For many small businesses, a zero-hour contract feels like flexibility made practical. You call when work comes in; you don’t call when it doesn’t. Clean. Except that in daily practice, not calling someone to work can have consequences that show up later, on your cash flow, in a wage claim, or during a tense conversation you didn’t see coming.

Dutch law treats so-called oproepcontracten, on-call or zero-hour contracts, with more structure than many entrepreneurs realise. If someone has been working a certain pattern for a while, the law assumes that pattern matters. After about three months, an employee can claim a “presumed number of hours” based on what they usually worked. In plain language: if the work was there before, simply stopping the calls doesn’t automatically stop the obligation to pay.

Then there is predictability. Since the Work and Security Act was tightened, you must call an on-call worker at least four days in advance. Cancel later, or decide not to use them at the last minute, and those hours may still be payable. For a micro-business, a few unexpected paid hours can feel minor, until they repeat, or until several people raise the same point at once.

The risk isn’t only legal; it’s relational. On-call workers often organise their lives around the expectation of work. When calls suddenly stop without explanation, trust erodes. That’s when questions turn into emails, and emails turn into formal claims. What started as a quiet attempt to save costs can become an administrative burden that eats time, focus, and goodwill.

I’ve seen this play out in small hospitality and retail businesses: a slow month leads to fewer calls, followed by a letter asking for back pay based on average hours. The owner isn’t acting in bad faith, just reacting to reality. But the law doesn’t look at intention; it looks at patterns.

The calmer path is awareness and small adjustments. Keep an eye on recurring hours, communicate early when work is drying up, and review whether a zero-hour contract still fits the situation after a year. Sometimes offering fixed hours, even modest ones, reduces risk instead of increasing it. Flexibility is valuable, but clarity is cheaper in the long run.