Netherland To Make WFH Lawful For All Employees Soon

Last updated on July 14th, 2022 at 06:48 am

Europe – The Netherlands is finally planning to make work-from-home a reality for employees. Once passed by the Senate, the legislation could become a law as the approval has already come through from the Lower House.

Once passed as a law, employers would be obligated to adhere to any request that comes by for work from home. Employers will be asked to consider all such requests and give adequate reasons for refusing them. Currently, employers in the Netherlands can deny any request from workers about working from home without giving any reason.

With a high happiness index, the country is already regarded to be well known for taking care of its workforce. The new bill is an amendment to the Netherland’s Flexible Working Act of 2015, which allows workers to request changes in their working hours, schedule and even place of work.

 According to Senna Maatoug of the GroenLinks party, “It allows them to find a better work-life balance and reduce time spent on commuting as speaking to the Wall Streets Journal who first reported this development. Maatoug was one of the co-authors of the bill.

Getting workers to come back to office has been a huge challenge for companies worldwide, especially as inertia seems to have creeped into workforce post Covid-19.

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While some companies have been accommodating in bringing their employees back, others like Salesforce have mostly done away with in-office working completely. This is a huge change in work dynamics and not all would want to be open to this style of working. Some others, like Tesla, still have coerced employees to return to the office. Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk had warned employees that they could either return to the workplace or leave the company.