Recent Belgian social news: explanations and implications for your work rules and regulations

What happens if an employee falls ill while on leave? He will no longer lose these vacation days

From 2024, employees who fall ill or have an accident during their leave can convert their holidays into sick days (resulting in guaranteed pay) and reschedule those for a later date.

If they wish to exercise this right, employees must submit a medical certificate to the employer stating the incapacity for work, its likely duration and whether the employee can travel to another location for the purposes of a medical check. A specific (optional) certificate template has been established by Royal Decree. If employees wish to carry over the holidays to a later moment after the end of the period of incapacity for work, they must submit a request to the employer when sending them the medical certificate. The medical certificate must be submitted no later than two working days after the start of the incapacity for work.

Your work regulations must be amended to include these formalities. Legally, only statutory holidays are concerned. If you grant extra-legal holidays (via your work regulations, for example), it would be advisable to stipulate that those are not affected by this right to carry over (if you so wish).

Is an employee unable to take all their leave by the end of the year because their contract has been suspended? A new option to carry this over to the following years has been introduced

From 2024, employees may also carry over unused days of leave to the following two years, if they have been unable to take those on time due to certain periods of suspension (accident or illness, maternity leave, birth, etc.).

Employees may exercise this right with any employer who employs them during the two years mentioned above (the number of leave days carried over must be shown on the holiday certificate).

Only leave days can be carried over, not holiday pay, which remains payable by 31 December of the holiday year at the latest. 

In principle, your work regulations set out the terms and conditions for the allocation of annual holidays. They need to be amended in order to take into account this new carry-over option. 

Did you not appoint a trusted advisor yet? This is becoming compulsory for certain companies

As a reminder, the trusted advisor is responsible for dealing with psychosocial risks (as part of the informal procedure).

Until 2023, companies were not obliged to appoint a trusted advisor unless requested by the work health and safety committee. From 2024, this will depend on the number of employees.

Does your company have 50 employees or more? Then it is now compulsory to appoint a trusted advisor, who must be one of the company’s employees.

Does your company have less than 50 employees? Then a trusted advisor is not compulsory. In companies with between 20 and 49 employees, this person must, where appropriate, be an employee of the company if the company only calls on the services of a psychosocial advisor from an external organisation. 

The contact details of the trusted advisor must be included in the work regulations. If you appoint a trusted advisor, do not forget to mention this in the work regulations.

Violence or psychological or sexual harassment at work? The protection rules have been strengthened

A number of changes came into force in 2023 concerning violence, psychological harassment and sexual harassment in the workplace, including:

•    application of the system of protection against reprisals provided for in anti-discrimination laws when the behaviour is discriminatory (age, sex, etc.);
•    extension of protection against measures that are prejudicial to ‘informal’ witnesses;
•    change in the starting point of the protection period (as soon as the employer is aware of the request for a formal psychosocial intervention/complaint, or could reasonably have been aware of it);
•    changes in the way the employer is informed (the health and safety advisor must provide information on the nature of the facts mentioned in the formal request for intervention, on the possibility for witnesses to refuse to allow the employer to be informed of their protection, etc.);
•    possible accumulation of compensation for violence, or psychological or sexual harassment in the workplace, on the one hand, and arising from a failure to comply with protection against reprisals, on the other.

The internal procedure for preventing psychosocial risks must be included in the work regulations which should be amended to comply with the new law.

Did some of your employment contracts start before 1/1/2014? 

1.    The ‘double photo’ no longer applies in the event of resignation by the employee

Finally, as a reminder, after the introduction of the ‘single status’, the notice period for the resignation of employees who started in the company before 1 January 2014 had to be calculated according to the ‘double photo’ rule (partial calculation of the notice period acquired before 31 December 2013 plus calculation of the notice period acquired after 1 January 2014).

Since last October, this mechanism no longer applies: for all contracts signed before that date, the notice period to be respected by the employee is calculated based on a single stage. The maximum period is 13 weeks.

Your work regulations must contain the notice period that employees must observe if the contract is terminated (or refer to the legal provisions governing this matter). Here too, these regulations may have to be amended to take account of this legal change. 

2.    Termination clauses for superior white-collar employees must be applied

In case of dismissal by the employer of a superior white-collar employee who had joined the company before 1 January 2014, the 'double photo' remains applicable. For the calculation of step 1, the notice period remains 1 month for each year of seniority started, with a minimum of 3 months. A law of 23 March 2023 erroneously provided that this rule would be abolished on 28 October 2023. This mistake has now been rectified, so the previously applicable rule continues to apply. 

Moreover, it adds, following a Constitutional Court ruling, that application of a valid clause on the notice period must be made if it existed on 31 December 2013. Thus, when dismissing a superior employee who joined the company before 1 January 2014, the employer will always have to check whether a valid notice clause existed on 31 December 2013 and, if so, will have to apply it.


Would you like further information or would you like us to update your work rules and regulations? Please feel free to contact your trusted BDO advisor or one of our experts Natalie Bastiaens or Filip Van Beirendonck.