What Belgian and Dutch law require for workplace instruction

Compliance training tends to be discussed as content: which topics, how often, which certificate. Inspectors and auditors rarely start there. They start with a name and a date, and work outwards. Was this person instructed before they started, about this site and this task, on the version of the procedure currently on the wall, in a language they read? Every one of those questions is answered from the law's own wording, and from a record.

Two laws, the same question

In Belgium the duty sits in the Welzijnswet of 4 August 1996 and its implementing Codex over het welzijn op het werk. Codex art. I.2-21 requires every worker to receive sufficient and appropriate training on welfare at work, aimed at their workstation or function: on entry into service, on a change of function, and when new work equipment or new technology is introduced. It is repeated and adapted as risks evolve, given during working hours, and not at the worker's expense. Art. I.2-20 adds an access rule: only workers who received appropriate instructions may enter zones with serious and specific hazards. Appropriate instructions, not a diploma.

In the Netherlands, Arbowet art. 8 requires that workers are effectively informed about the work and its risks (lid 1), that instruction is effective and adapted to their distinct tasks (lid 2), and that the employer supervises compliance with the instructions given (lid 4). Lid 4 is the one that quietly decides most inspections: issuing an instruction is not supervising it.

The Belgian onthaal is a procedure

Where most training duties are written as results, the onthaal is written as a procedure. Codex art. I.2-15 entrusts it to a member of the hierarchical line, and art. I.2-11 adds an experienced worker who accompanies each beginning worker and a document that the designated line manager signs for each person, so one group attendance list does not cover it. The term is explained in the onthaal glossary entry, and what it asks of supervisors in our guide on the line manager's duty.

The Dutch duty has no template

The Netherlands has no equivalent signature obligation, and it should not be claimed. Article 8 imposes the duty without prescribing any proof. That is uncomfortable rather than comfortable: the duty exists, and how you demonstrate it is entirely your own design. Without a record of who was instructed, on what, when and in which language, you cannot show that article 8 was met for a specific person on a specific date, and lid 4 asks you to show more than that: that you checked the instruction is being followed.

Temps: the user company instructs the workstation

Agency workers sit in a triangle. In both countries the company where the work is done carries the instruction about that workstation and its risks: in Belgium the user company, through the werkpostfiche it completes with the agency; in the Netherlands the hirer, who counts as the employer for the Arbowet. The agency's general induction does not replace it. How to run that before a temp's first shift is in our guide on onboarding temp workers, and the form itself in the werkpostfiche entry.

Language is part of "effective"

Neither law accepts instruction the worker cannot follow. The Arbowet asks for effective instruction, the Codex for appropriate training, and instruction in a language someone does not read meets neither. Which language Belgian law requires for work documents in each region is a separate question with its own rules, covered in our guide on the language of work instructions.

What the frameworks on top add

The law almost never fixes a course, a certificate, a duration or an interval. The schemes are more specific, but they are contracts: a client or a retailer asks for them. Our VCA guide covers the scheme most contractors meet, and our guide on refresher intervals the few places where an interval is fixed.

How Aristotl handles it

Aristotl builds courses of 3-5 minutes from the procedures and instructions you already maintain, and each worker completes them on their own phone, in their own language, with a knowledge check. Your team reviews every course before it is published. Courses are assigned per site or team, temps join through a link or QR code without a company email, and completion is viewable per person, per site and per version in the platform, so the question "was this person instructed, on what, and when" is one look.

The Belgian onthaal can run as a checklist with a signature step for the line manager, and the checklist day log exports as CSV or PDF. What stays with you: the practical instruction at the workstation, the buddy, and the supervision art. 8 lid 4 asks for.

Take the last three people who started on your riskiest site. For each of them, check whether you could show what they were instructed on, when, by whom and in which language.