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In May 2020, social elections will take place in Belgian companies to set up works councils and committees for the prevention and protection at work ("CPPW"). These will be in place for the next 4 years. It may only be the spring of 2019, but the process leading to these elections has already kicked off. Elections for works councils have to be held by companies employing at least 100 employees on average. For the CPPW, the threshold is 50 employees. The average employment figure is determined over the course of a 12 month reference period starting October 1, 2018 and ending September 30, 2019. We are in the middle of it. External agency (interim) workers also count towards the average, unless they temporarily replace an employee whose employment contract has been suspended. The reference period for this category has just kicked off, as it runs from 1 April 2019 until 30 June 2019. If the average of your own employees is close to the threshold, the use of external agency workers in the current quarter might tip you over. Time to start counting? Over the next months, we will unravel the most common pitfalls of the social election process. Watch this page! ■