Compliance and Regulations: How MANUS WFM Software Helps You stay Up-to-Date
The regulatory environment surrounding labor is a minefield full of violations waiting to happen. Organizations have to manage their workforces in line with numerous laws and collective labor agreements and keep on top of any changes to those mandates.
Compliance requires constant vigilance and without automation, it’s a burdensome process. Multiple violations can slip through the cracks, attracting escalating fines.
IIn this article, we’ll review the labor compliance challenges facing companies in the Netherlands and how WFM software keeps organizations on the right side of the law.
Labor Compliance in the Netherlands
Collective Labor Agreements
In the Netherlands alone, there were 666 registered collective laboragreements, (or collective bargaining agreements/CAOs) as of January 2025, applying to 6.1 million employees. These include 175 industry-wide CAOs (26%, affecting 5.7 million workers) and 491 company-specific CAOs (74%, affecting around 450,000 workers).
The greatest number of agreements are found in industry and utility sectors (42%), followed by transport and storage (14%). However, most employees covered by a CAO are in healthcare (21%), retail (16%), and industry and utilities (13%).
Collective agreements are continually updated so organizations must constantly track a complex set of rules.
Types of CAO’s
Aside from core issues like wages, the provisions deal with learning and development, early retirement schemes (RVU), and workload management.
New themes are also emerging, including part-time workers’ rights, equal pay, provisions for military reservists, and agreements that help refugees with residence permits integrate into the workforce through internships or targeted hiring.
Since the pandemic, many Dutch employers have started formalizing hybrid working arrangements in their CAOs. CAOs also cover internship conditions, and bereavement leave has appeared as a topic.
The Working Hours Act
Under the Netherlands’ Working Hours Act (Arbeidstijdenwet), a full-time employee is not allowed to work more than 12 hours in a day or 60 hours in a single week.
Over a longer period, the average must stay at 48 hours per week. In other words, they can’t work 60 hours every week indefinitely; instead, they might work 48 hours per week for 16 weeks and 55 hours for four weeks.
Employees are also entitled to at least 11 hours of rest between workdays and 36 consecutive hours off each week.
The Act applies to all staff, including temps, agency staff, and foreign workers.
Employers are mandated to track working hours and keep records. If your scheduling or timekeeping slips up, it’s as much of a legal issue as it is a labor management issue.
Exceptions
Staff can work beyond the limits under certain circumstances. For example, if a serious accident occurred and extra supervision is required, staff can work beyond the maximum daily hours. These types of exceptions are typically stated in CAOs.
Certain professions come with distinct rules, such as the hour limits placed on drivers during journeys within Europe. Other exceptions pertain to new or expecting mothers, minors, and young adults.
The Risks of Violations and Enforcement
With such a broad set of rules, non-compliance can easily go undetected and unintentional breaches can still result in penalties.
Violations of the Working Hours Act come with a standard fine of €200 per violation per day. The amount is adjusted depending on the size of the organization: companies with less than 10 employees pay 50%; companies with 10-50 employees pay 75%; and those with 100 or more employees pay 150%.
Failing to properly record working hours and rest times can lead to penalties of €10,000.
Routine overtime beyond legal limits could add up to tens of thousands of euros in fines if multiple employees are affected. Persistent non-compliance can lead to escalating fines and more severe enforcement actions, such as orders to cease activities and in extreme cases, legal prosecution.
Challenges of Staying Up-to-Date with Labor Regulations
Beyond the breadth and complexity of labor regulations, why is compliance so challenging?
For a start, the rules are constantly changing. For example, minimum wage increases typically occur twice per year.
2025 also saw stricter enforcement regarding worker misclassification. Scrutiny of freelancer and contractor relationships has increased, and unexpected payroll tax liabilities may follow.
Upcoming Changes
Let’s consider a few highlights as to how labor laws will be changing in the near future.
In 2026, a new collective bargaining agreement for temporary and agency workers will be introduced. The total employment package offered to these workers will have to be equal in value to what a comparable permanent worker receives, and all temps will start accumulating a pension when they begin working for company.
Negotiations are underway about a new non-food retail CAO. New provisions may be added regarding internship allowances, part-timer pay, and additional maternity leave with 100% pay, among other topics.
Looking further ahead, the ban on zero-hours contracts will take effect (in 2027).
Keeping up-to-date requires quickly translating new rules into operational practice, and this is what makes technology critical. Modern workforce management tools embed the rules into your processes and automate compliance checks. Let’s explore how MANUS WFM carries that out.
How Our Workforce Management Software Embeds Compliance
A workforce management system serves as a powerful safety net for compliance. For example, MANUS WFM has an advanced compliance engine that continuously enforces labor rules, whether they come from CAOs or national law (in the Netherlands or elsewhere).
We configure your implementation with all the rules applicable to your organization and the software automatically monitors and applies them in day-to-day operations.
For example, if managers create schedules where an employee’s shift would take them beyond the legal daily maximum hours, the system will flag it.
Managers no longer need to check every schedule line-by-line to detect issues – the workforce management solution highlights the exceptions that need attention.
This vastly reduces the burden of administrative tasks and the risk of oversight.
Attendance Tracking
WFM software helps organizations manage compliance with the timetracking rules under the Working Hours Act. Attendance data is logged (for example using apps or clockingdevices); pay rules are then applied and automated payroll calculations are performed for the entire workforce.
In case of any inquiries about a potential working time violation, you can pull up a detailed report showing the employee’s hours, the alert that was generated by the system, and the corrective action taken.
Proving Compliance
MANUS WFM creates an audit trail, providing complete visibility during inspections or disputes. Every schedule change, clock-in/out, approval, or exception resolution is logged.
In case of any inquiries about a potential working time violation, you can pull up a detailed report showing the employee’s hours, the alert that was generated by the system, and the corrective action taken.
Conclusion
Staying compliant with labor laws in the Netherlands’ and beyond is a challenge. With hundreds of CAOs, strict Working Hours Act requirements, and frequent regulatory updates, manual processes create significant risk.
Fines can mount with each violation, and failure to track time correctly can attract penalties of €10,000.
MANUS WFM gives organizations the structure, automation, and visibility needed to stay aligned with the law (without adding administrative burden). It embeds rules directly into daily operations and flags only the exceptions, which saves many hours.
Beyond compliance, it streamlines employee scheduling, leave management, demand forecasting, and other critical WFM processes – and helps minimize costs by up to 10%.
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