Starting the working day when you want, being able to take a break for a nap, do sport or leave the office early to pick up your children from school... All this has been possible since 1 January for the forty or so employees of the four companies of marketing specialists DG Group: Noosphere Brand Strategy, Z6 Creation, Hello Deco and Linc SA (which owns Yellow.lu). The only constraint is that the work has to be delivered on time.

“The idea is that everyone manages according to their tasks,” David Gavroy, CEO of DG Group, told our sister publication Paperjam. “This is the notion of intrapreneurship, the state of mind of entrepreneurs within the company.” The aim is to promote the well-being of employees by “putting their lives at the centre,” Gavroy explains. “We realised that with eight hours a day, we had problems with presenteeism.”

An employee who is tired, for example, “can go home and sleep for an hour and then get back to work.” Gavroy says the company will not control how people organise their working day. Only the final result counts.

No impact on working time

More flexibility does not mean working more or fewer hours. “The idea is not that employees work more, it is that they are happy.” At the same time, says Gavroy, “if you’re asked to do a task in a week and you complete it in two days, you’re not going to be allowed three days off. You finish the job, you move on to the next one.”

The only other constraint: the customer. “We want the company to be reachable from 8am to 6pm,” says Gavroy. It is up to the receptionists to organise their team, just as their colleagues do. “It is out of the question not to turn up for an appointment with a client.”

The teams are also invited to a weekly planning meeting.

Divided opinions

Is this freedom in line with current labour legislation? “We are not going to ask people to work at night and on Sundays. If they want to, that’s their choice,” explains the CEO. If the request comes from a customer “that’s different. We will find a system to allow them to recoup time or pay a premium.”

When asked about this initiative, the Labour and Mines Inspectorate (ITM) said that “case law authorises the parties to make working hours more flexible…subject to clauses in the contract.” Flexibility is not unlimited, however, but “governed by the rules governing daily and weekly working hours, compulsory daily and weekly breaks and rests, and Sunday work, which are provisions of public order that cannot be derogated from, not even by mutual agreement.”

Other questions arise: insurance to cover work accidents, compensating costs such as electricity when remote working... “There are no specific rules. With covid we all did what we could,” replies Gavroy. And when exceptional agreements allowing cross-border workers “unlimited” telework come to an end, “it is up to everyone to make sure they comply with the framework of the legislation.”

UEL employers’ assocation director Jean-Paul Olinger says flexible working schemes such as that introduced by DG Group are “interesting, even if I don't know the details.” As long as a company “respects the legal framework…flexibility is a two-way street,” Olinger concludes.

The OGBL union is more wary. “The phenomenon is not new. There was a company where employees were given a number of sales to make per month, with no time limit. The workload was such that they couldn’t do it in eight hours a day. We noticed that when [employers] wanted to do things like that, it often had a negative impact on the employee,” explains Jean-Luc de Matteis, who is in charge of these issues at the union.

Getting used to freedom

The results after a few weeks at DG Group? For the moment, “the employees are happy. They are getting used to this freedom. Some have already started arriving later in the morning or taking longer lunch breaks,” says Gavroy.

According to Statec, in 2012, 24% of employees fell under some sort of general measure allowing them to adjust their working hours to suit their personal needs. A Swiss study of a sample of 732 employees, also published in 2012 showed that employee satisfaction with their working time arrangements was, overall, higher among flexible workers than among those with fixed hours. But even employees with flexible working hours seemed to work more hours than contractually agreed.

This story was first published on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.