If you’re looking to hire full-time interns or co-op students, you may be eligible to receive between $5,000 – $7,000 in wage subsidies from the Government of Canada’s Student Work Placement Program (SWPP).
SWPP gives employers the opportunity to access funding to hire students and provide quality experiential learning opportunities.
How much do you receive?
Under the SWPP wage subsidy program, employers can receive:
- 50% of the wage cost for hiring a student, up to a maximum of $5,000 per student
- Up to 70% (a maximum of $7,000) may be awarded for students from under-represented groups in tech. This includes: first-year students, women in STEM, Indigenous students, newcomers, persons with disabilities and visible minorities.
As an example, if you hired a student at $18.00/hour working 35 hours/week for 16 weeks, normally the total cost for an employer would be $10,080. With SWPP, the cost could be reduced to $3,080 for hiring a first-year student!
How to apply for SWPP
There are various organizations offering SWPP programs to employers, administered by Employment and Social Development Canada.
Check out this webpage for a full list of delivery partners and how to apply.
TECHNATION and Information and Communication Technology Council (ICTC) are popular choices for tech organizations. However, since tech positions intersect with all industries, it may be good to check out all delivery partners and pick one that works for you. The University of Waterloo has a number of Co-op Specialists that you can chat with if you’re looking for some additional help or info.
Eligibility Requirements
To be eligible to receive SWPP wage subsidies, employers need to be:
- Registered Canadian business or organization
- Not a federal or provincial government organization
- Financially capable to hire a student for a part- or full-time work term, pay them consistently and provide a meaningful work experience
The student you hire must also be:
- A Canadian Citizen, permanent resident or a protected person defined by the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act
- Registered as a full-time student in a post-secondary institution program
- Not an immediate family member of the employer
Please know that each delivery partner may have additional eligibility requirements as well!
Some roles you might consider hiring a full-time student for includes:
- Tech roles:AI engineers, Software Developer, IT Support, Web Developer, Programmers, UX/UI designers
- Data roles: Database Analysts, Data Engineer, Research Analyst, Data Administrators
- AND MORE!
SWPP can be combined with other subsidies, grants and tax credits!
SWPP can be stacked with provincial funding to further lower the cost of bringing talent to your organization!
A great example is combining SWPP with the Co-operative Education Tax Credit (CETC). If you’re an employer in Ontario, you can receive between $5,000 – 7,000 in SWPP funding plus get the Co-operative Education Tax Credit (CETC), which provides up to $3,000 in expenditures not covered by SWPP!
So why hire students?
- Hiring students helps businesses’ bottom line
- Deloitte’s Economic Impact Report found that our 7,100 employer partners saw $525 million in gains in 2018/19. For every $1 an employer invested in hiring a Waterloo co-op student, they saw a gain of $2.
- It drives innovation and entrepreneurship in our country and positions ourselves as global tech leader
- According to a recent Impact Centre study, nearly 1 in 5 technology founders in Canada was educated at the University of Waterloo, renowned for North America’s largest co-op program
- Co-op students gain up to 2 years of full-time work experience working with as many as 6 different companies; employers benefit from students’ proven experience solving diverse, industry challenges through agile problem-solving, communication and self-taught skills to ensure they are staying on top of emerging trends
- Hiring students is a low-risk, cost-effective way to address current labour needs while filing your talent pipeline for future recruitment needs. Don’t end up short-staffed and scrambling to find replacements – rely on our rotational co-op talent pool and network.
- In this remote environment, consider talent from all over the country. Our #1 programs for computer science and mathematics attract Canadian students residing from Abbotsford, BC all the way to St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Whether your business is recovering or scaling up, now it the time to take advantage of SWPP funding and access top tech talent for the summer.
Learn more about hiring tech talent from the University of Waterloo, Canada’s largest co-op talent pool, and get more info about accessing SWPP funding here.
Tammy Kim-Newman is a Business Developer with Co-operative and Experiential Education at the University of Waterloo.