International interest in the experiment to help immigrants find jobs

Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment

19.3.2018 14.57

News item

Minister of Labour Jari Lindström, Permanent Secretary Jari Gustafsson and European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen, accompanied by international media representatives, visited Fazer on 19 March 2018 to learn about the Integration SIB project.

The Integration SIB project aims to find employment in Finland to 2 500 immigrants in 2016–2019. The experiment combines training and employment of immigrants in a flexible way and improves the opportunities for on-the-job learning.

- What we discovered in 2015 was that our policies were not equipped well enough to answer to pressures the influx of immigrants caused. One objective is to speed up the transition to working life. Early access to the labour market is crucial in terms of the integration of immigrants”, Minister of Labour Jari Lindström says.

Permanent Secretary Jari Gustafsson fully agrees with this.
- The SIB-model is a very important pilot when seeking future solutions for employing immigrants. At its best, SIB is a win-win tool for all: immigrants find work and companies find workforce that is trained to suit their needs, he says.

The companies participating in the experiment represent sectors that have difficulties in finding workforce, such as the manufacturing industry, building, logistics and services. One of the companies that participate in this is Fazer, which operates in the food and catering sector. At the moment the project is implemented in Uusimaa and Southwest Finland, but it is to be extended to the other regions of Finland as well.

The project has aroused a great deal of interest internationally, especially due to the financing model. In the Social Impact Bond (SIB) model the investors finance the activities and bear the economic risk. A total of EUR 14.2 million has now been collected to the Integration SIB fund, which makes it the largest SIB fund in Europe in terms of the capital invested.

The European Investment Fund has invested EUR 10 million in the experiment. European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen and a group of international media representatives learned about the project as part of the InvestEU campaign.