What is the main social objective of ProActif ?
The mission of ProActif is primarily to integrate or reintegrate job seekers into the labor market and secondly to train them by putting them to work within a team. Considering the heterogeneity of job seekers and the job market, various activities have been developed over the years, including gardening, cleaning, construction, carpentry, Fond-de-Gras, but also our restaurant, and lately the Food-Processing.
In a society where life is progressing fast, more and more people are in need of being welcomed and that is why it is important to have an SIS in a high performance economy. Instead of being unemployed, people can make a significant contribution to society. In order to offer work related to the labor market, we continually modernise our activities to ease their way into a job. That is why it is so important to keep developing and improving our business and adapt to real work conditions.
How do you remain profitable while maintaining impact ?
Our revenues are entirely reinvested into the development of the activity of the company. Through the reinvestments of our profits, our infrastructure is constantly improved. People can gain experience in different professions using modern machines. The more experience you can gain during your contract, the better the chances are. The gained professional experience increases the motivation of the employees.
We are above all at the service of the general public to give people a perspective in life.
The possible profit is not limited through the status of being an SIS but through the fact that we have to spend extensive resources in training and the impact we make has to be seen through the eyes of the entire society, not our company alone.
The motivations of an sis are different from those of a normal economic company that gives a return to the shareholder. We are above all at the service of the general public to give people a perspective in life. Profitability is solely a means at the service of the social project of the company.
What would you consider the most challenging and rewarding part of running an SIS ?
In general, there are many satisfying reasons to run an SIS. However, the following points in particular stand out. [First] providing support to people in vulnerable situations, either because of their economic or social situation, or because of their personal situation and particularly their state of health or their needs for social support. [Second] contributing to the development of their personal skills, to fight against exclusion and inequalities, for gender equality, for the maintenance and strengthening of social cohesion and the development of initial or continuing training activities.
However, there are also challenging parts that an SIS has to deal with. One of them is that you always have to adapt to new situations. Depending on which crisis occurs in any part of the world, we have to develop new ways to welcome new people. An example : the war in Ukraine. The fact that many refugees from Ukraine have found a safe haven in Luxembourg and now of course wish for a "normal" everyday life means that these people are also looking for work. Unfortunately there are many who only speak their language and this excludes them from a chance to find a job. They will then be forwarded to us by ADEM. In order to still guarantee a safe work environment, we have to be able to explain the work processes to them, and this means that our employees also have to adapt constantly. This adaptability is very important to us in order to give people the best possible support.
We can say that the legal status of an SIS has many advantages. On the one hand it will guarantee the real and serious nature of our professional activity, and on the other the social commitment of our company.
It has been edited to add more information for the online format and forms part of a 5-part SIS series.