Ignore bosses after work, 4-day week: Belgium’s lucrative offer to full-time employees

To enhance the quality of the lives of Belgium workers, the European country joined an increasing list of nations, which is offering its workers a four-day work week and will no longer have to answer calls or emails from their bosses outside of working hours.

The dream of spending less time at work without a pay cut is about to become a reality for more employees. Around 65,000 government workers earned “the right to disconnect," in hopes of leading a better work-life balance. 

This is part of a major Covid-era shake-up of labour laws, announced by Prime Minister Alexander De Croo on Tuesday. “The Covid period has forced us to work more flexibly - the labour market needs to adapt to that,” he told reporters after an overnight negotiation of the changes among ministers.

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These measures are meant to enhance the quality of life of Belgians and offer them better work-life balance.

Employees would be able to request a four-day workweek for a trial six-month period. If they so desire, they can stay with the shortened workweek or decide to opt out. The abbreviated workweek is somewhat different compared to what other countries and companies have enacted. The countries and businesses stripped away one day of the workweek without making people put in more hours during the other four days.

Belgium’s program would condense the current five-day week into four days. In practice, this means maintaining a 38-hour working week, with an additional day off compensating for longer work days. Employees would work longer hours each of the four days.

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The flexibility principle it carries would also allow an employee to work a higher number of hours in one week to have a much lighter week the next.

However, any request needs to be approved by the boss - meaning that, in practice, such managed flexibility would only be an option for those working in big companies, where the workload can be more easily distributed.

Only about 71 out of 100 Belgians in the age group from 20 to 64 years have a job, fewer than the euro-area average of about 73 and a full 10 percentage points less than in neighboring countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, according to Eurostat data for the third quarter of 2021.

Belgium’s seven-party federal coalition agreement set a goal for an employment rate of 80% by 2030, a panacea that would serve to keep its legal pensions affordable or finance future tax cuts.

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• 4-day week
• Belgium
• Ignore bosses after work
• full-time employees