Dutch employment contracts: 9 clauses every international employer should understand

Maximum one month for fixed-term contracts of six months to two years, maximum two months for contracts of two years or longer (and for open-ended contracts). No probation is allowed for contracts of six months or less. Get the maths wrong and the entire probation clause is void from day one.

Three fixed-term contracts in a 36-month window converts automatically into an open-ended contract on the fourth. Gaps shorter than six months count towards the chain; the 2024 reform tightened the interruption rule, so reset assumptions you held under the old regime no longer hold.

When a sectoral collective labour agreement (CAO) applies, the contract has to reference it and follow its terms on holiday allowance, salary scales, sick leave and pension. Ignoring an applicable CAO is one of the most common - and most expensive - mistakes international employers make.

Statutory notice is one month from the employee, scaling with tenure from the employer. Contractual extension is permitted but the employer notice must always be at least double the employee notice. Asymmetric clauses that fail this test are unenforceable.

Reform proposals are tightening the conditions under which non-compete clauses can be enforced: written justification per role, capped geographic scope, capped duration, and (in some drafts) a paid waiting period during the restricted window. Draft today as if the reform is in force - it usually saves a rewrite within 12 months.

Owed on most employer-initiated terminations, calculated as one-third of monthly salary per year of service, pro-rated. Even short tenures qualify under the current rules. Budget this into the cost of every hire from day one - not at the moment of separation.

Standard full-time in the Netherlands is 36-40 hours depending on CAO. The minimum wage is now a unified hourly rate (since 2024), with the same gross hourly wage regardless of standard working week. Quoting monthly minimums without the hourly conversion is a 2023 habit to drop.

8% of the annual salary, paid in May or June, on top of base salary. Many CAOs raise this to 8.33%. Whether it accrues over bonus and variable pay depends on the contract - and the default favours the employee, not the employer.

If the employee is eligible, the contract should split the gross salary into the taxable base and the tax-free reimbursement explicitly, and contain a clawback clause for the phase-down years. Doing this at signature avoids re-papering the contract three times during the five-year term.

Make the split mechanical, not narrative: state the gross figure, the reimbursed percentage that applies in each year of the term, and how the parties handle a mid-term loss of eligibility (most often, the employer is not required to gross up the difference unless the clause says so).