Belgian training plan template in Word, with a worked example

Template (Word)   Template (Excel)

From twenty employees you draw up a training plan once per calendar year, with the content settled before 31 March. The threshold is counted in full-time equivalents over a fixed reference period: the fourth quarter of year n-2 plus the first three quarters of year n-1. That reference period is anchored to the two-year period, not to the year of your plan: for both 2026 and 2027 you therefore count the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first three quarters of 2025. The undertaking to count is the legal entity.

There is no compulsory model. The FPS Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue states explicitly that the employer is free to determine the form of the plan. What is fixed is the minimum content, and this is it.

• Formal and informal training as defined in article 35 of the Act of 3 October 2022. Those two categories must match the definitions used by the National Bank of Belgium, the same ones you later use for the social balance sheet.
• An explanation of how the plan contributes to the investment in training set out in chapter 12 of the same Act, meaning the individual right to training.
• Training that addresses the bottleneck occupations in your sector: occupations for which employers in the sector cannot find, or struggle to find, suitable candidates.
• Particular attention to people from the at-risk groups, and in particular to employees aged at least 50, and to the method of evaluation with employees.
• Particular attention to employees of foreign origin and to employees with a disability.
• The gender dimension, which must be taken into account when the plan is drawn up.
• The plan is concluded for a minimum term of one year.

31 March is the date by which the content must be settled, not the date you start. Work back from the consultation. The works council gives its opinion by 15 March at the latest, so the meeting falls on 15 March at the latest, and the draft has to be with the council at least fifteen days before that. That lands you at the end of February, the beginning of March. The FPS puts it the same way: the draft must be communicated during the first quarter and in any event by the beginning of March at the latest. That start date is not in the Act as such; it follows from the two statutory terms together. Starting to write in March is starting too late.

• No works council? The draft goes to the union delegation, which gives its opinion by 15 March at the latest.
• Neither of the two? You submit the training plan directly to the employees, by 15 March at the latest. The obligation does not disappear.
• The plan already applies from 1 January, with the consultation period inside that year. Nothing stops you being ready before 31 March.
• A plan may run for several years, provided the works council, the union delegation or, failing those, the employees agree.

The table below is the template itself, in the same layout as the Word file. Each row is a block. The middle column says what goes in the block, the right-hand column shows what that looks like in practice at Metaalwerken Devos, a fictional company with 60 employees, blue-collar staff in joint committee 111 and white-collar staff in the competent white-collar joint committee.

Not everything in the table is imposed by law, and the table says so. Rows 4 to 11 come straight out of article 36: the minimum content and the points of attention the Act lists. Rows 1, 2, 3 and 15 evidence that you handled the threshold, the deadlines and the filing correctly; the Act does not prescribe them as content. Rows 12, 13 and 14 are recommended and marked as such.

A plan that treats your company as if it were a single sector is rarely right in Belgium. Blue-collar and white-collar staff usually fall under different joint committees, and the rules that bear on your training plan hang off that committee.

Joint committees and sub-committees may set, through a collective labour agreement declared generally binding by Royal Decree, the minimum requirements a training plan must meet. Such an agreement is filed by 30 September of the preceding year. If your sector has one, it overrides the form you would otherwise have chosen. Bottleneck occupation lists are drawn up sector by sector as well.

• Use one row per competent joint committee, not one line for the company as a whole.
• Record per committee: is there a sectoral agreement on the training plan, how many training days does the sector impose, and which sectoral fund goes with it.
• Look the agreement up in the FPS collective agreement database before you settle the plan, and take your bottleneck occupations from your own sector, not from a general list.

Your plan has to explain how it contributes to the investment in training of chapter 12. That investment is the individual right to training, and it is counted not in euros but in days per employee; the Act does allow you to express that day in hours. From twenty employees it is five training days per year for a full-time employee, pro rata for part-timers. Between ten and twenty employees it is at least one day. Below ten employees you fall outside chapter 12 entirely.

