Never miss a training subsidy again

You can usually find your company's joint committee (paritair comité) in a matter of seconds: it appears on your employees' payslips and in the declaration your payroll agency (sociaal secretariaat) files with the National Social Security Office (RSZ) each quarter. Each joint committee (PC) has a unique number — for example PC 200 for white-collar employees or PC 124 for the construction sector — assigned on the basis of your company's main activity. That number determines not only the minimum wages and working conditions in your sector, but also which sector fund finances training and which additional cao training days you must grant your employees.If you already know your joint committee, you will find the link to the corresponding training offer further down. If you are still unsure, or want to understand why that number actually matters, this guide explains how the joint committees are structured, how to look up the correct number, and what the "residual" committees 100 and 200 actually mean.

The kmo-portefeuille (the Flemish SME training subsidy) is a subsidy from the Flemish government through which Flemish small and medium-sized enterprises recover part of their training costs: small enterprises receive 30% support, medium-sized enterprises 20%, with an annual cap of € 7,500 per enterprise. The training must fall under one of eight future-oriented themes and be purchased from a service provider registered for the kmo-portefeuille.Since 1 February 2026 the kmo-portefeuille has been reformed, but only for the advice component: it was then limited to the cybersecurity theme. Nothing changes for training — the eight themes, the rates and the € 7,500 cap continue to apply unchanged.Do you operate in Wallonia or Brussels? Then the kmo-portefeuille does not apply to you: Wallonia works with its own system of chèques-entreprises, and in Brussels support runs via Brussel Economie en Werkgelegenheid (Brussels Economy and Employment). The rest of this article covers the Flemish kmo-portefeuille.

A sector fund — also known as a "fonds voor bestaanszekerheid" (social security fund) — is a fund managed per joint committee (paritair comité) and financed with mandatory employer contributions, which offers training, premiums and contributions to costs to employers and employees within that sector. Which fund applies to your business depends on the joint committee your company falls under: each joint committee generally has its own fund, with its own training offer and its own conditions. Some funds mainly offer free training, others work with flat-rate premiums per training hour or day, and a few combine both. As an HR manager or business owner, your company already contributes to your sector's fund in any case, via the sectoral contributions on the wage bill. Earning that contribution back through the training offer is therefore mainly a matter of knowing where to go, rather than filing an extra application. Further down this guide you will find an overview per joint committee, with a link to the corresponding fund and to the bookable training offer on smartlions.academy. Note: a sector fund is different from the kmo-portefeuille (the Flemish SME training subsidy) of the Flemish government, which works per enterprise and is open to all Flemish SMEs, regardless of joint committee. You can often combine both.