Wednesday, 12 August 2026
The Netherlands is preparing for a significant overhaul of flexible employment after the Dutch Senate approved legislation designed to give workers greater certainty over working hours, income and the duration of temporary employment.
The Flexible Workers (Increased Security) Act was approved by the Senate on 7 July 2026 and will introduce restrictions on on-call work, tighten the use of successive fixed-term contracts and strengthen employment conditions for temporary agency workers.
The reforms are significant for employers because flexible employment remains an important part of the Dutch labour market, with almost three in ten employees working under some form of flexible contract.
One of the biggest changes will be the effective abolition of traditional zero-hours and min-max contracts. These arrangements will largely be replaced by so-called bandwidth contracts, under which employers must guarantee employees a minimum number of working hours.
The maximum number of hours that can be required under such an arrangement will generally be limited to 130% of the agreed minimum. An employee contracted for at least 10 hours a week, for example, could be required to work up to 13 hours, while retaining the right to refuse work beyond that level.
The change is intended to preserve some flexibility for employers while providing employees with greater predictability over earnings and working time. Specific exemptions will remain available for groups including students, school pupils and people receiving an old-age pension, subject to the applicable conditions.
The legislation will also make repeated use of fixed-term employment substantially more difficult.
Under the existing framework, employees generally become entitled to permanent employment after three successive temporary contracts or three years of continuous employment. Currently, an interruption of six months can reset the sequence, allowing an employer to begin another series of temporary contracts.
The new legislation extends that interruption period to three years. As a result, employers will no longer generally be able to use relatively short breaks between contracts to restart the temporary employment cycle.
Exceptions are expected to remain for some forms of recurring temporary employment, including certain seasonal activities, as well as for students.
Temporary employment agencies will also face tighter restrictions. The initial Phase A period will be limited by law to 52 weeks, after which Phase B can run for a maximum of two years and contain no more than six fixed-term contracts.
This would generally limit temporary agency employment to three years before the worker becomes entitled to an indefinite employment relationship.
Another important change concerns remuneration and employment conditions for agency workers. Existing Dutch rules already provide equal treatment in areas including wages, allowances and working and rest periods. The new legislation broadens that principle to the overall employment package.
Agency workers performing the same or comparable work will have to receive employment conditions that are at least equivalent in value to those provided to employees hired directly by the company using their services. Individual benefits do not necessarily have to be identical, but the overall package must be comparable.
Implementation will take place in stages. According to the legislation described following Senate approval, the expanded equal-employment-conditions requirements for temporary agency workers are scheduled to apply from 31 December 2026, while the wider reforms, including changes to on-call and fixed-term employment, are expected to take effect from 1 January 2028.
For businesses operating in the Netherlands, the long implementation period provides time to review staffing models, but the changes could have considerable implications for sectors that depend heavily on variable labour.
Companies using zero-hours arrangements will need to assess which positions will require conversion to bandwidth contracts, while employers relying on repeated temporary contracts will have considerably less scope to rotate workers through successive fixed-term arrangements.
The reform therefore represents more than an adjustment to employment contracts. It marks a broader attempt by the Netherlands to retain labour-market flexibility while shifting more of the employment risk away from workers and towards employers that rely on flexible staffing.
Source; CMS
