Holland moves to make working from home a legal right

The Netherlands will be one of the first countries to make working from home a legal right.

The Dutch parliament approved legislation that would allow employees to work from home on Tuesday, and the Senate is now poised to approve the bill.

Currently, employers in the Netherlands can refuse a request to work from home without giving a reason – but under the new law, they will be forced to consider the request carefully and say why they refused the request.

During the pandemic, the Netherlands enforced work from home guidelines due to the soaring Covid-19 infection. This has sparked a shift in attitudes about working from the office, with many workers wanting to have flexibility in where they work.

The Netherlands will be one of the first countries to make working from home a legal right (file image)

The law marks an “important step” for workers, Senna Maatoug of the GroenLinks party and one of the bill’s authors, said on Tuesday.

He added: ‘Due to the corona period, we have seen that hybrid work has an advantage for the majority of employees. This gives them the opportunity to find a better work-life balance and to reduce travel time.’

The law aims to provide employees with a better work-life balance and give businesses the opportunity to continue to ‘reap the benefits of mixed work and not revert to old habits’.

Steven van Weyenberg, of the D66 party and co-author of the bill, said it was ‘a good law for employers because happy employees are happy employers’.

He added: ‘It’s often not necessary to stand in traffic for an hour to get to work. Because you don’t have to be in the office to send emails to your coworkers who are two desks away.

‘Sometimes you can concentrate better at home and updating the administration, and then also open the door for a plumber.’

Workers in the Netherlands are no strangers to working from home – even before the pandemic, 14 percent of employees worked remotely, the highest rate in the EU, according to Eurostat.

Dutch multinational bank, ING Groep, allows employees in the Netherlands to work 50 percent of their time at home, excluding branches (file image)

Dutch businesses say continuing to allow remote work will facilitate productivity and increase worker satisfaction.

Dutch multinational bank, ING Groep, allows employees in the Netherlands to work 50 percent of their time at home, excluding branches.

“We are combining the advantages of working in an office with the advantages of working from home,” ING spokesman Aram Goudsmit told The Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Heineken NV said its employees in the Netherlands can work from home two days a week under their current hybrid model.

The Dutch Federation of Trade Unions hailed the law as an important step towards making workers ‘happier’.

A spokesperson told the paper: ‘The Covid crisis has shown that remote work can work and that workers are happier and more productive if they alternate working from home and in the office.

‘As a union, we urge companies to come to a collective agreement on remote work.’

Other European countries haven’t gone so far as to make working from home a legal right, but Spain offers protections to workers who want to work remotely. In Portugal, employers are prohibited from contacting employees outside of working hours.

Photo: This graph shows the percentage of people from each country who responded to WFH Research’s global survey of 33,000 people who said they would rather quit or find a new job than return to the office five days a week

The pandemic has caused a shift in the way workers view working from home.

In May, a survey found that British workers led the world in refusing to return to work.

The survey, published by Work From Home Research (WFH Research) and involving 33,000 people from around the world, showed how 23 per cent of British workers said they would rather quit or start looking for a new job than return to the office.

That puts the UK above every other country included in the survey, including the US (14.8 percent), Russia (15.7 percent) and China (8 percent).

In terms of Europe, only Hungry (20 per cent) and the Netherlands (19.6 per cent) are closest, while the UK is significantly ahead of France (11.9 per cent), Germany (14.8 per cent) and Italy (11.9 per cent ) and the worldwide average of 14.58 percent.

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