The credit runs in fixed five-year periods, the first from 1 January 2024. At the end of such a period, so on 31 December 2028, the balance of the available training credit is reset to zero and a new period begins. Until then, days not taken carry over to the following year and may not be deducted from that year's credit.

Since 1 January 2026 the Federal Learning Account has been abolished and there is no longer a legal obligation to register the training your employees follow. Sectoral collective agreements may still provide otherwise, and an employee can still ask for the balance of their training credit. Without a counter in days you can neither answer that question nor evidence the carry-over.

• Five days per year per full-time employee from twenty employees, pro rata for part-timers and for those not employed for the whole year.
• One day per year between ten and fewer than twenty employees; those employers set the number of days each year before 30 September.
• A sectoral agreement may change the number but never below two days per worker, and it cannot cut the number where more than two days had already been granted for a given year.
• The balance carries over; at the end of the five-year period it is reset to zero collectively.

Two obligations, two clocks. The plan stays within the undertaking: the Act attaches no retention period to it, but it does attach a condition. Employees and their representatives have access to the plan on simple request, and for as long as that request can be made, the plan has to be there.

Alongside that, within one month of the plan entering into force you send a copy electronically to the Director-General of the Directorate-General Supervision of Social Legislation, through transfer.werk.belgie.be, or transfert.emploi.belgique.be in French. If the plan contains personal data of employees, you must anonymise it before sending the copy. Two files, then: the copy for the works council is not the copy for the FPS. Filing only with a sectoral fund is not enough, even where a generally binding collective agreement provides for it.

• Retention happens inside the company, with no statutory term, and with access on simple request for employees and their representatives.
• The copy for the FPS must be anonymised if it contains personal data.
• If your sector has fixed a model and conditions in a generally binding collective agreement, you are obliged to comply with them.

The formal and informal training in your plan has to match the National Bank definitions. That is deliberate: the training section of the social balance sheet uses exactly the same split. It asks, by gender, for the number of employees involved, the number of training hours followed and the net cost to the company, across three blocks: formal continuing vocational training (codes 5801 to 5813, with sub-codes for the net cost), less formal and informal continuing vocational training (5821 to 5833) and initial vocational training (5841 to 5853).

Build the plan in those categories from the start, with participants, hours and net cost by gender, and you fill that section from the same records instead of counting everything a second time. Mind the boundary: that is one section of the social balance sheet. The other sections, on headcount, hours worked, staff costs and staff movements, come out of your payroll administration.

• Classify every training at the moment you record it: formal, less formal or informal, or initial vocational training.
• Keep participants, hours and net cost separately for men and for women; the social balance sheet requires that split.
• Deduct subsidies received to reach the net cost; codes 58031 to 58033 for men and 58131 to 58133 for women ask for that breakdown in the formal block.

No. The FPS Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue states explicitly that the employer is free to determine the form of the training plan and that there is no compulsory model. What is fixed is the minimum content set out in article 36 of the Act of 3 October 2022, and the template on this page follows that content. Joint committees can additionally set minimum requirements through a collective agreement declared generally binding by Royal Decree, and those you do have to comply with.

The content must be settled by 31 March at the latest, once per calendar year. But the works council's opinion is due by 15 March, and the draft goes out at least fifteen days before that meeting. In practice you therefore start at the end of February or the beginning of March; the FPS asks for the draft to be communicated by the beginning of March at the latest. The plan itself already applies from 1 January.

Then the draft goes to the union delegation, which gives its opinion by 15 March at the latest. If there is neither a works council nor a union delegation, you submit the training plan directly to the employees, by 15 March at the latest. The obligation to draw up a plan does not disappear where there is no consultation body.

Yes. Within one month of the plan entering into force you send a copy electronically to the Director-General of the Directorate-General Supervision of Social Legislation of the FPS Employment, through transfer.werk.belgie.be, or transfert.emploi.belgique.be in French. If the plan contains personal data of employees you must anonymise it first. Filing only with a sectoral fund for existence security is not enough, even where a generally binding collective agreement provides for it.

