Have you lost your job due to Covid-19 or are you a new graduate looking for experience? If you are struggling to find work in Ireland, then we have some information to share with you that might help.
Under the government’s Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS), the state helps businesses, who have seen their turnover drop by more than 30%, with payroll costs. Provided the employer pays an employee €203 or more per week the scheme will refund the employer €203. So in essence, if an eligible company employs someone on a part-time basis for €203 it doesn’t cost them anything.
Most business owners who are eligible for the scheme are under a huge amount of pressure and stress due to the pandemic. The last thing on their mind is hiring more people. But there is a huge opportunity being missed for finding work in Ireland.
Rather than wait for these businesses to survive the pandemic, reach out to them now and offer your skills illustrating how you can help them. Contact your local pub, hotel, travel agency and offer your skills and help for free.
The EWSS scheme does not dictate how many hours you have to work to be paid the €203. So if you are experienced and normally work at a higher hourly rate such as €30 per hour, you can simply work 7 hours for a company.
Secondly, there is no limit to the number of companies you can work for. You could work seven hours per week for four different eligible companies earning you a gross income of €812 per week.
Here is another scenario. You have two restaurants in Dublin who normally compete with each other. They both have three waiters who work a 40 hour week at €10.15 per hour. Both business owners are considering letting a waiter go each due to the second lockdown in Dublin. Rather than let any of their waiting staff go, both restaurants could employ all 6 waiters for 20 hours each and not only reduce their wage costs but eliminate them altogether.
At Earth’s Edge, we have used the pandemic to work on the business. While we are all devastated we are not away climbing big mountains this year, the number of improvements we have made has been phenomenal. We are a much leaner business now. One of the areas we identified as a weakness was digital marketing. We have upskilled massively in the area over the last 6 months. And this week we hired two very talented people as paid interns to help with digital video and SEM.
As a business owner or someone out of work my message to you is quite simple. We are living through the greatest change the world has seen since WWII. Don’t sit back and wait to see what happens, make it happen yourself.
