ENSIE has been very active to support WISEs all over Europe since the beginning of the Coronavirus crisis. You’ll find here a summary of those actions. 

Following its 2020 work on the COVID-19 crisis impact on Work integration social enterprises (WISEs), ENSIE launched a new study on to evaluate the effects of the crisis on WISEs one year after. 

In the following document you can also find the 2021 Impact-WISEs study showcasing the role of WISEs. 

Those studies highlights that one year after the crisis hit, there are still some difficulties faced by WISEs notably in terms of challenges to recruit people or the customers’ reluctance to use WISEs services. Nevertheless, WISEs have been innovative in their approaches to overcome the crisis and expand their offer through distance trainings development, launching home delivery services, using ITC to reach clients, build networks and redirect their activity. The workload was high for WISEs in Austria for instance where the employees reported to have worked long hours and were close to burnouts. It is thus important to underline that innovation need appropriate funding, staff and resources – during the pandemic more than ever.

During summer and fall 2020, we updated our data on how the COVID-19 crisis impacted WISEs in Europe.

You’ll find in this publication the data from 9 countries from all over the EU and Moldova. It shows that overall, WISEs are very resilient and overcame the crisis. However, the support given to WISEs by the States varies from one country to another and often, no specific measures are foreseen for WISEs and it is difficult for them to access national and EU funds.

We updated, thanks to our members, our data on WISEs and COVID-19 and analysed the results. We also presented numerous good practices from WISEs all over Europe which have faced the Coronavirus crisis with innovating practices.

On the 29 April 2021, at the GECES, we presented the results of our study among our members and discussed with the European Commission what kind of support WISEs would need in the next months. 

In April, we started collecting data from our members to make a thorough analysis of the national situations. Two types of datas have been collected,  economic data and datas related to skills and employment issues.  

Call for specific support measures for inclusive and integrated forms of employment during the Coronavirus crisis

We started our action with the publication of a "Call for specific support measures for inclusive and integrated forms of employment during the Coronavirus crisis", with RREUSE, Social Firms Europe - CEFEC and CEC. Calling the European Commission as well as Member States to take action to help the most vulnerable to face the Coronavirus crisis.