Changing contract hours in the Netherlands is governed by the Flexible Working Act (Wet flexibel werken, Wfw). An employee who has been with the employer for at least twenty-six weeks may ask in writing to work more hours, fewer hours, at different times or from a different place. For a change to the number of hours or to the working times, the employer must grant the request unless compelling business or service interests stand in the way. The request goes in at least two months before the intended start date, and the employer must decide in writing at the latest one month before that date. If the employer does not decide in time, the hours are adjusted as requested.
That is the employee’s route. The reverse situation, an employer that wants to reduce or change an employee’s hours, works entirely differently and is far more difficult: the number of hours is a core term of the employment contract, and it cannot simply be altered unilaterally.
This guide sets out both directions: what the Act gives an employee, which refusal grounds actually hold up, what an employer must show before changing hours against an employee’s wishes, and what a change means for pay, holiday, pension, unemployment benefit and the transition payment.
The right to request a change under the Flexible Working Act
The Wfw, which replaced the Working Hours Adjustment Act, gives an employee a statutory right to ask for three things: a different number of working hours (arbeidsduur), different working times (werktijd), and a different place of work (arbeidsplaats). The three are not treated equally, and confusing them is the most common source of disappointment.
For working hours and working times the test is strict against the employer. The request must be granted unless compelling business or service interests (zwaarwegende bedrijfs- of dienstbelangen) oppose it. For the place of work the test is much weaker: the employer must consider the request and discuss it with the employee, but is not bound by the same standard. A bill intended to strengthen the position on the place of work was rejected by the Senate in 2023, so the difference remains.
Two conditions apply to the employee. The employment must have lasted at least twenty-six weeks by the time the change is to take effect, and, unforeseen circumstances aside, a new request can only be made a year after the employer granted or refused the previous one. The Act also does not apply at all to employers with fewer than ten employees; those employers are required to make their own arrangement for adjusting working hours, and in practice that arrangement is often found in the collective labour agreement or in the staff handbook rather than in the contract.
Where a collective labour agreement (cao) contains its own rules on adjusting hours, those rules take precedence over the Act to the extent the Act allows. Always check the cao before the contract, and the contract before writing the request.
The procedure and the deadlines
The procedure is short and the deadlines do the work. The employee submits a written request at least two months before the date on which the change should take effect, stating the current hours, the requested hours, the desired start date and, if relevant, how the hours should be spread over the week. Giving a reason is not a statutory requirement, but a request that explains itself is far more likely to be granted, and a documented reason is useful later if the refusal has to be tested.
The employer must consult the employee and then decide in writing, at the latest one month before the intended start date. A refusal must state the grounds. If the employer misses that deadline, the consequence is automatic: the working hours, working times or place of work are adjusted in accordance with the request. That is the single most useful provision in the Act for an employee, and the single most expensive oversight for an employer, which is why the date of the request should be recorded and the request sent in a way that proves receipt.
Where the request for the number of hours is granted but the spread over the week is not, the employer may set the spread differently, but only if it has a serious interest in doing so that outweighs the employee’s interest in the arrangement requested. In practice that is where most negotiations end up: not on whether four days instead of five, but on which four.
Whatever is agreed should be confirmed in writing as an amendment to the employment contract, stating the new hours, the new salary, the new holiday entitlement and the date from which they apply. An oral agreement about hours is valid, but it is unprovable, and hours are the term of employment that generates the most disputes years afterwards.
When may the employer refuse?
Only compelling business or service interests justify a refusal, and the Act itself gives examples of what that means. Where the employee wants to work fewer hours, the interests that can qualify are serious problems of a business-economic nature, problems of safety, or problems in meeting a roster. Where the employee wants to work more hours, the examples are serious problems of a financial or organisational kind, insufficient work being available, or the absence of budget or an established position for the extra hours.
The threshold is genuinely high. Inconvenience is not a compelling interest, nor is a general preference for full-time staff, nor a fear that other employees will ask for the same. The employer has to make the problem concrete: which roster cannot be filled, which qualification is missing on which shift, which budget does not exist. A refusal expressed in generalities rarely survives a court’s assessment.
Employers do have a legitimate alternative route. Instead of refusing outright, an employer may propose a different arrangement: a smaller reduction, a temporary arrangement to be evaluated, a different distribution over the week, or a transfer to another role in which the requested hours are workable. An employee is expected to consider such a proposal seriously as a good employee, and refusing every alternative weakens the employee’s position if the matter reaches court.
