The ONSS tool facilitates the recruitment of flexible workers and students
October 2025 - Are you an entrepreneur looking to hire a flexi-jobber or student worker today? If so, you often have to deal with a lot of administrative procedures. The National Social Security Office (ONSS) recently proposed a solution with the online application "Consult citizen data".
It is not always easy to hire a flexible worker or a student. What conditions must be met? How many hours of study does a candidate have left? And how can you prove all this without accumulating paperwork? The "Consult citizen data" tool gives you quick and secure access to candidate data, eliminating many obstacles in the recruitment process.
Always visibility on correct data
For a flexi-jobber, the rule is that they must have worked at least 80% during the previous three quarters. A working student can only be employed if they have enough hours left. Until now, candidates often had to find their payslips themselves or download a certificate via Student at their workplace . This approach is not immediately user-friendly, especially for SMEs that want to act quickly.
With the new ONSS application, it is much easier. As an employer, you request online access to the data, your candidate gives their authorisation via a QR code or link, and within moments you have an overview of the relevant information. For study hours, this authorisation remains valid for three months, and for flexible jobs for one month.
How does it work in practice?
The procedure is simple:
Registration: your company must be affiliated with the social security online services.
Register: the person responsible logs in via eID or itsme.
Request permission: your candidate scans a QR code or clicks on a link and decides for themselves whether they want to share their data.
Data received: as an employer, you can immediately see whether the candidate is eligible.
The result? Time savings and increased security. For the candidate, it takes just a few clicks, without having to send sensitive documents.
Efficient and secure
The comparison with mobile payments is easy to make: what used to be tedious can now be done in a matter of seconds. The ONSS also emphasises that privacy protection is essential. Candidates remain in control: they decide whether the data is shared and can withdraw their consent at any time. Employers, in turn, undertake to comply with strict security rules in the terms and conditions of use.
Do you integrate the tool directly into your own IT systems? Even more extensive privacy protection measures then apply. This creates a "circle of trust" that prevents abuse and data breaches.
Reliability above all
The strength of this application lies in the reliability of the data. You obtain information directly from the official ONSS databases, without any intermediaries. This gives you the assurance that employment decisions are based on accurate and up-to-date data.
Future prospects
Today, this tool is particularly useful for flexible workers and students, but the ONSS sees much broader applications for it. Think of someone communicating their pension details to an advisor, or an employee giving their trade union access to a file. For SMEs, this model could also pave the way for more effective collaboration with other organisations and administrations in the future.
A new step towards e-Gov 3.0
The launch of citizen data consultation is part of the "e-Gov 3.0" initiative. e-Gov 3.0 is a broader wave of digitisation of social security. The aim is to make administrative processes smarter, faster and simpler for citizens and businesses. For SMEs, this means less paperwork, greater efficiency and easier access to talent.
Want to find out more? Visit https://www.socialsecurity.be/site_nl/employer/applics/peopledata/index.htm.
