Employer of record in France: costs, rules and how to hire

The DPAE pre-hire declaration must reach the competent social-security body before work or the trial period begins, and no earlier than eight days before hiring. Miss it and the hire is irregular from its first hour, which is a poor way to start. Two other French obligations catch foreign employers just as reliably: occupational health and the workforce thresholds.

File the pre-hire declaration before work starts

Agree who files it and retains proof before confirming a start date. Prescribed employment information is then due within seven calendar days and the rest within one calendar month: legal employer, work location, role, start date, pay components, hours, trial period, leave, applicable agreements and insurance schemes.

Arrange occupational health follow-up

The usual information and prevention visit is due within three months of starting, but some employees, including night workers and workers under 18, need it before assignment, and apprentices and higher-risk work have their own rules. The three-month deadline is not a reason to postpone a check that must happen first, and valid exemptions may apply, so ask which service covers the employee and whether the role needs enhanced monitoring.

Employee representation and value sharing

A social and economic committee, or CSE, must be established once the employer reaches at least 11 employees for 12 consecutive months, and the count that matters is the employing company's rather than yours. Mandatory participation generally applies after the 50-employee threshold has been met for five years, with a separate value-sharing obligation possible for qualifying companies of 11 to 49 employees after three consecutive profitable years.

Written contracts are required for CDDs, part-time work, temporary agency work and portage, and must be in French, with a foreign employee entitled to request a translation. A full-time CDI can be unwritten unless an agreement says otherwise, though the prescribed employment information is still due. What decides the terms in practice is the convention collective and its classification.

Choose the contract for the actual work

Four arrangements cover almost every French hire, and they are not interchangeable.

Probation

The maximum initial trial period is set by employee category, and the category is decided by the collective agreement rather than by you.

These can be shorter under the applicable terms. A single renewal is possible only where the extended sector agreement permits it, the contract provides for it and the employee agrees during the initial period, giving totals of four, six and eight months. CDD probation is normally one day per contract week, capped at two weeks for a term of six months or less and one month for a longer term. The employer's trial-period warning runs from 24 hours to one month depending on time served, and a warning requirement cannot extend the trial itself.

Restrictions and contractor classification

An enforceable post-employment non-compete must protect a legitimate interest, be limited in time, geography and activity, and include reasonable financial compensation after employment ends. There is no universal statutory percentage for that compensation, so the clause and the applicable collective agreement have to be assessed together. Agree confidentiality, equipment, access and intellectual-property terms that fit the role, and have the EOR review them under French rules.

Misclassification risk, and what a requalification costs

France runs this through the courts and the collection agencies rather than through a form, and the presumption you may be relying on is rebuttable. The presumption of self-employed status can be lifted where the real conditions in which the work is performed reveal a relationship of subordination, following either a court action brought by the worker or an inspection by the social contribution agency or the labour inspectorate. The relationship can then be requalified as an employment contract by a judge, and the use of false independent workers can constitute the offence of concealed work. Source: service-public.gouv.fr, archived capture 13 September 2026.

The numbers attached to the nearest dated obligation show the order of magnitude. Where an employer fails to file the pre-employment declaration, the consequences run in three layers: a civil one, regularisation by the collection agency of the social security contributions left unpaid because of the missing declaration; an administrative penalty of 1,305 euro per employee concerned; and a criminal one, where an unintentional failure is a fifth-class contravention punished by a fine of 1,500 euro, while an intentional failure is the offence of concealed work by concealment of salaried employment. For concealed employment the cumulative penalty before the criminal court is 45,000 euro and three years for a natural person, and 225,000 euro for a legal person. Source: entreprendre.service-public.gouv.fr, archived capture 13 September 2026.

What a hirer does about it: decide the status on the working conditions you are actually going to impose, not on the contract you would prefer to sign, and where the person will work under your direction, employ them. If you are using a contractor in France because employment felt slow, you have chosen the more expensive risk.

Payroll and additional payments

The general rule is payment once a month at the same period each month, with no single universal statutory payment date, while non-monthly categories including temporary agency employees generally need payment at least twice a month at intervals of no more than 15 days. A bonus or thirteenth-month payment can become compulsory through the contract, a collective agreement, established usage or an employer commitment, so confirm the basis, calculation and payment date in the offer rather than assuming a universal statutory thirteenth month.

Employer charges start at 13% for health, maternity, invalidity and death insurance and 5.25% for family allowances, both before applicable relief, with basic pension at 8.55% to the ceiling plus 2.11% on all covered pay. This is what puts France 17th of 192 on the Employer Burden Index. What decides your actual bill is the relief: the 2026 RGDU reform replaced the former reduced rates and is calculated on the January 2026 SMIC reference.

Supplementary pension contributions

For 2026 the standard called Agirc-Arrco rates are 7.87% on tranche 1, split employee 3.15% and employer 4.72%, and 21.59% on tranche 2, split 8.64% and 12.95%, with tranche 1 running to the social-security ceiling and tranche 2 from one to eight ceilings; CEG and, where applicable, CET and Apec contributions are additional, and scheme-specific rates can differ.