When the employer wants to change your hours
The Flexible Working Act gives the employer no corresponding right. An employer that wants to reduce an employee’s hours is trying to change a core term of the employment contract, and Dutch law offers only two routes, both of them demanding.
The first is a written unilateral variation clause (eenzijdig wijzigingsbeding) under article 7:613 of the Dutch Civil Code. Such a clause allows the employer to change a term of employment only if it has an interest in the change that is so substantial that the employee’s interest must yield to it, measured by the standards of reasonableness and fairness. The clause has to be in writing and agreed in advance; a clause in a staff handbook that the employee never accepted will not do.
The second route applies where there is no such clause. Under the standard the Supreme Court set in Stoof v Mammoet (HR 11 July 2008, ECLI:NL:HR:2008:BD1847), the court asks three questions in order. Are there changed circumstances at work that give the employer reason to make a proposal? Is the proposal reasonable in the light of all the circumstances, including the nature of the change and the employee’s interests? And can acceptance of the proposal reasonably be required of this employee? Only if all three are answered affirmatively must the employee accept.
In practice a structural reduction of hours imposed by the employer amounts to a partial dismissal, and Dutch law does not recognise partial dismissal as such: an employer that wants fewer hours must normally either agree the change with the employee or take the ordinary dismissal route, with the UWV or the subdistrict court. A temporary drop in work is not enough. Where the employer simply stops offering the agreed hours, the employee remains entitled to the salary for the contractual hours, because the risk of insufficient work lies with the employer.
There is one important consequence attached to a reduction imposed for business-economic reasons or because of long-term incapacity for work. In the Kolom decision (HR 14 September 2018, ECLI:NL:HR:2018:1617) the Supreme Court held that an employee whose hours are substantially and structurally reduced in those circumstances is entitled to a transition payment for the part of the contract that is lost. The Supreme Court later made clear that this applies to a loss of hours, not to a reduction in salary alone. If an employer proposes to cut your hours by a fifth or more on a permanent basis, that entitlement should be on the table before anything is signed; our article on the transition payment explains how it is calculated.
Where the employer proposes the reduction in exchange for keeping the job, the practical answer is usually a written agreement with a defined term and an evaluation date, rather than an open-ended change. If the employer instead offers a settlement agreement, the position is different again and is dealt with in our guide to the vaststellingsovereenkomst.
What actually changes when the hours change
Almost everything in an employment relationship is proportional to the hours, and the consequences are easy to underestimate because they arrive gradually.
Salary follows the hours directly, and so does everything derived from it: holiday allowance, a thirteenth month, and any bonus expressed as a percentage of salary. Statutory holiday entitlement is four times the weekly working hours per year, so it moves in proportion as well; holiday already accrued at the old level is not lost, and days that have been built up should be settled or carried over on the agreed basis rather than quietly recalculated.
Pension accrual falls with the pensionable salary, and because pension accrues over decades a reduction taken in your thirties costs considerably more at retirement than the drop in monthly pay suggests. Where the scheme offers voluntary additional accrual, that is the moment to ask about it.
Unemployment benefit is the consequence employees most often miss. Entitlement to benefit arises when an employee loses at least five working hours per week, or half the hours where the contract was for fewer than ten hours, and the benefit is calculated on the wage earned in the reference year before unemployment. Two things follow. Voluntarily reducing your own hours does not entitle you to benefit for the hours you gave up. And a reduction now lowers the wage on which a benefit would be based if you lose the job later. Where a reduction is proposed by the employer, and certainly where redundancy may be on the horizon, that calculation belongs in the decision.
One further point works in the employee’s favour. Where an employee has structurally worked more hours than the contract states, the contractual working hours can be adjusted to reflect reality, on the basis that the parties’ conduct has amended the agreement. Payslips and rosters over a representative period are the evidence for that, and it is worth raising before the situation ends rather than after.
Part-time work and equal treatment
Working fewer hours may not be used as a reason to treat an employee less favourably. Article 7:648 of the Dutch Civil Code prohibits distinctions between employees on the ground of the length of their working hours in the conditions under which the contract is entered into, continued or terminated, unless the distinction is objectively justified. In practice this means that pay, allowances, training, promotion opportunities and access to a bonus scheme must be pro rata rather than reserved for full-timers, and that a part-time employee cannot be passed over for a role for that reason alone.
