What is a notice period?
A notice period is the time an employment contract keeps running after one party has announced it is ending. Work continues, pay continues, and the contract only stops at the end of the period.
It applies to open-ended employment. A fixed-term contract (CDD) ends by itself at term, so there is normally nothing to give notice of.
How is a notice period calculated in Belgium?
From seniority, in weeks, and asymmetrically. The period an employer must give grows with length of service and keeps growing; the period an employee must give also grows with service but is capped, so it stops increasing well before the employer side does.
Two details change how it plays out. Notice does not begin the day it is announced, but on the Monday following the week in which it was validly notified. And how it is served changes that date: a registered letter is presumed received on the third working day after it is sent, so the clock starts later than the sender usually expects, while hand delivery or service by bailiff starts it from the first Monday after notification. The SPF Emploi guidance on ending an open-ended contract sets out the formalities, which is why a badly served notice can simply fail to run.
How does a notice period differ from a probation period?
They are not alternatives, because Belgium largely does not have the second one. The trial clause was abolished for most employment contracts when the single employment status came in, and survives only in student contracts and agency work.
What replaced it is the notice calculation itself. In the first months of a contract, statutory notice is very short on both sides, which produces the flexibility a trial period used to provide without anyone needing to write a clause. See probation period for what remains of it.
What can replace a notice period?
An indemnity. Either side can end the contract immediately and pay compensation corresponding to the notice that would have been served, which is why the practical question in most Belgian departures is the amount rather than the calendar.
During a served notice, an employee normally has time off to look for work. And if you are employed by a consultancy rather than by the company you work at, your notice runs against the consultancy, not against the client project you happen to be on. Sparagus employs consultants on that basis across the roles currently open.
