Sick pay in the Netherlands: how much you owe, and for how long

• You continue paying 70% of wages during sick leave, for up to 104 weeks, the same percentage in year 1 and year 2; only the floor underneath changes.
• In the first 52 weeks, a minimum-wage floor applies: if 70% of wages would fall below the statutory minimum wage, you must still pay at least the minimum wage. That floor disappears in weeks 53–104.
• The occupational health doctor’s problem analysis is due by week 6, the action plan by week 8, and the first-year evaluation at the end of week 52.
• A wage sanction extends your continued-pay obligation by up to 52 extra weeks if the benefits agency (UWV) finds your reintegration efforts insufficient.
• The maximum daily wage above which you owe nothing further has stood at €309.91 per day since 1 July 2026.
• Large employers pay a disability insurance fund (Aof) rate of 7.63% in 2026; small employers pay 6.27%, with a separate, lower-exposure profile for the return-to-work fund (Whk).

How much do you have to keep paying an employee who is sick?

You continue paying 70% of wages for two years. The percentage is the same in both years; only the floor underneath shifts. The employee keeps the right to 70% of wages, calculated per time unit, for 104 weeks. You must pay at least the applicable statutory minimum wage for the first 52 weeks (Article 7:629(1) of the Dutch Civil Code). This is the most misunderstood rule in Dutch sick-leave law: there is no separate, lower percentage for year two. The percentage stays at 70%; what falls away after week 52 is only the guarantee that you will never drop below the minimum wage.

Two limits bound that 70%. First, the statutory minimum wage: €14.99 per hour for employees aged 21 and over, in force from 1 July through 31 December 2026 (€14.71 in the first half of the year); see the current minimum-wage rates from the Dutch government. Second, the maximum daily wage: wages above this cap do not count toward the 70% calculation. That cap has stood at €309.91 gross per day since 1 July 2026 (€304.25 in the first half), and is revised twice a year, on 1 January and 1 July.

You may agree with the employee, or through a collective bargaining agreement, that the first two days of a sick-leave report go unpaid: the so-called waiting days. That is the only departure ever allowed to the employee’s disadvantage (Article 7:629(9) of the Dutch Civil Code). Everything else is a statutory floor: a collective bargaining agreement or an individual employment contract may raise the 70% (many collective agreements top it up to 100%, sometimes for the whole period) but never lower it. For domestic staff working fewer than four days a week, and for employees who have reached the state pension age, a shortened period of six weeks applies instead of 104 (Article 7:629(2) of the Dutch Civil Code).

Work out your own continued-pay obligation using the current minimum wage and maximum daily wage before you finalize a payslip for a sick employee.

Which steps of the gatekeeper regime do you need to take, and when?

Within a fixed sequence of weeks, you need to arrange a problem analysis, an action plan, and a first-year evaluation. Miss any of these steps, and the benefits agency (UWV) can hold you liable for a wage sanction. This whole process follows from the reintegration rules for employers, often called the gatekeeper regime, set out in the Regulation on the First and Second Year of Sick Leave Procedure and Article 7:658a of the Dutch Civil Code.

As soon as long-term sick leave looks likely, you need a judgment from the occupational health doctor or occupational health service: the problem analysis. It is due by week 6 after the first day of sick leave at the latest (Article 2(2) of the Sick Leave Procedure Regulation). If that judgment shows there is still room to support a return to work, you and the employee draw up the action plan together. Do this within two weeks, so by week 8 at the latest (Article 4(1) of the Sick Leave Procedure Regulation). That plan gets evaluated periodically and, at a minimum, at the end of the first year of sick leave: the first-year evaluation, around week 52 (Article 4(2)(b) of the Sick Leave Procedure Regulation). You may deviate from these deadlines with justification, but not without one (Article 5 of the Sick Leave Procedure Regulation).

Around week 89, the benefits agency (UWV) writes to the employee about the option to apply for a long-term disability benefit under the Work and Income Act, known as the WIA. The employee must submit that application at least eleven weeks before the end of the waiting period, so by week 93 (Article 64(2) and (3) of the WIA). All these steps together make up the reintegration report, which the benefits agency uses to judge whether you have done enough.

