With personnel hard to come by, employers are forced to be creative. Restaurant Het Zusje van André Dokter came up with a singular idea: anyone who agrees to work for them will have their tuition fees paid for them, in addition to a regular salary.
‘We have to accept that times are changing’, says Peter Having, the restaurant’s manager. Why spend buckets of money on a temp agency when you can just reel in potential employees with the promise of a bonus?
‘It felt like a much more personal touch’, he says, laughing. With loads of new students arriving in Groningen this month, it seemed like the perfect time. ‘I had no idea it would blow up like this, but we did get a lot of positive responses.’
Fun and spontaneous
Four days after they put their job opening online, the restaurant had already received fifty-two applications for the five positions they have. There are two requirements applicants need to meet: they have to be fun and spontaneous. ‘Anything else, we can teach them’, says Havinga. ‘But since the whole thing is such a success, we have the luxury of finding people who’ll really fit in.’
The chosen few will get a contract for a year for twelve hours a week, and the two-thousand-euro bonus will be paid out in monthly instalments. ‘They’ll get 166 euros a month, earning their tuition fees retroactively’, says Havinga.
What if they fail their probation period, or they want to leave before the year is up? ‘No hard feelings. They’ll still receive the bonus for every month that they work here.’