Employee deductions and tax withholding

Employee basic-pension rates are generally 6.90% up to the ceiling and 0.40% on all covered pay, with CSG, CRDS, supplementary pension and any employee health-plan contribution on their own bases, all separate from employer charges. Payroll withholding uses the tax administration's applicable rate.

Those are marginal rates per tax share, so never apply the top band to a whole salary, and use the tax administration's applicable withholding rate for payroll.

Health cover, commuting and pensions

Private employers generally must offer collective supplementary health insurance and fund at least 50% of the premium, separate from statutory contributions, and must cover 50% of eligible public-transport commuting subscriptions. Minimum retirement age runs from 62 years and 9 months for births from January 1963 through March 1965 to 64 for births from 1969.

Work permits and immigration

The employer must establish the right to work before hiring: non-European workers may need a work authorisation while specified visas and residence cards provide exemptions, and residence-title checks normally go to the prefecture at least two working days before hiring. Algerian nationals have separate rules, an EOR agreement is not itself permission, and the provider may not be able to support the actual permit.

Other things to agree with the EOR

Document responsibility for payroll records, employment information, occupational health, absence handling, employee data and contract changes, and tell the EOR before changing duties, location, salary or hours so it can assess the applicable rules and representation process.

The adult general SMIC is €12.31 gross per hour from 1 June 2026, or €1,867.02 a month for the legal 35-hour week, having replaced the January 2026 adult rate of €12.02. That is a floor and rarely the answer: portage and collective-agreement minima can require more. What decides the offer is the classification in the applicable convention collective and which pay elements count toward its minimum.

Minimum salary and the offer

Mayotte, young workers and training contracts have their own rates, so confirm the classification before agreeing a salary.

Working hours and overtime

The legal full-time reference is 35 hours per week, which is a reference rather than an absolute maximum. General adult limits are 10 hours a day, 48 in a week and a 44-hour weekly average over 12 consecutive weeks, subject to authorised exceptions, with a 20-minute consecutive break due after six hours.

Without a different valid collective provision, the first eight overtime hours in a week attract 25% extra pay and subsequent hours 50%, and a collective rate must be at least 10%. Compensatory rest and annual-quota rules can apply, and part-time extra hours follow different rules. Daily rest is normally 11 consecutive hours and weekly rest 24 hours added to it, giving 35.

Forfait jours and workload

A forfait jours arrangement needs an eligible autonomous employee, an applicable collective framework and the employee's signed agreement, with an ordinary annual limit of 218 days and specific rules for agreed additional days; daily and weekly rest, leave and workload-monitoring safeguards still apply, and a cadre job title alone does not establish one.

Leave accrues at 2.5 jours ouvrables a month, giving 30 a year, which is five weeks. The counting method is where foreign employers go wrong: the statutory measure includes Saturday even for someone working Monday to Friday, so on a five-day basis five weeks is normally 25 days. A five-day method is allowed if it preserves at least equivalent rights.

Paid annual leave

Non-occupational sickness accrues two such days per month up to 24 annually, with its own carryover and information duties. Ask the EOR to confirm the equivalent entitlement and apply the correct leave-pay calculation.

Public holidays in 2026

Eleven statutory holidays fall in 2026, with regional additions, and a date on this list does not automatically give every employee an extra paid day off.

May Day is normally a paid non-working day and permitted work on it receives double pay, while other holidays depend on applicable agreements. Alsace-Moselle and overseas locations have additions, and the general salary-maintenance rule for non-worked holidays normally requires three months' service.

Sickness absence

Statutory sickness benefit is generally 50% of capped daily reference earnings after three waiting days, and employees with at least a year's service may receive an employer top-up, normally after seven waiting days, to 90% and then two-thirds of pay: for one to five years' service that is 30 days at each level, extending with longer service.

Maternity and paternity leave

For a first or second child the usual maternity entitlement is 16 weeks, six before birth and ten after, rising to 26 weeks for a third or later child, 34 for twins and 46 for three or more births. Health, family and timing conditions can alter the period, and statutory maternity benefit is capped although an agreement may provide salary maintenance.

Paternity entitlement is 25 calendar days, or 32 for multiple births, in addition to three employer-paid working days of birth leave, with four calendar days following the birth leave immediately and the remainder generally taken within six months. Maternity and paternity benefits are paid under capped social-security conditions.

Additional birth leave from July 2026

From 1 July 2026 each eligible parent can take one or two additional months after the required maternity, paternity or adoption leave, at 70% of capped reference pay in month one and 60% in month two, taken together or separately. The usual window is nine months for a qualifying arrival from July 2026, with a transitional window through March 2027 for earlier 2026 cases, and normal employer notice is one month.

Parental education and family-event leave

With at least one year's service an eligible employee can take parental education leave, initially for up to a year, normally renewable twice for a single birth and ending by the child's third birthday, with different limits for multiple births and adoption, and normally unpaid by the employer. Marriage or a PACS gives four paid working days, bereavement generally three days for a spouse or partner, parent, parent-in-law or sibling, and a child's death 12 working days rising to 14 in specified cases, with an additional eight-day mourning entitlement in qualifying cases and collective agreements able to provide more.