Staff scheduling in cleaning: smart planning for fragmented hours

A cleaning company schedules differently from a factory or a shop. Your people don't work at one location from 9 to 5, but spread across ten, twenty or fifty sites: offices that need to be empty in the evening, a school between 6 and 8 in the morning, an apartment building that needs an hour twice a week. On top of that come last-minute replacements for sick leave and clients who change their opening hours.

The result is a schedule with lots of short shifts, lots of travelling and lots of part-time contracts. And that is exactly where day-to-day practice collides with Belgian labour law. Below are the rules that shape your roster, and how to build them into your planning.

The three sticking points in a cleaning roster

1. Short shifts. A 1.5-hour site makes commercial sense, but under labour law it isn't a given.
2. Fragmented days. A morning block and an evening block at different clients: how many hours sit in between, and what about the travel time?
3. Variable rosters. With variable part-time work schedules you have to notify your people in time — and since the labour deal that has become stricter.

The 3-hour rule: the starting point

The Labour Act of 16 March 1971 states that every shift must last at least 3 hours. A shift is a continuous period of work, possibly interrupted by a short break. So you can't simply schedule someone for "just an hour" at a single site.

Exceptions do exist. That minimum can be departed from in the cases provided for by the Royal Decree of 18 June 1990, or through a collective labour agreement concluded at sector or company level and approved by the joint committee. The FPS Employment lists the exceptions.

For the cleaning sector that is no small detail: whether your shorter shifts are permitted depends on the collective agreements within JC 121 (cleaning and disinfection companies) and on what your work rules say. Check this thoroughly once with your payroll office and record the outcome as a scheduling rule — not as something every planner has to work out from memory each time.

In practice: combine short sites into blocks. Two clients in the same street or the same business park, each needing 1.5 hours, together make up one 3-hour shift. That also happens to be the only kind of schedule that stays financially worthwhile for your employee.

Variable part-time rosters: 7 working days in advance

If you work with part-time staff without a fixed work schedule, you have to publish the roster in advance by means of a dated, written notice. Since 20 November 2022 that period has been extended from 5 to at least 7 working days in advance. The exact period and the method of notification (posting, letter, email, app) must be set out in your work rules.

Seven working days sounds long in a sector where a client calls on Monday with a change for Wednesday. So:

• Work with a base roster per site that runs weeks ahead, and treat changes as the exception, not the rule.
• Agree contractually with clients within what notice period they can move cleaning slots. Your scheduling rules are not an internal matter; they belong in your service contract.
• Record every deviation from the published roster. For part-time employees you have to be able to demonstrate what was actually worked; if that record is missing, you run the risk that the inspectorate assumes full-time employment — with the corresponding NSSO bill.

You can read more about what is and isn't allowed when changing rosters in Changing a work schedule: what does Belgian law say?.

The 1/10 rule replaces the 1/3 rule

Alongside the minimum duration per shift there is also a weekly minimum. The 1/3 rule used to apply: a part-time employee had to work at least one third of the weekly working time of a full-time colleague in the same category. Since 1 June 2026 a lower threshold of 1/10 applies.

For cleaning companies that matters: contracts of just a few hours a week become legally easier. But watch out for two things. First, the 3-hour rule per shift still stands — a lower weekly minimum does not mean you can simply schedule one-hour blocks. Second, a small contract changes nothing about your obligation to keep track of deviations. We covered this in detail in Part-time contracts 2026: from the 1/3 rule to the 1/10 rule.

Travel between sites

In cleaning, the difference between "40 hours paid" and "40 hours invoiced" often lies in the travelling. Whether and how travel time between two sites is compensated depends on the sectoral collective agreements and on your own arrangements. Don't leave this vague: set out per employee which journeys count and build that rule into your scheduling.

At scheduling level you gain the most from geographical clustering. One cleaning team covering four sites in the same municipality loses less time than two teams criss-crossing each other. A good scheduling system shows you that travel time while you are planning, instead of afterwards on the timesheet.

Overtime pay: where the limit sits

A shift gives entitlement to overtime pay above 9 hours a day or above 40 hours a week — or above the lower limit that applies in your sector or company. In cleaning, overtime rarely comes from long days, but from accumulated replacements: someone covers for a sick colleague three weeks in a row and suddenly sits structurally above their contractual hours.

That's why a live hours counter matters more than a monthly check. If you see on day 12 of the month that an employee is already at 85% of their monthly hours, you can divide the replacement work differently. If you only see it at payroll time, you pay.

Dimona and administration per employee, not per site

A classic mistake in fast-growing cleaning companies: thinking in sites instead of in employees. Your Dimona declaration is made per employment relationship with you as the employer, not per client or per location. If you move someone to another site, your Dimona doesn't change — but your employment contract, work schedule and time records do have to be correct.

So set up your HR administration around the employee: contract type, contractual hours, availability, means of transport, languages, VCA certificates. The site is an assignment you link to that. It also makes finding replacements much faster: you filter on who is available, lives nearby and still has hours left.

Checklist for your cleaning schedule

• Every shift at least 3 hours, or a documented exception.
• Variable part-time rosters published at least 7 working days in advance, in the way set out in your work rules.
• Every deviation from the roster recorded and kept on file.
• Short sites clustered by zone and by part of the day.
• Hours counters visible during the month, not afterwards.
• Contractual arrangements with clients about notice periods for changes.

Anyone who gets these six points into a single system takes most of the chaos out of scheduling. If you want to see what that looks like for your organisation, have a look at the approach for cleaning and building services or at how to automate your HR administration.