Job market

Programme

Nuon aims to help unemployed youngsters find work and thereby develop a diversity of latent employment potential for the future, providing a permanent contribution by offering these youngsters relevant education and coaching as well as work experience. This enables the participants to take a major step towards economic independence. Nuon takes its social responsibility and through the Step2Work project commits itself to reducing youth unemployment. 

Step2Work started in August 2006. In a period of three years 300 unemployed youngsters with a disadvantage on the labour market will gain a one-year work experience placement. During that time the youngsters will also be obliged to follow a nationally recognised vocational education course appropriate to the work experience placement. In this combination of work and education every participant is constantly coached by specially trained Nuon employees. 

After completing the work experience placement the chance of obtaining a job inside or outside Nuon will have improved demonstrably, since the participant will have acquired work experience and followed a nationally recognised vocational education course. Wherever necessary the participant is given job application training so that he/she can look for his/her next job.

Participants

Step2Work recruits specifically for the work experience placement and cooperates for this purpose with municipal councils, CWIs and DWIs and reintegration agencies. Candidates aged from 18 to around 30 are recruited who have not completed their education or whose educational level is too low to be able to enter the employment market. To be eligible to participate they must have been registered as jobseekers for at least six months. 

Step2Work is open to specific target groups such as refugees and those with an occupational handicap and keeps in touch with institutions such as the Emplooi foundation and Heliomare.

Our commitment

Taking the greying of the population into consideration, it is important that the potential labour market capacity is developed, because only then can enough people become and remain available in the future.

The existence of youth unemployment, which in the Netherlands manifests itself in various groupings in society such as unskilled workers, immigrants, early school leavers without a diploma and those with a mental or physical handicap, is alarming from an economic and social standpoint. In particular, unskilled youngsters find it hard or impossible to obtain a permanent job, in spite of an improvement in the economic situation. Therefore the government, through the Task Force for Youth Unemployment, and employers’ organisations and trade unions have called on industry to make an effort to tackle youth unemployment in this country.