he/she is involved in strategic decision-making, and not simply tasked with an executive role within the organisation.

An organisation that wishes to reinvent itself must allow itself and its employee time to adjust. Therefore, the strategic employee must be in service of the organisation for a minimum of one year before the organisation can receive the entire subsidy sum to assist in the financing of the gross labour costs of the new strategic employee. In order to be eligible for the subsidy amount, the recruitment must take place in the month following the moment that the subsidy request was submitted. Only after employment of at least six months, the organisation can receive the starting sum of €12,500. After the first six months of employment, this amount is increased every month to reach the maximum subsidy amount of €25,000 after one year of employment.

Your administrative effort

Your subsidy application must be conducted digitally and include a project description of the planned growth of your organisation as well as the documentation relating to the recruitment in question.

In the project description, the entrepreneur must express his/her vision on economic growth as concretely as possible (please indicate revenue, number of employees, possible investments). Within this economic growth, a tipping point must also be situated at which point the organisation will move from its current to its new business practices. The project description must also indicate that the organisation wishes to realise its growth in a well-founded manner; taking into account all aspects of economic growth and showing how growth will be guaranteed after the subsidy period. The necessity of the knowledge in question and the fact that the new recruit will be capable of delivering this knowledge must be shown. In addition to this project description, the request must be accompanied by a vacancy notice with both a profile and task description, and a future organigram of the organisation in which a place is reserved for the new force. If your dossier is complete and has been deemed admissible, you will be invited to the Agency for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (Agentschap Ondernemen en Innoveren) where you must give further clarification of the described growth trajectory and are subjected to a question round.

Click on this link (only in dutch) to continue to the online application form.