Put every gatekeeper-regime deadline directly into your calendar on the first day of sick leave, not once week 6 is already looming.

When do you need to start second-track reintegration?

There is no hard week-52 deadline in the statute. The real turning point is the outcome of the first-year evaluation. Once the employee’s own job is no longer possible, and there is no other suitable work within your company, you have to support their placement with another employer. This is an open-ended duty, without a week number attached (Article 7:658a(1) of the Dutch Civil Code). The benefits agency (UWV) calls reintegration within your own organization first-track reintegration, and everything outside that (with another employer, through secondment, or as a self-employed worker) second-track reintegration.

The practical deadline does not come from the statute but from the benefits agency’s own assessment framework, the Gatekeeper Process Guide. It states that second-track reintegration must start within six weeks of the first-year evaluation at the latest. The one exception: you have a concrete prospect of structural return to work within your own organization inside three months. That is not a statutory provision but the framework the insurance physician and labor expert actually use when assessing a wage sanction. The distinction is exactly the point: the statute only imposes the open-ended obligation, and the benefits agency translates that into a concrete deadline when assessing after the fact.

For your own planning, treat week 58 — six weeks after the first-year evaluation around week 52 — as the de facto outer limit. Document explicitly why you start later if you do; the three-month exception is the only accepted reason for delay.

What is a wage sanction, and who imposes it?

A wage sanction extends your continued-pay obligation by up to 52 extra weeks, imposed by the benefits agency (UWV) when it finds your reintegration efforts insufficient during the disability benefit application. If handling the disability benefit application shows you failed to meet your obligations without good reason, the benefits agency extends your continued-pay period. This gives you up to 52 extra weeks to fix the shortcoming (Article 25(9) of the WIA).

The benefits agency assesses this when handling the disability benefit application and the reintegration report. It must decide at least six weeks before the end of the 104-week waiting period, so around week 98 (Article 25(10) of the WIA). The labor expert then checks systematically: whether the employee’s own job can be made suitable, whether other suitable work exists within your organization, and whether second-track reintegration was launched in time and adequately. If you fix the shortcoming before the sanction period ends, you can submit a request to shorten it; the benefits agency then reassesses and may cancel the remaining sanction period.

Build your own file so that, at every step, you can show which effort you made and why, rather than only that you did something.

What must the occupational health doctor do, and what are you barred from asking?

You are required to engage a certified occupational health doctor or occupational health service to support sick employees, but you may never ask about, or record, the diagnosis yourself. You must have yourself supported, in guiding employees who are unable to work, by an occupational health doctor or a certified occupational health service — a duty to bring in expert support (Article 14(1) of the Working Conditions Act). That same law also guarantees the employee effective access to the occupational health doctor and the right to a second opinion (Article 14(2)(e)–(g)).

The privacy line here is sharp, and the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) enforces it. What an employee has, and why, is not information you need to hold, because health data counts as a special category of personal data. See the Data Protection Authority’s guidance for employers on sick employees. Even if the employee volunteers the diagnosis, you may not record or share it, and the employee’s explicit consent does not make that permissible either. What you may register: the contact number and address where the employee is staying, the expected duration of the sick leave, and ongoing tasks and appointments. You may also record whether the sick leave is connected to a workplace accident, and whether the employee falls under one of the four Sick Leave Act safety-net schemes.

Set out explicitly in your sick-leave policy which questions a manager is and is not allowed to ask when someone reports sick, so that line does not get reinvented case by case.

What happens after two years of sick leave?

After 104 weeks, the benefits agency carries out a disability assessment, and only then does dismissal come into view, never earlier and never without permission. In that assessment, a loss of income above 35% entitles the employee to a disability benefit. Full and permanent incapacity for work triggers a full incapacity benefit (IVA). Partial capacity — where the employee still has, or is expected to regain, some ability to work — triggers a partial capacity benefit (WGA) instead (UWV, Differentiated WGA and Sick Leave Act Contributions 2026, Annex III).

Ending the contract can happen by agreement with the employee, or otherwise only with a dismissal permit from the benefits agency. The condition for that permit: you expect the employee will still be unable to return to work, even in an adapted role, within 26 weeks. If you terminate the contract without that permit, the dismissal is invalid (Business.gov.nl guidance on ending a long-term sick employee’s contract). The severance payment remains due regardless: whether the employee is still sick at the point of dismissal makes no difference (Dutch government guidance on severance pay during sick leave).

