Member-only story
the compensation day in hours
The Belgium compensation day reviewed and refined
Last summer, I stumbled upon a fascinating quirk in Belgian employment law: compensation days. It turns out that if a public holiday falls on a weekend, you don’t just lose that day off — you get compensated for it! In most countries, a weekend holiday is simply bad luck, but Belgium has a different approach.
My initial thought was simple: just add an extra day to the employee’s holiday balance. Easy, right? I even started imagining a system where I’d find the compensation day, add a “-1” to the balance (meaning one extra day), and let employees use it before the year’s end.
But there was a problem. This approach works fine for traditional full-time employees, but Belgium has a diverse workforce with many people working part-time or having varied work schedules. Simply adding a full day didn’t account for someone who might only work a few hours on the day that would normally be “compensated.”
