Belgium: the drivers and challenges of implementing collective WTR
Belgium: the drivers and challenges of implementing collective WTR
A qualitative study
About
For the European Work-Time Network's fifth webinar of 2025, we are joined by Maritza López Novella, Damaris Castro and Brent Bleys to discuss the drivers and challenges of implementing collective working time reduction in Belgium. The event will be hosted online at 1pm Brussels time on Wednesday 18th June.
Our speakers will deliver a short presentation on the subject, followed by an audience Q&A.
Upon request of the previous federal government, Ghent University and the Federal Planning Bureau examined the potential for collective working-time reduction (WTR) in Belgian organizations. As part of this project, a 6-month WTR trial was set up in 2024. Despite early interest, few organizations ultimately took part. To better understand the drivers and barriers influencing organizational engagement with WTR, we conducted 31 semi-structured interviews with three groups of organizations: adopters, organizations that disengaged during the trial process, and non-involved organizations. The latter group was identified using a typology of likely WTR adopters, developed from participant data in national trials in Germany, Portugal, and Spain, as well as from the 4dayweek.io initiative. In this webinar, we present key findings from these interviews, highlighting the main drivers and barriers to WTR adoption.
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Maritza López Novella is a senior researcher at the Federal Planning Bureau (FPB) in Belgium, specializing in labour market dynamics and employment policies. With three decades of experience, she has developed extensive expertise in policy evaluation, particularly in analysing the impact of public employment measures on vulnerable groups, including low-skilled and unemployed persons. Her research focuses on evidence-based policy assessment using quantitative econometric techniques, including causal inference methods. Her work supports federal and regional policymakers in designing and improving labour market policies that promote social inclusion and economic resilience.
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Damaris Castro is a researcher in the Department of Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, where she obtained her PhD in Economics in 2024. Her research focuses on ecological and labor economics, with a particular interest in sufficiency and working-time reduction. In collaboration with the Federal Planning Bureau, she has been leading the research work for the COLORBEL project (December 2023 - May 2025), which evaluates collective working-time reduction in Belgian companies.
- Brent Bleys is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, and an ecological economist. His research interests include Beyond GDP metrics, pro-environmental behavior, post-growth policies – including working-time reduction – and methods for measuring and promoting sufficiency. He holds a PhD in Applied Economics: Commercial Engineering (2009) from the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and teaches courses on ecological economics, environmental economics and policy, intermediate macroeconomics, and statistical analysis at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University.
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Location
Online - Zoom, https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85484273125?pwd=IdafzWNprZwRKqIgnhRffkq0qLjCGM.1, Belgium