Flexible working is essential to meet the needs of both employees and employers, who have to manage emergencies, seasonal peaks and work organisation. It improves well-being, motivation and performance, while enhancing the attractiveness of the company.
In recent years, the law has provided more and more opportunities to organise working time flexibly. However, the introduction of these possibilities within the company most often requires compliance with strict rules, not forgetting analysis of a key question: what should be included in the work regulations?
Working hours - a mandatory part of work regulations
Work regulations must indicate the start and end of the regular working day, as well as the time and duration of breaks - in short, the regular working hours. In addition, the introduction of special arrangements often requires additional information to be provided (see below).
It is crucial to adapt the work regulations to the actual working hours in the company. Failure to do so is often synonymous with breaches of the social legislation and problems relating to overtime, which in turn can lead to discussions about the payment of extra pay and the granting of compensatory rest.
Exception - Certain temporary changes to working hours do not require compliance with the ordinary procedures for adapting work regulations.
What exactly should be included in the work regulations?
Please note - Each possibility of flexible working provided for by the legislator contains its own particularities. These include:
- flexible working hours - This is the common practice of allowing employees to choose their own arrival and departure times within flexible working periods, to be stipulated in the work regulations. The employer will also take care to determine the fixed working periods.
- variable working hours - initially intended for part-time employees, but authorised by the FPS Employment for full-time employees on condition that all variable working hours are included in the work regulations.
- the alternating work week system - This system allows full-time employees to alternate between a ‘light’ work week and a ‘heavy’ work week, subject to certain compulsory provisions in the work regulations, in addition to the need to sign an amendment to the work contract concerned.
- the 4-day week - The 4-day week timetable must be included in the employment regulations (subject to certain particularities if introduced via a company CLA).
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The work regulation will also have to be adapted in the event of permanent working arrangements, working in successive shifts, for so-called ‘new working arrangements’, or in the event of the introduction of a ‘small flexibility’ arrangement, etc.
Things to remember!
We will end with a few points of attention that are frequently raised in practice when it comes to organising working time within the company.
- Analyse ‘working time’.
- Avoid abuse of positions of management and trust (which are not subject to the provisions on working time). These concepts are not the same as that of executive employees!
- Ad hoc flexibility is permitted to a certain extent by the legislation.
- Too much flexibility kills flexibility’. It is essential to make choices, to favour simplicity over the accumulation of all the different forms of flexibility in the workplace, at the risk of getting lost in the maze of working time regulations and exposing yourself to the risk of criminal sanctions and/or difficult discussions relating to the provision of overtime.
Liesbet Vandenplas and Sacha Henet, Eubelius
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