Employees get more rights to work from home - rejected

Please note: this bill has been rejected by the Senate (Eerste Kamer)

What changes?

Do you have 10 employees or more? Your staff was to get more rights to work from home. With the ‘Work where you want act’ (Wet werken waar je wilt) working from home would be enabled by law.

As the employer you would no longer be able to simply refuse a request from your employee to work from home, nor simply refuse a request to work in the office. A request to adjust the work location would have to be handled the same way as a request to adjust working hours or working time.

Refusal only in case of significant business or service interests

According to the bill, your employee would have been able request to work from another location. In principle you would then have had to grant such a request. This would also have applied to employees who work from home and want to work in the office more often. If an employee requests a change in work location, you would only be able to refuse this when important interests of the business or service were at stake.

Following the current Flexible working act (Wet flexibel werken) you can deny a request to adjust the work location in consultation with the employee. Under the new law, you would only be able to refuse the request for an adjustment in work location for very good reasons, in reasonableness and fairness.

Small businesses

The new act would only apply to companies employing 10 or more people.

Only applicable to home or office

The new act would not have meant an employee could work from wherever they want. Only requests to work from home would have to be granted in principle. The home address could be outside of the Netherlands, but not outside the European Union. The new law would also have applied to employees who currently work from home often but want to work more in the office.

For whom?

• employers with 10 or more employees

When?

This change in the Flexible working act has been rejected by the upper house of parliament (Senate or Eerste Kamer, in Dutch).