Bart and Ali work at the Posted Workers notification portal’s technical helpdesk. Every day, they answer all kinds of questions from business owners who are submitting or checking notifications. Below, they tell us about the notification portal and their work behind the screen.
What does your daily work involve?
Bart: ‘In addition to providing support to business owners over the phone, we are constantly improving and developing the portal, together with the ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. This is to make the process of notifying and checking posted workers as user-friendly as possible, with the ultimate goal, of course, being more notifications. Thanks to these notifications, we gain more insight about the people who are temporarily employed here in the Netherlands.’
The notification portal has been around for about 4 years now. In your experience, is the duty to notify becoming more widely known?
Ali: ‘We have noticed that the duty to notify is becoming more familiar to both Dutch and foreign business owners. It is increasingly understood that notifying is necessary to ensure that people can work honestly and safely here. The number of notifications is also constantly on the rise. However, even after 4 years, we still sometimes have business owners on the phone who have never heard of the duty to notify. We refer them to postedworkers.nl for more information.’
How complicated is the notification and checking process?
Bart: ‘We are constantly working to make it easier to submit and check notifications. For example, since 2020, people have also been able to submit notifications in German, while certain emails can be received in Polish. It is clear that this helps business owners.’ Ali adds: ‘Notifying for the first time may take slightly longer. But the more often you do it, the faster you go through the process. We can see that foreign clients take between 5 and 10 minutes to submit a notification. Dutch clients generally take no more than a few minutes to do this.
How can you make notifying as easy as possible for yourself?
Ali: ‘If you are submitting a notification as a foreign client, it is a good idea to keep the notification checklist at hand. This way, you will be well prepared and ready to submit the notification more quickly. Bart: ‘A tip here is to ask the Dutch client in advance which email address they want the notification to be sent to. Then you can be sure that the request to check reaches the right person.’
What are the most frequently asked questions that you receive?
‘We get asked questions like “How do I log in?”, “I can’t see any notifications; how do I do it?” and “How do I submit a notification?” on a daily basis. You should have a good look at the notification portal’s frequently asked questions page. And if you can’t work out how to notify, we are, of course, always happy to help you. Email your question to helpdeskpw@svb.nl, call us on business days on 020-6565123 (09:00-17:00), or fill in the contact form on the online notification portal.’