Memo on Employment Conditions 2025 - Prioritise Working Smarter

In order to foster economic growth and maintain our level of prosperity, it is essential to focus on increasing labour productivity. This does not, incidentally, mean working harder but rather working more efficiently by leveraging technology or organising work processes differently.

The Netherlands has for years managed to register economic growth because more people have joined the workforce. Now that labour shortage appears to be structural, however, it is necessary to take a broader view and not to focus solely on expanding the labour supply.

Parties to Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) have a key role to play here. It is important that they develop a shared joint long-term vision to make sure that businesses and workers remain agile now and in the future and that they promote growth in labour productivity so as to achieve appropriate wage setting. Every CBA should consequently include an arrangement to improve labour productivity.

Needless to say, labour productivity growth depends on many factors and can be stimulated in various ways. This memorandum of conditions of employment draws on four themes to propose ways of boosting labour productivity in organisations and to make sure that work can be done with fewer people, to wit: remuneration, the organisation of work, lifelong learning, and vitality.