Rules looming to increase number of home workers

Some workers who can work from home are not doing so despite the circulating coronavirus. The outgoing cabinet is therefore taking measures. In addition, a bill of initiative has been submitted to give employees more rights around working from home.

The urgent advice from the cabinet is to work at home, unless that is really not possible. This should prevent the spread of the coronavirus; the workplace is a major source of infection. Nevertheless, recent studies show that some employees work on location. A RIVM poll in January found that of those workers who say they can work from home, 73% work from home as much as possible. TNO found in November 2020 that 9% of the employees surveyed could work more from home, but still work on location because the employer expects them to (4.4%) or because they prefer to (4.8%). In absolute numbers, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of employees. So there is room for improvement, the government acknowledges.

Criteria for testing whether working from home should be possible

The Cabinet is calling on organizations to once again assess whether working at home is really necessary and to do as much as possible to make working from home possible. Together with the social partners, a list of criteria for working from home is being developed, which is expected to be published this month. The criteria are used by employers and employees (representatives) to test whether working from home should be possible. If an employer does not follow the criteria and an employee reports this to the Inspectorate SZW, the supervisor will take action. In addition, an urgent amendment to the law is being worked out in order to be able to close business premises in the event of a 'source contamination'.

Proposal for Act on Working Where You Want to go to Parliament

Employees have no legal right to work from home, not even now that the government is urgently advising them to work from home. An employee can submit a request to work at home on the basis of the Flexible Work Act, but the employer can reject this without a compelling business interest. To change this, an initiative bill has been drafted. This bill was recently urgently submitted to the Lower House, in the hope that the new rules can be quickly incorporated into legislation. The bill is also important for the period after the corona crisis. Research by the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis shows that, after the crisis, employees expect to work, on average, twice as many hours from home as before the crisis.

Source HR Rendement