In the past, training grants for employees were poorly understood by the human resources departments of companies. This is no longer the case. In fact, there are more and more public subsidies in terms of training grants, allowing employees to follow distant or face-to-face training while continuing to benefit from their status within the company.
Understanding training grants
According to a study on subsidies, companies spend about 3% of their payroll on training their employees. In fact, this percentage represents the legal minimum for this type of training. However, this varies greatly depending on the size of the company. For companies with fewer than 10 employees, the rate is set at 0.55%, compared to 1.5% for companies with 10 to 19 employees and 1.6% for companies with more than 20 employees. In any case, companies will need funds to finance the training of their employees. This is also known as subsidies. Fortunately, several schemes exist to enable companies to obtain these funds and subsequently give the majority of their employees the chance to train in order to develop their profession.
How to collect grants?
The first solution available to structures is to apply to the Approved Organisations run jointly by Employers and Unions/ Organismes Paritaires Collecteurs Agrées or OPCA. These organisations are the ones that regulate their sector of activity. They are free to determine the rules for awarding grants. These concerns, among other things, the amount of funding, the reimbursement to the company, but also the duration of the actions are considered to be priorities. It is therefore the OPCA that determines the number of applications that organisations can submit at the beginning of the year, in proportion to their workforce. This organisation generally gives priority to employees over 40 who have been active for more than 20 years.
What are the solutions for large projects?
For companies wishing to carry out large-scale projects, particularly for the collective plan, the simplest solution would be to apply to the region, the State or Europe. Since the subsidies requested could be quite high, these bodies are better placed to offer them. By the way, the state can cover up to 20-80% of the amount requested by the companies. For the record, this is the most advisable solution for organisations that plan to offer heavy training to their employees. In this case, the programmes may require a larger budget of up to thousands of euros.