Research: High workload, low absenteeism

(Candidate) civil-law notaries feel they are too busy. This is one of the conclusions of the "Notary Labor Market" study by the Royal Dutch Association of Civil-Law Notaries (KNB). But there's more. For example, employees more often say they can't work flexibly, while employers indicate they can, both before and during the pandemic. And twenty-somethings consider work-life balance more important than salary.

In the "Notary Labor Market" survey (pdf, 14 MB), (candidate) civil-law notaries were asked about various aspects of their work related to the attractiveness of their profession. Twenty-eight percent of employers (civil-law notaries and candidate civil-law notaries in partnerships) participated. Of the employees (candidate civil-law notaries and associate civil-law notaries), 26 percent participated.

Lots of overtime
There's a significant amount of overtime in the notarial profession. Most respondents work 1 to 4 or 5 to 9 hours of overtime per week. Women are better at limiting overtime than men, both as employers and employees. People in their forties work the shortest workweeks, relatively speaking. Young people, on the other hand, work the most overtime, especially in the Randstad. The fact that the notarial profession wasn't very adept at flexible working hours before the coronavirus crisis is evident from the employees' responses: almost half say flexible working wasn't possible. Due to the coronavirus, this percentage has dropped to over 20 percent. And yet, only a quarter of employers say their employees couldn't work flexibly before the pandemic. Since the pandemic, that percentage has dropped to over 10 percent.

Work/life balance
Despite all this, absenteeism in the notarial profession is (much) lower than the Dutch average. The average number of sick days for a Dutch citizen in 2019 was around 10 days. Almost 90 percent of (candidate) notaries say they are sick for fewer than 5 days. Therefore, managers don't have to mention this in their performance reviews. But what are those reviews about? The research shows that managers discuss salary with twenty-somethings, but they consider work-life balance much more important. Older employees, on the other hand, value collegiality and independence more. Employees over 60, therefore, talk about their performance much more than employees in other age groups.

Risks
And then the key question for employees: do you want to become a notary or notary? A third want to become one, 20 percent of whom even want to within five years. Almost 70 percent also want to do so at the office where they currently work. Why don't the rest want to become notaries? A third of employees don't consider themselves sufficiently entrepreneurial. The responsibilities and risks that come with it are also mentioned.