The law on the Federal Learning Account (FLA) will finally come into force on 1 April 2025. This is a tool in which all the training courses offered to each employee of all Belgian companies will have to be registered. This FLA is being introduced to manage and monitor.
The individual right to training is part of the employment deal. The joint employers' organisations Beci, Boerenbond, UCM, Unisoc, Unizo, UWE, FEB and Voka attach great importance to lifelong learning, but note that the FLA provides no added value. It does not help to achieve a genuine training culture in companies, nor does it help citizens to take responsibility for learning.
Moreover, this additional administrative obligation is impractical for company directors. There is no proportionality between efforts and results. Employers' organisations fear that this way of working will weaken rather than increase acceptance of these regulations. Given the current circumstances, we think it would be best to withdraw it.
The various employer organisations are unhappy with the inadequate and incomplete preparation, the unanswered questions, the unclarified ambiguities, the failure to respect the ‘only once’ principle, the very limited success of the pilot project and the lack of feedback to the social partners. Regardless of the need (or not) for a tool to monitor training courses, the hurry to implement this project, without giving it much thought, is totally unjustified and unprecedented.
Simplifying administrative procedures should be a key factor in supporting employers. Companies are happy to offer training to their employees, because every employer is well aware of the need for continuous development. The government, however, is forcing them to keep double accounts of their training courses, which entails a huge administrative burden. In addition to their internal systems, companies will now have to complete a government tool with all this information on training.
In addition, the legislator hasn't analysed a whole series of existing notifications to determine whether they overlap and could therefore be abolished.
Since discussions on the legislation began, employers have expressed concerns about the speed of development of this tool and its quality. Ideally, we would take the time to map out the training ecosystem, develop different scenarios, anticipate potential pitfalls and problems and, on that basis, provide employers with a finished product that is feasible and achievable.
Why implement this project in such a hurry? Notions such as ‘improving the operation of the Belgian labour market’ and ‘the importance of training for the labour market’ are evoked, but these arguments do not apply to the one million workers in the public sector, since they are not covered by the law.
A questionable decision, to say the least, when the above arguments are used to exert unprecedented pressure on private sector employers to be ready on 1 April for new legislation, even though no instructions have been issued to date.
On the contrary, there is a list of questions and ambiguities on the table to which employers are getting only partial and incomplete answers, after considerable persistence. And this list is getting longer by the day.
Not to mention the question of whether this registration tool will really improve the apprenticeship culture, the joint employers' organisations believe that this project can only succeed if everyone does their homework.
The challenge facing the competent authorities is therefore clear: develop a pilot project worthy of the name, resolve the outstanding issues, clear up any ambiguities, provide employers with all the information and support they need to get started and give them enough time to prepare, both financially and administratively. It is only on this condition that all employers - regardless of the size of their company - can reasonably be expected to bear this additional burden.