Background information

In the COVID-19 crisis, the city of Vienna is committed to keeping the city's economy going. This measure is addressed at the more than 60,000 Viennese micro, small and medium-sized companies which are currently particularly dependent on support, for example when it comes to the necessary switch to a home office. Support is provided via the Vienna Business Agency (Wirtschaftsagentur) in collaboration with the Vienna Economic Chamber (WKW).

Content of measure

The funding program supports Viennese companies to set up teleworking stations and to create stable communication between teleworking stations and the company location or locations. These include:

• Advisory measures by third parties
• investment measures for IT technical facilities
• Consulting service for hardware and software equipment of the teleworking system, IT hardware and software

It is targeted at small and medium-sized companies as well as micro-enterprises from Vienna

Submission: Continually online with the online funding application; retrospectively from 1 March 2020. The applications are assessed by experts from the Vienna Business Agency. The funding rate is 75% and up to €10,000 per project.

Use of measure

The uptake was substantial. In the first week of funding, 700 applications were received by the Vienna Business Agency, and more than 2,000 applications were filed within the first two weeks. The originally envisaged funds of €2 million were first tripled to €6 million and exhausted by the end of March and then increased to €10 million.

In total, 2,049 companies received funding (while around 100 applications were rejected). By the end of July 2020, around €3.1 million in funding has been paid out (based on submitted invoices). The average subsidies lie around €4,900 per company. The main beneficiaries (measured by the total volume of funding) are companies in the field of professional and technical services (€3 million), information and communication (€1.52 million) and retail/commerce (€1.07 million). In terms of company size, the main beneficiaries were micro-enterprises (€4.3 million), small enterprises (€2.8 million) and one-person enterprises (€1.74 million). There are currently no plans to continue the funding.

Target groups

Workers	Businesses	Citizens
Does not apply to workers	SMEs One person or microenterprises	Does not apply to citizens

Actors and funding

Actors	Funding
Employers' organisations Local / regional government Public support service providers	Regional funds

Social partners

Social partners' role in designing the measure and form of involvement:

	Trade unions	Employers' organisations
Role	No involvement	Consulted
Form	Not applicable	Any other form of consultation, institutionalised (as stable working groups or committees) or informal

Social partners' role in the implementation, monitoring and assessment phase:

• Only employers' organisations
• Main level of involvement: Regional or local level

Involvement

The Vienna branch of the Federal Economic Chamber was involved in the design of the measure.

Views and reactions

The regional employers organisation was involved in the design of the measure and is thus supportive.

Sources

• 01 March 2020: Home office subsidy exhausted (wirtschaftsagentur.at)
• 22 March 2020: Home office funding in Vienna in extremely high demand (www.wien.gv.at)
• 26 March 2020: Vienna triples home office subsidy to 6 mio euro (www.wien.gv.at)
• 01 August 2020: Kurzanalyse ausgewählter Fördermaßnahmen Wiens (www.wien.gv.at)