İŞKUR on-the-job training programme, trainees and the incentive checklist

İsmail Usta the carpenter's workshop

İsmail Usta's furniture workshop has six insured employees. Orders have increased and one more person is needed. But finding a ready-trained craftsman on the market is hard. Someone from İŞKUR called: "Would you like to train a young person through the on-the-job training programme?" The first question that came to İsmail Usta's mind was: "What does it cost me, and what am I promising in return?"

Like a test drive, but with a promise to buy

Before buying a car you take it for a test drive. The on-the-job training programme (İşbaşı Eğitim Programı, İEP for short) is also a kind of test drive for the employer: a job seeker learns the trade at your workplace for a few months, and you get to know them. The difference is this: before the drive, you promise to hire some of the participants afterwards.

What does İEP mean for the employer?

• The participant is not your employee; they are a participant in an İŞKUR programme. No employment contract is made, no payslip is produced, and the insurance registration is done by İŞKUR, not by you.
• İŞKUR pays the participant an allowance (official name zaruri gider, necessary expenses) for each day they attend. During the programme İŞKUR also pays the general health insurance and the work accident and occupational disease premiums. No wage comes out of your pocket.
• Your cost is time and effort: you assign one of your craftsmen as trainer, you have the participant work only in the trade in the contract, and you enter their attendance into İŞKUR's online system every week, by midnight on Saturday at the latest.

Who can take part?

The main rules İŞKUR has announced to employers:

• At the start of the programme and throughout it, the workplace must have at least 5 insured employees. The number of participants cannot exceed the number of employees.
• While the programme runs, your monthly number of insured employees must not fall more than 10% below the number at the start.
• The participant cannot be your first- or second-degree blood relative (mother, father, child, sibling, grandchild, grandfather, grandmother) or your spouse.
• Someone who worked insured under the same tax number in the year before the programme cannot be a participant. So you cannot take your own former employee back through İEP.
• If a participant has not received occupational health and safety training, you must give them this training, at least at the basic level, before the programme starts.
• At least 5 and at most 8 hours a day; at most 6 days and 45 hours a week. The length of the programme varies by sector: in most sectors at most 3 months, in manufacturing and IT at most 6 months.

The conclusion is clear: someone hiring their first employee cannot take part in İEP because of the 5-insured-employee condition. In the rules İŞKUR has announced to employers there is no exception for workplaces with fewer employees; ask the job and vocational counsellor at the İŞKUR provincial directorate whether this changes in future. İŞKUR's recruitment service, on the other hand, does not look at the number of employees: you can give your job advertisement to İŞKUR and ask for candidates to be referred.

What are you promising in return? The employment obligation

Since the change in January 2024 the general rule is this: when the programme ends, you hire at least 60% of the participants in the same trade, for at least 60 days and for no less than twice the length of the programme actually completed.

• The hiring must start within 30 days after the programme ends.
• If a person you hired leaves before the obligation period is over, you must take on a suitable person in their place within 30 days.
• You notify the İŞKUR provincial directorate of the hiring within 60 days of the start date.

Example: İsmail Usta runs a 3-month programme with one participant. When the programme ends, he has to hire that young person for at least 6 months (twice 3 months). During these 6 months the young person is a normal employee: contract, employment start notification, payroll, premiums. So İEP is not a free worker; it is a promise of a real hire afterwards.

By joining the programme, you accept the administrative and financial sanctions that will apply if you do not follow the rules; the details are written in İŞKUR's regulation and in the contract. Before signing the contract, ask in writing which sanctions there are, and keep the answer.

For the person you hire after İEP, an SGK incentive such as the youth and women employment incentive may open up; ask your mali müşavir (accountant) in particular how the programme affects the "uninsured in the last 6 months" condition.

Vocational high school students and apprentices, briefly

Under Vocational Education Law No. 3308, vocational high school students and apprentices of vocational education centres (MESEM) can receive training at a business under a contract made with the school.

• You pay the student a wage. The wage has a lower limit in the law; it is set as a percentage of the net minimum wage, and the rate varies with the workplace's number of employees.
• Part of this wage may be refunded to the employer by the state.
• This wage paid to the student is exempt from tax (3308 art. 25).
• As a rule the student's work accident and occupational disease insurance premium is paid not by you but by the school or the public body it is attached to. No long-term (pension) insurance premium is paid.
• The training at the business is carried out by a master trainer or training staff; the school tells you who can do this job.

The rates and the state contribution have changed often. Ask the school's coordinating teacher and your mali müşavir for the current amount.

Incentive checklist: ask before hiring

Use this list together with the checklist before hiring.

In the end İsmail Usta applied for one participant. In the last week of the programme he had the young person's employment start notification prepared and asked his mali müşavir the first question: "Which incentive will be selected for this lad?"