Employee's professional training: Two new registration obligations for employers in Belgium

At a glance

• The Belgian government recently introduced two new registration obligations for employers: They must register their training plans with social inspection and professional trainings on the federal learning account.
• The Act of 3 October 2022 requires employers with at least 20 employees to draft an annual training plan by 31 March each year, focusing on collective employee training. 
• The training plan must be reviewed by the works council or equivalent 15 days before finalisation, with a focus on specific groups like older employees, non-EU jobseekers, and disabled workers.
• The federal learning account was established by the Act of 20 October 2023, and it records all training days to ensure employees receive their entitled training, with registration required each quarter. 
• The federal learning account was effective from 1 April 2024, but a draft Act proposes delaying it to 1 July 2025, pending a parliamentary vote.

The Belgian government recently introduced two new registration obligations for employers. The first is an obligation to register the employer's training plan with the social inspection and the second is to register professional trainings on the new federal learning account. Whilst these are both linked, they are included in separate pieces of legislation. 

Employer's training plans

The Act of 3 October 2022, which includes various employment provisions, outlines the regulations for employers’ training plans. These plans should reflect the employer’s policy for all employees collectively. Training can be either formal, provided by an external organisation, or internal, conducted by a colleague. The requirement to create a training plan applies to all employers with at least 20 employees, and they must draft an annual training plan by 31 March each year.

The works council (or, if absent, the trade union delegation, or if neither exists, the employees themselves) should be provided with the training plan to review and advise on it 15 days in advance. Therefore, the employer should draft the plan by 15 March at the latest. The plan should particularly focus on training for employees aged 50 and above, jobseekers who are not nationals of an EU member state, and disabled workers.

Article 38 of the Act of 3 October 2022 requires that the annual plan be submitted to the Belgian government within one month of its enactment. However, the Royal Decree of 14 July 2024, which outlines the submission process, was only published in the Official Journal on 2 September 2024.

Registration should be completed using the application form, which is also used for registering a collective bargaining agreement or new work regulations.

The Royal Decree of 14 July 2024 emphasises that the training plan should address the workforce as a collective group. It explicitly states that if the plan includes personal data on individual employees, the employer must anonymise this data before registering the plan.

The training plans for 2023 and 2024 must be registered by 2 March 2025.

Register professional trainings

There is a separate obligation to register trainings completed by individual employees under the Act of 20 October 2023, which concerns the creation and management of the federal learning account.

The Act of 3 October 2022 grants every employee the right to five days of professional training per year (pro-rated for part-time employees). This right is not dependent on the number of employees an employer has.

The federal learning account was established to record all training days and ensure that each employee receives the professional training they are entitled to.

Training must be registered in the quarter in which it occurs. The training institute can register the training on behalf of the employer.

The federal learning account came into effect on 1 April 2024. However, a draft Act has been submitted to Parliament to delay its implementation to 1 July 2025. Although the parties of the four Members of Parliament who submitted the draft Act hold a clear majority, the vote on the draft is still pending.