Many Dutch employers still don't have formal agreements around hybrid working
With around 5 million hybrid workers, people who regularly or occasionally work from home, the Netherlands has proportionally more people working from home than anywhere else in Europe. But most employers still only arrange this informally, Financieele Dagblad reported based on a new study by employment lawyer Niels van der Neut and economist and labor sociologist Weteke Conen.
A TNO study at the end of 2021 showed that less than a quarter of hybrid-working employees worked from home based on formal agreements. Now, just under half still work according to informal agreements. Most companies rushed into implementing work-from-home during the coronavirus pandemic. “And since then, a significant number have barely considered how to implement it further,” Van der Neut and Conen said.
Most employers do not sufficiently consider it their responsibility to ensure that their hybrid workers have an ergonomically well-designed home workspace and are not working too much, the researchers said. A study from 2022 showed that hybrid workers often work longer days and have more irregular hours than office-based employees. “If no measures are taken to address this, there’s a greater risk of burnout,” Van der Neut told FD.
The question is how big this problem is, given that there have been no major disasters in the five years since work-from-home became commonplace. “I wouldn’t venture that conclusion,” Conen said to the newspaper. “I think both physical and psychosocial stress will become an issue at some point, for example, due to the increased risk of work-life balance blurring.”
Van der Neut points out that TNO research seems to indicate that burnout is increasing, though no causal link with hybrid working has been demonstrated. “I do find it remarkable that so few organizations pay attention to the potential psychosocial risks associated with working from home,” he said.
At least, there should be formal agreements about when an employee is expected to be reachable, Van der Neut said. "These days, home is no longer exclusively private, because a large part of the time is also spent working. This also means that people feel much more than before that they need to be available, that they need to keep an eye on their email and mobile phone. If an organization doesn't have a policy regarding accessibility, it can cause stress for its employees – or at the very least, less rest. I think that's problematic for both parties.”
According to the researchers, there are no signs of work-from-home becoming less popular in the Netherlands, as it seems to be doing in the United States. “The vast majority of employers indicate that at least some of their staff will continue to work from home,” Conen said. “Dutch employers seem convinced that working from home has a positive effect on productivity, concentration, and motivation.”