The Act sets no retention period. Article 37 of the Act of 3 October 2022 provides that the training plan is kept within the undertaking and that employees and their representatives have access to it on simple request. In practice that means: for as long as the plan or an earlier plan can be requested, it must remain available, together with the opinion of the consultation body and the proof of filing.

The FPS states that there is currently no sanction for failing to comply with this formality. A missing plan can, however, become a subject of social dialogue inside the company, and a penal provision may be introduced in future. If your sector has fixed a model and conditions in a collective agreement declared generally binding by Royal Decree, you are obliged to comply with those conditions.

Legally, no. The Act of 14 January 2026 repeals the Act of 20 October 2023 on the Federal Learning Account, and since 1 January 2026 you can no longer register training in it, so there is no longer a legal obligation to register training. Sectoral collective agreements may still provide otherwise, and an employee can still ask for the balance of their training credit. You need those figures anyway to determine the carry-over to the following year.

Smart Lions builds the training plan out of your own training records and exports it in two versions: one for the works council and one anonymised copy for the FPS Employment. Next to it, the individual right to training sits in days per employee and per joint committee, balance included, and the training section of the social balance sheet comes out as a single export. 30-day full trial, then automatically Free. Start 30 days free

• Employers with twenty or more employees draw up a training plan once per calendar year, before 31 March.
• The draft goes to the works council at least fifteen days before the meeting, the opinion is due by 15 March, and where there is neither works council nor union delegation the plan is submitted to the employees by 15 March.
• The plan must contain at least formal and informal training, explain how it contributes to the chapter 12 investment, pay particular attention to at-risk groups and employees aged 50 and over, to bottleneck occupations, to the method of evaluation with employees, to employees of foreign origin and employees with a disability, and take the gender dimension into account. It is concluded for a minimum term of one year.
• Statutory definitions of formal training, informal training, bottleneck occupation and training plan.
• The training plan is kept within the undertaking, with no statutory retention period, and employees and their representatives have access on simple request.
• Joint committees may set, by generally binding collective agreement, the minimum requirements a training plan must meet; that agreement must be filed by 30 September of the preceding year.
• The employer freely determines the form of the plan, there is no compulsory model, and formal and informal training must match the National Bank of Belgium definitions.
• The draft must be communicated during the first quarter and in any event by the beginning of March at the latest, and the content settled by 31 March at the latest.
• There is currently no sanction for failing to comply with this formality, a missing plan can become a subject of social dialogue, a penal provision may follow, and a generally binding sectoral model and conditions must be complied with.
• The reference period for the full-time-equivalent count is anchored to the two-year period, not to the year of the plan: the fourth quarter of year n-2 and the first three quarters of year n-1 preceding that two-year period. A training day is a normal working day of a full-time employee, which the employer may express in hours.
• The plan already applies from 1 January with the consultation period included, a plan may run for several years subject to agreement, the twenty threshold is calculated as in article 50 paragraph 2, and the undertaking is the legal entity.
• Filing must go through transfer.werk.belgie.be; filing only with a sectoral fund for existence security is not sufficient. The gender dimension means, quantitatively, no unequal treatment or opportunity by gender and, qualitatively, attention to training on gender equality and the prevention of discrimination.
• Within one month of entry into force a copy is transmitted electronically to the Director-General of the Directorate-General Supervision of Social Legislation, and personal data of employees must be anonymised first.
• Five training days per year per full-time employee, employers with fewer than ten employees excluded, at least one day between ten and fewer than twenty employees with the number set annually before 30 September, and a sectoral agreement may not go below two days nor cut the number where more than two days had already been granted.
• Unused days carry over without being deducted from the following year's credit, and at the end of each five-year period, which may start at the earliest on 1 January 2024, the balance is reset to zero.
• There is no longer a legal obligation to register the training employees follow; sectoral collective agreements may provide otherwise and an employee can still ask for the balance of their training credit.
• Since 1 January 2026 training can no longer be registered in the Federal Learning Account.
• The Act of 14 January 2026 repeals the Federal Learning Account.
• The training section of the social balance sheet asks, by gender, for the number of employees involved, the training hours followed and the net cost, in three blocks with codes 5801 to 5853.