New Federal Learning Account: obligation to register professional training in 2024

With the Act of 20 October 2023 (published on 1 December 2023 ), the legislator has introduced the Federal Learning Account (FLA). The FLA has as a purpose to give workers access to information regarding their individual right to training, based on the Labour Deal Act of 2022.

On the basis of art. 52 of the Labour Deal Act, the principle of individual training credit means, in general, that every full-time employee in a company with at least 20 employees will be entitled to five days of training per year (as of 2024). For more information on this principle and exceptions, we refer to our article of 2022 regarding this topic.

Until now, the individual training right remained, more or less, widely ignored in practice. Therefore, the legislator has worked out a system to give more transparency to workers regarding their rights which will make it easier for them to claim their right to training.

Via a website, www.mycarreer.be, workers will see the following data:

• The number of training days workers are entitled to based on the Labour Deal Act or sector provisions.
• The number of training days that workers have followed/taken up.
• The trainings that they have followed (and details regarding these trainings)
• The remaining training credits (still to be taken up)
• Information regarding employability-enhancing measures.

The Act also contains obligations for employers. Every quarter, employers need to add information or bring the information up-to-date, regarding the followed trainings by their workers. However, it is possible that providers of training will add the information regarding their training themselves and that the employer just needs to verify and approve this.

On the first working day of the calendar year, the number of training days will be calculated by the FLA (or to be precise, by the public service Sigedis). The employer then has 30 days to adjust this information in case this is not correct. If the FLA cannot calculate the number of training days, the employer will be informed and he will become responsible for inserting the correct number of training days.

In case an employee leaves the company, the employer needs to bring the data up-to-date, and consequently, his access to the FLA-account will be ceased on the 30th day after the notification of the exit of the employee.

Further, the act provides that workers will receive information regarding the processing of their data in their FLA account at the time of their onboarding in the company and subsequently once a year on the condition that they register their e-mail address via mycarreer.be. If the worker does not register his e-mail address, the employer will receive this information, after which he needs to transfer this to the worker. Workers also have the right to request to correct incorrect or incomplete information in their FLA-account. As long as the employer has access to the account, they have to make the necessary corrections (if the worker can provide the necessary proof).

The FLA-act is not enforced by traditional methods like the introduction of a new criminal provision in the Social Penal Code. Instead, the legislator has opted for a “naming and shaming” method. Every quarter, a list will be published of employers who:

• Fail to register the onboarding of a worker;
• Do not transfer the information regarding the data in the FLA-account to workers who did not register their e-mail address;
• Do not correct information after a justified request of the worker.

This ‘black’ list will be published on the website of the Federal Public Service of Work and sent to the National Labour Council as well as to the competent Joint Committee.

The Act will enter into force on 1 April 2024. However, it provides a transition period of 6 months for employers to register the information for all the current employees. This transition period normally starts on 1 April 2024, but it cannot begin before the application is online (at the moment, the application is still very much offline). This means that employers have until 30 September 2024 to register the training data, unless if the application goes online on a later date than 1 April 2024.

Take aways:

• As of 1 April 2024, employer will have a duty to register certain information regarding the individual training rights and actual trainings of workers on their FLA accounts.
• Employers will have a duty to verify/register info at the time of onboarding, register updates every quarter and notify an exit of a worker.
• Employer will also need to verify and implement request to correct data.
• The enforcement of the system is based on a “naming and shaming” method.