The legal minimum every employer in the Netherlands must give, and what Moral Fabric suggests beyond that.
Employers must make it clear that employees should not, and are never expected to, work during their time off. That includes attending meetings and responding to emails or messages. Time off is for disconnecting and recharging properly.
Statutory time off
By Dutch law, every employer must give full-time employees at least 20 days of paid leave per year: four times the weekly working days (art. 7:634 BW). Part-time employees get the same ratio, pro-rated to their contract.
These days are paid in full, and start accruing from the employee's first day. Statutory days expire 6 months after the end of the calendar year in which they were earned, so around June 30 of the following year, unless the employee genuinely couldn't take them, for example due to long-term illness.
They can't be paid out while employment continues, the employee must actually take them as rest. If employment ends, any statutory days that are unused and haven't yet expired must be paid out.
Non-statutory time off
Employers can choose to offer extra ("bovenwettelijke") days on top of the statutory minimum. There's no legal minimum for these, though in practice many Dutch employers add some, commonly 5 days for a full-time employee, often set by a CAO.
By default, these extra days don't expire until 5 years after the calendar year they were earned in. That 5-year period comes from Dutch civil law's ordinary rule for how long any financial claim stays valid, it isn't a rule written specifically for vacation days, unlike the 6-month rule that applies to statutory days. Because of that, an employer is free to set a shorter deadline for these extra days in the employment contract or CAO.
While employed: paying out non-statutory days is optional, it only happens if both the employer and employee agree to it. An employer can simply choose never to agree to this, which is effectively a policy that these days can't be cashed out and must be used within a set time frame or forfeited.
When employment ends: this optionality disappears. Any unused, unexpired days, statutory or non-statutory, must legally be paid out at that point, regardless of any internal no-payout policy. That part of the law can't be waived.
Moral Fabric's suggested policy
Moral Fabric adds 10 extra days on top of the statutory 20, for 30 days total (full-time, 40h/week; pro-rated for part-time).
20 days (the statutory ones) are for actual holidays. They can be taken all at once, though splitting them into at least two separate breaks across the year is encouraged.
10 days (Moral Fabric's addition) are for short breaks throughout the year: a day here and there for whatever's needed. An unexpected personal situation, moving house, a sunny day, a wedding, a funeral, a birthday party, whatever it is. Spreading these out means small moments of rest when needed, not a vacation, just a treat.
In practice, all 30 days are processed the same way, day-to-day there's no distinction between which type is being used.
Why this policy?
It replaces a long list of special leave categories. Neither Moral Fabric nor a manager decides what counts as a valid reason for a day off, the employee does. (Statutory special leaves, like parental leave, remain separate.)
It's a deliberate push against high stress. Taking more, smaller days off to rest and recalibrate should be easy, not something that needs justifying.
Log time off:
Absences should be logged properly. This includes automatic email replies and communication channels, for example:
Automatic email reply. Set an out-of-office auto-reply for the time away.
Payroll platform. Time off gets requested through the payroll platform, so it's on record and processed correctly.
Public holidays
None of the public holidays below are legally mandatory paid days off in the Netherlands, a public holiday only becomes a paid day off when it's written into a CAO or employment contract. Moral Fabric treats all of the below as paid days off, and they can be swapped for another day if preferred.
Holiday
When
New Year's Day
January 1
Good Friday
The Friday before Easter Sunday
Easter Sunday
Movable, falls on a different Sunday each year
Easter Monday
The day after Easter Sunday
King's Day
April 27, moved to April 26 if the 27th falls on a Sunday
Liberation Day
May 5, an official public holiday only once every 5 years (next: 2030); other years it's not a statutory day off
Ascension Day
40 days after Easter Sunday (always a Thursday)
Whit Sunday (Pentecost)
49 days after Easter Sunday
Whit Monday
50 days after Easter Sunday
Christmas Day
December 25
Boxing Day
December 26
Good to know
Specific leave types (parental leave, sick leave, care leave, calamity leave, unpaid leave) come on top of this policy.