More and more employees want to work partially or completely from home, but what if your employer suddenly thinks otherwise? An article by journalist Tan Tunali appeared in the NRC on April 21, 2025, in which labor lawyer Stijn Blom of Arbeidsadvocaat.nl explains the legal situation with home working agreements. A recognizable dilemma that appears more and more often in practice: an employee has been working partly at home for some time, but is suddenly given a directive stating that she must return to the office for the most part. How does that sit legally?
Using a real-life example, the article shows how tensions can arise between individual wishes of employees and the interests of teams and organizations. Stijn Blom addresses questions such as: is there a right to work from home? When is it an acquired right? And what may or may not an employer unilaterally change?
Below you can read the full article from NRC of April 21, 2025, written by Tan Tunali. It discusses the tension between individual wishes and organizational interests in working from home and what labor law says about it. The full article from NRC can be read back at the bottom of the page.
Article: Help! My boss suddenly wants me to come to the office more often. Now what? Published in NRC on April 21, 2025 - Tan Tunali
Mr. Stijn Blom, employment lawyer at Arbeidsadvocaat.nl B.V. Stijn has extensive experience in employment law and supports entrepreneurs and employees on a daily basis with a variety of employment law issues. From dismissal cases to drafting watertight contracts and regulations - with his practical and personal approach, he helps employers and employees move forward. Want to know more? Visit Stijn's page.
Help! My boss suddenly wants me to come to the office more often. Now what?
Work-at-home policies are becoming more commonplace, but they remain a struggle in which employers must align the interests of the individual employee, the team and the organization.
Dilemma
I work as the manager of a "self-managing team," alternating between home and office. Next summer, I plan to move and want to be in the office only one to two days every two weeks because of the long commute. To that, I was presented with an internal directive from my boss stating that I should be physically present 60 percent of the time. What to do
Female (45), name known to the editor
Mutual agreements
"My freedom ends where yours begins," is a maxim Marjolijn Feringa was raised with. As an interim director and coach of management teams, she regularly quotes it in discussions between employers and employees around work-at-home requirements. You can't just look at an employee's individual interests, she wants to say with it. Ultimately, employers and employees must decide together how and where work can best be performed. And that depends on the nature of the work and the corporate culture.
There are always three parties with desires, according to Feringa: the individual employee, the team, and the organization as a whole. "Everyone's interests count in this and the key is to bring those interests together," says Feringa. "That's not always easy, because when you get hired somewhere, you agree on what you're going to do there, but usually not how exactly." In this, an employer has quite a few demands to make, Feringa argues, which an employee cannot simply ignore.
"Such a 60 percent rule seems fair, but is of course very arbitrary"
Marjolijn Feringa - executive coach
Although, since the corona pandemic, most large companies do have a home-working policy in place, it still causes problems quite often. "If one colleague says: I only come to the office on Mondays and Tuesdays, and another colleague only on other days, you never meet," says Feringa. And that turns out to be important. "If you know each other personally, you are more likely to help each other." The bigger picture benefits from that. As does conversations at the coffee machine. "Those are nice to discuss informal things, but also often lead to good ideas," says Feringa.
As a coach, she sees how many companies are trying to strike a balance between the wishes of employees, who increasingly want to work from home for a variety of reasons ("it's perfectly fine at home," "travel time," "kids' swim lessons"), and the need to meet each other. This is often spelled out in regulations with strict percentages. "Such a 60-percent rule is, of course, very arbitrary. It seems fair and many companies think it will get rid of the hassle. But of course it should be about how best to organize our work."
According to Feringa, the key to this is to research what kind of work actually needs to be done, where best to do it and what suits the company. "If I need to concentrate on a particular task, it's nice not to have to sit in an office garden. If I have a big meeting, with people across the country, it might actually be more efficient to do it digitally. And if you want to brainstorm together, again, it's just better to do that in the office."
Acquired right
Employment lawyer Stijn Blom also sees this balancing of interests often come up in his work. He emphasizes that a right to work from home does not exist. "Under the Flexible Work Act, you can request your employer to work from home, but ultimately it is the employer who decides." Because there are no clear frameworks in this, it is a gray area. A law that would regulate this stranded a year and a half ago in the Senate.
Employment law often refers to reasonableness and fairness - prerequisites for good employee and employer relations. Once you have an agreement that you can work from home (some of the time), it can become what is known as an "acquired right. "Then it has become a condition of employment and an employer has to be of good character to justify why it should not be possible," Blom said. There are criteria for this, the lawyer knows. "Then, among other things, they look at how long someone has been working from home, and whether other colleagues are allowed to do the same."
"If someone is not meeting targets, an employer may say, 'We want you to come to the office more.'
Stijn Blom - employment law attorney
"So such an internal directive may well be valid," says Blom. "The question is whether working from home has become a vested right and whether the employer has such an interest that he may change it."
Conflicts surrounding working from home rarely end up in court, Blom knows. "If they do, it often has to do with employee dysfunction. If someone fails to meet targets, for example, an employer may say, 'We want you to come to the office more.'"
According to Blom and Feringa, what also plays into this kind of dilemma is the tight labor market and the demands that employees can make as a result. "The Netherlands is a champion of working from home, and employers generally deal with it quite flexibly," says Blom. Large companies that want to attract young talent actually have to offer these conditions. Blom: "You just don't attract young staff anymore if you don't offer very flexible, hip terms of employment."
So
There is no such thing as a right to work from home, so how you can fill that falls or stands with agreements you make with your employer. These must include the interests of the individual employee, the team and the entire organization. If you have been working remotely for some time, it may have become a condition of employment, but that is not necessarily the case. So get clarity before the situation becomes untenable.
