👉 Stay on top of your training obligations, without the Excel stress

From twenty employees, every full-time employee is federally entitled to at least five training days per year (this was still four days in 2023); with ten to nineteen employees, a federal minimum of one training day per year per full-time employee applies, and below ten employees federal law imposes no minimum. These are the federal minimum rules: the actual number depends on your joint committee (paritair comité), because sectoral collective agreements (cao's) may deviate from them. If an employee works part-time, the number of days is calculated pro rata. This individual training right was introduced by the law of 3 October 2022 (the 2022 labour deal, or Arbeidsdeal) and is separate from, but closely linked to, the obligation to draw up an annual training plan.If an employee does not use all of their training days in a given year, they are not lost: they carry over to the next year as training credit. That credit runs in fixed five-year periods, though — the first from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2028 — and at the end of each period every employee's balance is reset to zero collectively. Both formal training (courses and training sessions with an instructor) and informal learning (coaching, self-study, onboarding by a colleague) count, as long as they are work-related — wellbeing training also qualifies.In this guide you will read, per company size, how many days you must provide, what happens to unused days, when sectoral collective agreements deviate, and how this right relates to the training plan and the announced individual learning account.

A sector fund — also known as a "fonds voor bestaanszekerheid" (social security fund) — is a fund managed per joint committee (paritair comité) and financed with mandatory employer contributions, which offers training, premiums and contributions to costs to employers and employees within that sector. Which fund applies to your business depends on the joint committee your company falls under: each joint committee generally has its own fund, with its own training offer and its own conditions. Some funds mainly offer free training, others work with flat-rate premiums per training hour or day, and a few combine both. As an HR manager or business owner, your company already contributes to your sector's fund in any case, via the sectoral contributions on the wage bill. Earning that contribution back through the training offer is therefore mainly a matter of knowing where to go, rather than filing an extra application. Further down this guide you will find an overview per joint committee, with a link to the corresponding fund and to the bookable training offer on smartlions.academy. Note: a sector fund is different from the kmo-portefeuille (the Flemish SME training subsidy) of the Flemish government, which works per enterprise and is open to all Flemish SMEs, regardless of joint committee. You can often combine both.

Does your company have 20 or more employees? Then, since the 2022 labour deal (Arbeidsdeal, the law of 3 October 2022), you are required to draw up an annual training plan, adopted by 31 March at the latest. The plan lists the formal and informal training you plan to provide that year, with specific attention to shortage occupations, the gender dimension and at-risk groups. You first discuss the draft with the works council or trade union delegation, and then file the final plan with the FPS Employment (FOD Werkgelegenheid).The precise content requirements follow from the royal decree of 14 July 2024. Employers with fewer than 20 employees are exempt from this formal planning obligation. In this guide you will see who the obligation applies to, which deadlines you must meet, what exactly the plan must contain and how to organise the consultation correctly.