The reverse also matters. Where a reduction in hours is requested by an employee with caring responsibilities and the employer refuses without a concrete business interest, the refusal can raise a question of indirect discrimination on the ground of sex, because part-time requests are made disproportionately by women. That is a separate ground of complaint, assessed by the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights or by the court, and it is one employers underestimate.
Leave as an alternative to a permanent reduction
A permanent cut in hours is not always the right instrument. The Work and Care Act (Wet arbeid en zorg) provides parental leave for each child until the age of eight, with a benefit paid by the UWV for the first nine weeks at a statutory percentage of the daily wage, provided the leave is taken in the first year of the child’s life. It also provides short-term and long-term care leave for a sick partner, child or parent, and birth leave for partners. Where the need is temporary, leave preserves the contractual hours, the pension accrual and the basis for any later unemployment benefit in a way that a permanent reduction does not.
If the request is refused
Start by asking for the refusal in writing with the grounds set out concretely, if that has not already happened. A refusal that names no specific business interest is a weak refusal, and pointing that out often produces a better answer than litigation would.
Next, check the calendar. If the employer decided later than one month before the intended start date, the request was granted by operation of law and the discussion is over. This happens more often than employers expect, particularly where a request has been passed between a line manager and an HR department.
If the refusal stands, consider the alternatives the employer put forward and make a counter-proposal that meets the stated interest: a different distribution over the week, a phased reduction, a trial period of six months with an evaluation. Most disputes about hours are solved at this stage, and a documented attempt to find a workable solution strengthens your position if it is not.
Where that fails, the dispute goes to the subdistrict court (kantonrechter), which assesses whether the interest the employer relies on is genuinely compelling. Proceedings about working hours are relatively quick and relatively cheap, and legal expenses insurance or a trade union membership frequently covers them. Mediation is an alternative where the working relationship needs to survive the outcome, which in a dispute about hours is usually the case.
Employers facing a request should treat the deadline as the priority and the substance as the argument. Answer in time, in writing, and with a reason that names the roster, the budget or the safety issue. Where the request cannot be granted in full, propose something. And where the employer has a works council, remember that a general policy on working hours and rosters is a matter on which the council has rights, even though an individual request is not.
Frequently asked questions
Can my employer reduce my hours without my consent?
Only in narrow circumstances. Either the contract contains a written unilateral variation clause and the employer has an interest so substantial that yours must yield to it, or, without such a clause, the employer makes a reasonable proposal prompted by changed circumstances that you can reasonably be expected to accept. A structural reduction is otherwise effectively a partial dismissal, which requires the ordinary dismissal route.
How often can I ask for a change?
Once a year, counted from the employer’s decision on the previous request, unless unforeseen circumstances justify an earlier request. The Act sets that limit deliberately, so a refusal is not the end of the matter but it is the end of it for the time being.
What if my employer does not answer in time?
The change takes effect as requested. The employer must decide in writing at the latest one month before the intended start date; failing that, the working hours, working times or place of work are adjusted in accordance with the request.
Does the Act apply in a small company?
The Flexible Working Act does not apply to employers with fewer than ten employees. Those employers must make their own arrangement for adjusting working hours, and the general duties of good employership under article 7:611 BW continue to apply, as do any rules in the collective labour agreement.
Will working fewer hours affect my unemployment benefit?
Yes, in two ways. A voluntary reduction gives no benefit for the hours given up, and the reduced salary lowers the basis on which any later benefit is calculated. Both effects are worth quantifying before agreeing to a permanent reduction.
Can I increase my hours again later?
Yes. A request to work more hours follows exactly the same procedure and the same test, and the employer must grant it unless compelling business or service interests, such as the absence of work or of budget for the extra hours, stand in the way.
Advice on changing contract hours
Most disputes about working hours are won or lost on two things: whether the deadlines were met and whether the refusal was made concrete. Both are easy to check and both are worth checking before the discussion hardens.
Law and More advises employees and employers on working hours, terms of employment and their unilateral variation, and represents both sides before the subdistrict court. We work in English and Dutch. Please contact one of our employment lawyers to discuss your situation, or read further in our employment law guides.
