The rules around a rota

What Ploeg is, and what it is not

Ploeg is a planning board: who works when, who is away. It counts the planned hours and the leave as you enter them.

Ploeg is not payroll software, not time registration and not a set of work rules. It does not check whether a rota complies with the law. That stays your responsibility, with the help of your social secretariat.

The work rules

In Belgium, every employer has work rules (arbeidsreglement, règlement de travail). Among other things they contain the work schedules: when the working day starts and ends, the breaks and the rest days.

A rota you make in Ploeg has to fit within your work rules. A new kind of schedule may mean the rules need to change. How that works is set out in the law on work rules (see the sources).

Part-time schedules

Extra rules apply to part-time staff. Their schedule has to be made known in advance, in good time, in the way the work rules lay down, for example a posted schedule. How far in advance is in the law and sometimes in your sector agreement: we deliberately give no number until it has been reviewed.

Whoever departs from the published schedule has to keep a record of those departures. Ploeg keeps the rota and you can print it with the date on it, but it is not an official register of departures. Ask your social secretariat how best to do that.

Working time and rest

The law limits how long someone works per day and per week, and asks for rest between two shifts and breaks during a long shift. Many sectors have their own agreements.

Ploeg shows the planned hours per week next to the contract hours, so you see who is scheduled more or less. It does not check the legal limits: look them up in the sources or ask your secretariat.

Public holidays and replacement days

Belgium has ten legal public holidays. On the rota they carry a red dot. The community holidays and days such as All Souls’ Day or Boxing Day are shown too, without a dot: they are only days off if your sector, your contract or you decide so.

When a legal public holiday falls on a Sunday or on a day someone does not usually work, that person is entitled to a replacement day. How it is set is in the rules on public holidays (see the sources).

Below are the legal public holidays of this year and next year, worked out by Ploeg itself.

Annual leave

How many days of annual leave an employee has depends on what they worked the year before. The social secretariat or the holiday fund works that out, not Ploeg.

In Ploeg you enter each person’s leave per year yourself, in days or hours. Approved holiday comes off it. That way you see at a glance who still has a lot left, as your own count.

Your staff’s data

Your staff’s names, hours and leave are personal data. You are responsible for them (the GDPR calls this the controller). Ploeg keeps them on your own device only and sends them nowhere.

The reason for an absence rarely belongs on a rota. For illness just put Sick, without explanation, and only share a week with the people on it.

Your social secretariat

Your social secretariat runs the payroll and knows the rules of your sector. Ploeg makes the conversation shorter: with the CSV of the shifts or, with Plus, the overview of hours and leave per period.