The Balanced Employment Market Act (WAB): what does it entail and what has changed since?

Insights

December 3, 2025

The Balanced Employment Market Act (WAB): what does it entail and what has changed since?

The WAB (Balanced Employment Market Act) has been in effect since 1 January 2020. One of the aims of this law is to create better working conditions for employees with flexible contracts in relation to the conditions of a permanent contract. On-call workers and payroll employees in particular are better protected under this law. In addition, it makes it more attractive for employers to give an employee a permanent contract. Changes in the dismissal law have also been implemented.

Since its introduction, a number of things have changed regarding this law. For you as an employer, it’s important to know whether the WAB changes anything for your situation and to know what the consequences of this are. That’s why we’ve made a checklist. Please check it thoroughly if you have employees working under a zero-hours contract, on-call contract or min-max contract!

On-call contracts

If you have employees with on-call contracts (this also applies to zero-hour contracts or min-max contracts), a number of rules changed as of 1 January 2020. Listed below are the main rules from the WAB you should still pay attention to in order to remain compliant:

Fixed hour offer: When an on-call contract has lasted 12 months, you are obliged to make a written offer for a fixed amount of working hours by the 13th month at the latest. If you don’t do this, the employee can claim the wage over the offer you should have made. The employee is allowed to refuse this offer and continue the existing on-call contract. However, as an employer, you remain obliged to repeat this offer every year.
Unemployment benefit contributions (WW-premies): As an employer, you pay lower unemployment benefit contributions for permanent employees with an indefinite contract than for employees with a fixed-term contract. Therefore, it’s wise to look into giving on-call workers a fixed-hour contract for an indefinite period! The low premium will be withdrawn retroactively (meaning you must pay the high premium) if an employee with a contract of less than 35 hours works more than 30% above their fixed hours in a calendar year.
Notification period: The call-out and cancellation period has gone from 4 days to 24 hours; this changed as of 1 July 2023. If you cancel the shift within those 24 hours, you are obliged to pay the wage for the agreed hours. The employee must comply with the agreements and is, if contractually stipulated, obliged to arrange a replacement. repeatedly cancelling without a valid reason can lead to employment law consequences, such as file building.

Expansion of chain contracts

As an employer, you were previously allowed to offer three consecutive temporary contracts over a maximum period of two years. After this period, you had to offer an employee a permanent employment contract. This period has been extended to three consecutive contracts in three years.

Payrollers

The status of payroll employees has changed. Payrollers must be employed under the same employment conditions, both primary and secondary, as your own employees. Not just in terms of salary, but also in terms of holiday entitlement for example. The aim of this regulation is to make it less interesting for employers to hire employees via payroll, and instead hire these employees directly.

Following the introduction of the WAB in 2020, a supplement has been in effect since 2021: payrollers are also entitled to an adequate pension scheme after 26 weeks of work. This is an important component for payroll companies that must not be missed.

Dismissal law

The introduction of the WAB also meant a change in the dismissal law. Simply put: it has become easier to fire an employee. Previously, employees could only be dismissed based on one of the eight grounds for dismissal. Otherwise, an extensive dismissal file had to be presented. The WAB makes it possible to dismiss someone based on cumulative grounds (i-ground). You can see this as a kind of sum of situations. This basically means that when situations occur that individually wouldn’t be sufficient for dismissal, they might meet the requirements for dismissal when combined. You can find more information about the cumulative grounds via this link (in Dutch).

Transition allowance

Another important change within the WAB is the adjustment of the transition allowance. As an employer, you were previously only obliged to pay a transition allowance if the person dismissed had been employed for more than two years. The WAB entitles employees to a transition payment from day one, even if an employee is still in their probation period. To compensate employers, the transition allowance has been lowered to 1/3 gross monthly salary per year of employment. The payment is calculated over the actual duration of the contract.