Treat the disability assessment and the dismissal process as two separate steps, not one event: you only have valid grounds for a dismissal permit once the 26-week test has run its course.

When does the benefits agency pay instead of you?

In a number of cases, the benefits agency carries the risk under the Sick Leave Act instead of you, most notably once employment ends while the employee is still sick. As long as you remain obliged to continue paying wages under Article 7:629 of the Dutch Civil Code, the benefits agency pays nothing. Once that obligation ends — for example because a fixed-term contract expires — the benefits agency takes over from the first day after that (Article 29 of the Sick Leave Act). The same mechanism applies to agency workers: if the temp assignment ends while the temp worker is sick, the staffing agency applies for a Sick Leave Act benefit from the benefits agency (UWV guidance for agency workers who are sick).

For pregnancy-related sick leave after maternity leave ends, the benefits agency pays 100% of the (capped) daily wage, not the usual 70%, for up to 104 consecutive weeks (Article 29a of the Sick Leave Act). The no-risk scheme also applies for certain vulnerable groups: employees who already received a disability benefit, young people with disabilities under the youth disability benefit scheme (Wajong), and employees in sheltered employment. Under it, the benefits agency compensates your wage costs during sick leave, even within an ongoing contract (Article 29b of the Sick Leave Act; UWV conditions for the no-risk scheme).

Check with every new hire whether the no-risk scheme applies: it directly reduces your wage costs if they go on sick leave, and you have to apply for it yourself; it does not happen automatically.

What does sick leave cost you through contribution rates, beyond wages themselves?

Beyond the wages themselves, you pay two differentiated contribution rates that move with sick leave in your sector or company: the return-to-work fund contribution (Whk) and the disability insurance fund contribution (Aof). For 2026, the Aof rate is 7.63% for large employers and 6.27% for small employers (Government Gazette 2025, 42324).

The Whk contribution draws a different line: small employers, with a contribution-liable wage bill up to €1,082,500 (assessed against the 2024 wage bill), pay a fixed sector-average rate that does not respond directly to your own sick leave. Large employers, above €4,330,000 in wage bill, pay an individually risk-weighted rate; mid-sized employers sit on a weighted average of both (UWV, Differentiated WGA and Sick Leave Act Contributions 2026).

Ask your payroll provider which contribution category you fall into based on your 2024 wage bill: that determines whether your rate moves with your own sick-leave numbers or not.

How do you keep this manageable as an operator?

The hardest part of the gatekeeper regime is not the entitlement itself, but the fact that every step carries a deadline you have to track yourself. Miss week 6 or week 8, and you immediately build up exposure to a wage sanction, even if you do everything else right. In practice, this is really a calendar problem: who has to do what, by which date, and where the evidence lives that it happened.

Taito.ai sets up the gatekeeper-regime deadlines for every sick-leave report — problem analysis, action plan, and first-year evaluation — and keeps them maintained automatically for the responsible person.

For the full picture of your obligations as an employer, including sick leave, see the Dutch compliance hub.

Sources

• Article 7:629 of the Civil Code
• Article 7:658a of the Civil Code
• Regulation on the First and Second Year of Sick Leave Procedure
• Work and Income according to Labour Capacity Act (WIA)
• Sickness Benefits Act (Ziektewet)
• UWV — Differentiated WGA and Sickness Benefits Act contributions 2026
• Dutch Data Protection Authority — guidance for employers on sick employees
• Government Gazette (Staatscourant) 2025, 42324
• Working Conditions Act (Arbowet)
• Article 17(1) of the Social Insurance Financing Act (Wfsv)
• Business.gov.nl — ending a long-term sick employee’s contract
• Government guidance on severance pay during sick leave
• UWV — guidance for agency workers who are sick
• UWV — conditions for the no-risk scheme

Disclaimer

Taito.ai does not provide legal, tax or accounting advice. This article is general information about the law as it stood on the date above, not advice on your situation, and it is not a substitute for it. Rates and thresholds change. Check with a qualified adviser before acting on anything here.