Shortage in the labour market?

Reinforcement in the workplace!

Trendhuis wants to help solve a problem in our labour market by inviting more people with a disability on the work floor and wants to do so through the Welcome2Work project. Statbel’s statistics indicated that in 2020 only 40.8% of people between the ages of 20 and 64 with a disability had a job in Belgium. But we are slowly but surely improving as this was only 38,5% in 2017. The statistics are slightly better in Flanders: Here 46% of 20 to 64 year olds with a disability were employed in 2020. However, we are still behind the Netherlands, where 58.5% of working age people with a disability had a job in 2017.

Welcome2Work targets Flemish employers to solve this shortage in the labour market because people with a disability often have specific talents and can rarely use them. That is why Trendhuis made an e-platform aimed at employers and their employees. There you will find an inspirational guide for employers, an (online) empathy game, a handy checklist, and even the option to organise an internship in the workplace based on a candidate’s talents.

The inspirational guide is filled with stories from employers about their experiences hiring and integrating a coworker with a disability. You will also find practical tips and nifty links to a helping hand there. The empathy game serves to give HR-managers, leaders, and co-workers another perspective on the hiring process of a candidate with a disability. Together they will search for advantages and solutions. The checklist is a short, crystal clear overview of all the things you have to keep in mind when hiring someone with a disability. The internship makes use of the talent scan “TestYourTalent”. This way, people with a disability are given the opportunity to take an internship based on their talents in an actual company. The match between company and internee is based upon the talents of the latter and the needs of the former.

“We want to encourage employers to think about hiring someone with a disability during further recruitments,” says Nathalie Bekx, Trendhuis’ CEO. “The focus lies on individual competences and talents. We want to lower the existing threshold and help make innovative forms of integration into the labour market commonplace.”

With the support of the European Social Fund, Trendhuis was able to develop and test the project between 2018 and 2021. They did so together with partners from the social economy, VDAB, GTB, and partner organisations from Bulgaria and Lithuania. Are you interested in these tools? Or do you want to organise an internship for a candidate? Please take a look at our website (www.welcome2work.be) or contact us (nathalie.bekx@trendhuis.be)