Belgian residential care homes and home care organisations employ tens of thousands of workers on complex rotating schedules: early shifts, late shifts, night shifts, weekend duties, and on-call periods. Each type of working time carries different wage supplements and NSSO obligations. Getting it right depends entirely on accurate, timestamped records. Here is what Belgian healthcare employers need to track and how Suivo’s time tracking platform delivers accurate, audit-ready records for PC 318 and PC 330.
Two joint committees, two sets of rules
Belgian healthcare employers fall primarily under two joint committees, and the rules differ between them.
PC 318 – Residential and semi-residential care (woonzorgcentra, revalidatiecentra):
Covers nursing homes, residential care centres, rehabilitation centres, and similar institutions. Workers typically report to a single location. Shifts are long (often 8 to 12 hours), with early starts (06:00) and late ends (22:00 or later). Night shifts run through the night.
PC 330 – Home care and social assistance services:
Covers home care workers who visit clients in their own homes. Workers are mobile by definition, travelling between client addresses across a city or region. Each client visit is a separate location, and a worker may make 6 to 10 visits in a single working day.
Both joint committees have their own CAOs governing working time, overtime thresholds, night work definitions, and supplement rates. Your time registration system must be configured to track the right data for the right workers.
Night work and weekend supplements: why accuracy matters financially
Care sector supplements are not trivial. Belgian collective agreements for PC 318 and PC 330 include night work premiums, Sunday supplements, and public holiday bonuses that can add 25% to 100% on top of the base hourly rate for the hours concerned.
With an average nurse working a rotating roster that includes nights and weekends, the supplement calculation is a significant portion of their monthly payslip – and a significant cost for the employer. An inaccurate timestamp – a clock-in recorded 20 minutes early or 15 minutes late – compounds across dozens of workers across hundreds of shifts into a meaningful payroll error.
Digital time registration with verified timestamps ensures that the night hours claimed for supplement calculation are the hours actually worked, not rounded estimates or memory-based approximations.
| Shift type | Supplement (indicative, PC 318) | Record needed |
| Normal day work | Base rate | Start and end time |
| Evening work (18:00-22:00) | +25% | Exact start/end within qualifying window |
| Night work (22:00-06:00) | +50-100% | Exact start/end within qualifying window |
| Sunday work | +100% | Date must be verified as a Sunday |
| Public holiday | +100% | Date must be verified as a public holiday |
These percentages are indicative; the precise rates are set in sector-level and company-level collective agreements. The point is that accuracy of timestamps has a direct, calculable financial impact.
On-call (wachtdienst) and standby: a separate category
Many residential care workers are required to be on-call outside their normal shift – available to respond if needed but not actively working. Belgian law treats on-call time differently from active working time:
- On-call at home (thuis wachten): the worker is available but free to be at home. Only the time they are actually called in counts as working time. This does not count toward the maximum working time calculation in the same way.
- On-call at the workplace (aanwezigheidsdienst): the worker is physically present at the facility even when not actively caring. This is counted as working time for pay purposes but at a different rate than active work.
A time registration system for residential care must distinguish between these categories and record them separately. The payroll calculation differs significantly between them, and an NSSO auditor who cannot see the distinction will treat all on-call hours as active working time.
Home care: registering time with no fixed location
For PC 330 home care workers, the challenge is that there is no fixed workplace. A home care assistant might start at a depot, travel to a first client at 07:30, finish at 09:00, travel to a second client, and so on through six to eight visits before returning to the depot at 17:00.
The working time includes:
- The first departure from the depot (or home, depending on the contract).
- Travel time between client visits (counted as working time in most PC 330 agreements).
- Active care time at each client’s address.
- Return to the depot or designated end point.
GPS-based time registration is the standard solution. Each client’s address is registered as a geofenced zone. When the home care worker arrives at the client, the clock-in is automatic. Travel time between clients is captured by the time between clock-out at one address and clock-in at the next. The worker does not need to manually start or stop a timer – the app handles it based on location.
Suivo’s time tracking solution supports this model, with configurable geofences for each client address and a dashboard that shows coordinators which workers are currently with which clients.
NSSO obligations and the care sector
Care organisations are employers like any other under Belgian social security law. The NSSO expects:
- Accurate Dimona declarations for all workers before their shift starts.
- Time records that match the declared schedules and the DmfA quarterly wage declarations.
- Correct recording of absence (sick leave, annual leave, time-off in lieu) alongside working time.
The care sector’s complexity – rotating rosters, night shifts, on-call, part-time workers, agency staff – makes consistent compliance challenging without a dedicated workforce management platform. An NSSO auditor reviewing a care home with 60 workers on a rotating 3-week roster and multiple shift types will quickly expose any gap between declared schedules and actual time records.
The 2027 mandatory obligation applies to care employers too
Belgian care employers are included in the 2027 mandatory time registration obligation. While the sector already has strong incentives to track time accurately (complex supplements, NSSO obligations, re-integration tracking), care organisations that still use paper rosters or verbal agreements to track actual hours will not meet the 2027 standard.
Starting now gives you time to configure the system correctly for your specific joint committee, pilot it on one ward or care team, and resolve any configuration issues before the mandate takes effect. View Suivo products or check pricing options to plan your rollout.
Ready to manage care sector time registration?
Suivo helps Belgian residential care and home care organisations track working time accurately, distinguish shift types, and keep records that satisfy NSSO and payroll requirements. Read more in our time registration tools guide.
