Dutch labour reforms make recurring work, real costs and worker status harder to separate.
The roster is open on the desk. Friday evening is understaffed again, one employee has requested more hours, and an agency can provide someone at short notice. A self-employed worker is another possibility. The hourly invoice looks manageable. A permanent contract feels heavier.
This is where many small employers make a staffing decision through the price of next week. Yet the work may return every Friday for years. The person may serve the same customers, report to the same manager and depend on the same instructions as everyone else.
The unavoidable question is this: are you buying temporary capacity, or postponing responsibility for structural work?
The distinction matters more now. CBS counted 375,000 vacancies and 407,000 unemployed people at the end of the third quarter of 2026. That meant 92 vacancies for every 100 unemployed people. The market had eased slightly, but finding suitable people remained difficult, particularly in trade, care, business services and construction.
Flexibility is still useful. Availability cannot be assumed.
The roster tells the truth
Dutch employment figures are moving, modestly but clearly. In the third quarter, permanent employment increased by 10,000 to more than 5.6 million people. Flexible employment fell by 8,000 to more than 2.7 million. The number of self-employed people without employees declined for a seventh consecutive quarter.
The figures point to a changing reserve of flexible and self-employed labour while employers still face substantial matching pressure. That makes the actual pattern of work more important than the contract heading.
At the same time, CBS counted 588,000 part-time workers who wanted more hours and were immediately available. That national figure will not solve a particular Friday shift. It should prompt an employer to ask whether existing staff have been offered predictable, workable additional hours before outside capacity is purchased.
In thirty years of Dutch professional practice, I have learned to trust patterns of actual work more than contract headings. Six months of rosters, timesheets and manager instructions often explain the organisation better than a carefully drafted agreement.
If the same hours keep returning, the work is no longer incidental simply because the contract remains flexible. If one freelancer fills an ordinary internal role under daily direction, the invoice does not make the relationship independent.
The legal direction follows the work
The Wet meer zekerheid flexwerkers was approved by the Eerste Kamer in July 2026. Its main flex-contract provisions take effect on 1 January 2028. Zero-hours contracts will then give way to arrangements with guaranteed basic hours, subject to statutory exceptions. After three temporary contracts, employers will generally face a three-year interruption before offering the same worker another temporary contract.
That gives businesses time to prepare, but not a reason to wait. A company cannot redesign its staffing model sensibly in the final payroll run of 2027. It needs to know earlier which hours belong in its permanent base, which cover genuine peaks and which require specialist independence.
The pressure around zzp work arrives sooner. The Belastingdienst has enforced employment classification again since 1 January 2025. Where false self-employment is established, payroll-tax corrections and additional assessments may follow. The authority looks at how the parties actually work together, including direction, working times, organisational integration, substitution and commercial risk.
From 31 December 2026, zzp work below €38 per hour will carry a statutory presumption of employment when the worker invokes it. This does not automatically convert every low-rate assignment into employment. It places a greater burden on the client to support the claimed independence.
For low-margin businesses, that changes the calculation. A seemingly cheap invoice can sit beside payroll exposure, employee-rights claims and management time spent reconstructing what happened.
Count the delivered hour
Permanent employment brings paid leave, sickness exposure, equipment, training, pension costs where applicable and a longer commitment. It can also bring continuity, knowledge, customer trust and greater control over the roster.
Flexible labour carries different costs. Agency margin, induction, supervision, replacement risk and reduced productivity during repeated onboarding all belong in the price. From 31 December 2026, agency workers must receive at least equivalent employment conditions to comparable directly employed workers. Agency capacity should not be budgeted as a permanently cheaper workforce.
Collectively agreed hourly wages, including special payments, were 4.0 percent higher in the third quarter of 2026 than a year earlier. That makes a permanent hire a serious cash decision. It also makes poor comparison dangerous. Gross salary against invoice rate is not a complete calculation.
I would want to see the cost per productive hour after absence cover, administration, supplier charges, onboarding and supervision. I would also ask what happens to revenue when an experienced person leaves, a replacement fails to appear, or a customer must explain the same problem again.
Agency and payroll arrangements transfer parts of the administration, not every responsibility. A hirer must check whether the intermediary has the required Waadi registration. Identity, working conditions and the safe organisation of work remain relevant. Outsourcing the payslip does not outsource governance.
A staffing model is a business promise
Return to that Friday roster. Perhaps the agency worker is right for a festival weekend. Perhaps the self-employed specialist is genuinely delivering a defined result with professional autonomy. Perhaps the employee asking for more hours is the strongest answer to a recurring shift.
The choice should follow the work, not the employer’s preferred label.
A useful review starts with several months of actual hours. Separate stable demand from seasonal peaks, sickness replacement and specialist assignments. Then connect each category to its full cost, customer importance, manager, access rights and contractual basis. Long-running external relationships deserve periodic reassessment because daily practice changes.
A permanent contract is not automatically virtuous, and flexibility is not automatically suspect. Dutch business has always needed room to adjust. Good flexibility absorbs real variation. Poor flexibility hides a permanent need until tax, labour law, staff turnover or customer service exposes it.
The wiser decision is rarely the cheapest hour on next week’s schedule. It is the staffing arrangement that the company can afford, explain and sustain when the same Friday comes around again.
If recurring work is raising questions about cost, contracts or worker status, let us review the staffing model behind it.
The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Linda Pavan Geraedts. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Linda Pavan Geraedts before publication.
References
- Arbeidscontract en flexibilisering: werknemer in vaste dienst of flexkracht? · Salaris Vanmorgen
- CBS - Latest labour-market availability and staffing pressure
- Rijksoverheid - Flex-work reform from 1 January 2028
- Ondernemersplein - On-call work and roster certainty
- Belastingdienst - Zzp classification, payroll exposure and the coming hourly-rate presumption
- Ondernemersplein - Low-rate zzp work and statutory presumption of employment
- Ondernemersplein - Agency workers, payroll providers and hirer responsibility
- Rijksoverheid - Equal employment conditions and proposed time limit for agency deployment
