SLIM

SLIM stands for "Subsidy for learning and developing within SMEs". The arrangement offers subsidy for retraining your employees. Entrepeneurs can benefit from reduced costs for creating a positive learning culture within their company.

SLIM does not subsidize external courses or educations!

SLIM is meant for SMEs, large companies within the agricultural, recreation and catering sectors, and collaborations between at least two SMEs. Activities that copntribute to a positive learning culture are eligible for SLIM.

You conduct one of the following activities:

1. Review of the company: changes in the market can lead to uncertainty in the company. During a review, your entire company undergoes a scan to discover the company's health. This is compared to the ideal, which begets an education- or development plan for the company. This development plan will show what the training needs of the employees are.

2. Career or development advice: learning your life long is easier said than done. How can you grow and develop in during your career? What wishes, possibilities and ambitions do you have? Which skills strengthen my position in the job market? You can help answer these questions by offeringing career or development advice to your employees. Trajectories such as these often beget a personal development plan, with which you can help your employees achieve their goals.

3. Initiatives aimed at methods that stimulate employee development: in order to make "learning and development" a fixed theme in businesses, the SLIM subsidy bets on development or introduction of methods that strengthen a learning culture. There are multiple ways to embed learning and development into an organisation, such as:

• Setting up and implementing methods redarding periodic development talks and evaluations with the help of experts and online tools.

• Setting up an elearning portal to familiarise your employees with new soft and hard skills.

• Developing a training program in the form of a business school to make new and current employees to do a study. Training costs are excluded.

• Deployment of an employee as a learning- and company ambassador, when your SME doesn't have HR personnel.

The SLIM subsidy reimburses between 60 and 80% of the eligible costs. For each application, the maximum subsidy amount is €25.000 for SME entrepeneurs and €20.000 for SMEs in the agricultural sector. Large companies in the catering industry or recreation sector can apply for €200.000 per application and partnerships (with at least 2 SMEs) can apply for €500.000 per application.