You run a French company from abroad, the order book is filling up, and you need someone on the ground in Paris, Lyon or Bordeaux. Hiring your first employee in France is a commercial milestone, but it is also a legal sequence where the order of operations matters: a pre-hiring declaration filed before day one, an entry in the staff register, a written contract with the right terms, a trial period kept within strict caps, a monthly pay slip and a health visit organised after arrival. Each step is governed by the French Labour Code, and each omission carries its own price, from a flat-rate indemnity equal to six months of salary to criminal prosecution for concealed work. Foreign founders are particularly exposed because the reflexes of their home country do not transfer: there is no at-will employment, no purely oral arrangement without risk, and no payroll without prior registration of the employer with the French social bodies. This guide walks you through the two sequences that make a first hire compliant, namely the declarations and registrations that must precede the start date, and the contract and trial period that frame the first months. It is written for the owner who lives abroad and manages at a distance, explains every French acronym, and relies on the exact articles of the Labour Code and the Social Security Code plus two recent rulings of the Cour de cassation, the supreme court for labour disputes.

I. Declare and register your first hire before the start date

A. File the DPAE on time or face concealed-work liability

The DPAE, short for declaration prealable a l’embauche, is the prior declaration of hiring that every employer must file with the social protection bodies before any new employee starts work. The Urssaf, which stands for Union de recouvrement des cotisations de securite sociale et d’allocations familiales, is the collection agency for social contributions for employees under the general scheme, while the MSA, the Mutualite sociale agricole, plays the same role for farm workers. The declaration is filed online, in practice through the Urssaf or net-entreprises portals, and it must reach the competent body before the employee takes up the post or before the trial period begins, and at the earliest within the eight days preceding the hiring date. The administration states this timing plainly in its official hiring procedure guide for employers, which also lists the mandatory content of the declaration: the identity of the employer, the identity, sex, date and place of birth and social security number of the employee where already registered, the foreseeable date and hour of hiring, and the nature and duration of the contract and of the trial period for open-ended and fixed-term contracts of more than six months. A foreign founder managing from abroad should therefore treat the DPAE as a hard deadline in the recruitment calendar, not as paperwork to regularise later, and should keep the electronic acknowledgement of receipt, because that receipt is the proof that the formality was completed on time.

The statute behind this formality is article L. 1221-10 of the Labour Code, which provides that “L’embauche d’un salarié ne peut intervenir qu’après déclaration nominative accomplie par l’employeur auprès des organismes de protection sociale désignés à cet effet.” In other words, no hiring may take place before the individual declaration has been made to the designated social protection bodies, and the employer must complete it at every workplace where employees are engaged. This single declaration then triggers a chain of affiliations: registration of the employee with the CPAM, the caisse primaire d’assurance maladie or local health insurance fund, affiliation of the employer to the unemployment insurance scheme, and enrolment with the supplementary pension scheme. The official hiring procedure guide on entreprendre.service-public.fr details each of these downstream steps, and the dedicated DPAE page on the same official portal explains how to transmit the declaration depending on whether the employee falls under the general or the agricultural scheme.

Missing the DPAE is not a mere administrative oversight. Article L. 8221-5 of the Labour Code provides that “Est réputé travail dissimulé par dissimulation d’emploi salarié le fait pour tout employeur : 1° Soit de se soustraire intentionnellement à l’accomplissement de la formalité prévue à l’article L. 1221-10”. Deliberately skipping the DPAE is therefore deemed concealed work by concealment of salaried employment, the French concept of travail dissimule, which is prohibited by article L. 8221-1 of the Labour Code. The Cour de cassation drew the full consequences in a ruling of 7 January 2026, appeal number 24-17.725, published under ECLI:FR:CCASS:2026:SO00024. The employee had never received pay slips and had never been declared to the social body, and the court of appeal had rejected his claim for a concealed-work indemnity without checking whether the employer had also deliberately avoided the DPAE formality. The Cour de cassation recalled that “Aux termes du second, est réputé travail dissimulé par dissimulation d’emploi salarié le fait pour tout employeur de se soustraire intentionnellement à l’accomplissement de la formalité prévue à l’article L. 1221-10, relatif à la déclaration préalable à l’embauche”, and it quashed the appeal ruling precisely on that head, ordering in its operative part: “CASSE et ANNULE, mais seulement en ce qu’il déboute M. [U] de sa demande au titre de la rupture et de ses conséquences et de sa demande en paiement d’une indemnité pour travail dissimulé, l’arrêt rendu le 15 mars 2024 par la cour d’appel d’Aix-en-Provence”. For a foreign employer, the lesson is direct: a missing DPAE, combined with missing pay slips and missing social declarations, exposes the company to the flat-rate indemnity of article L. 8223-1 of the Labour Code, which states that “En cas de rupture de la relation de travail, le salarié auquel un employeur a eu recours dans les conditions de l’article L. 8221-3 ou en commettant les faits prévus à l’article L. 8221-5 a droit à une indemnité forfaitaire égale à six mois de salaire.” Six months of salary, due on top of the other termination indemnities, is the civil price of concealment, and it applies regardless of the size of the company or the nationality and residence of its owner.

The criminal and administrative layers add to the bill. Article L. 8224-1 of the Labour Code provides that “Le fait de méconnaître les interdictions définies à l’article L. 8221-1 est puni d’un emprisonnement de trois ans et d’une amende de 45 000 euros.” Three years of imprisonment and a 45,000 euro fine can therefore be imposed by the criminal court for concealed work, and the official hiring guide adds that even an unintentional failure to file the DPAE is a fifth-class petty offence punishable by a 1,500 euro fine, alongside an administrative penalty per employee concerned. A founder living abroad sometimes assumes that distance softens enforcement, but Urssaf audits target French entities irrespective of where the shareholder lives, as explained in our guide to facing a Urssaf audit while living abroad. File the DPAE before day one, for every contract type including short fixed-term contracts and part-time engagements, keep the receipt with the payroll records, and diary the start date so that the declaration window of eight days is never missed.

B. Enter the employee in the registers and organise social cover

Once the DPAE is filed, the new recruit must be entered in the registre unique du personnel, the single staff register that every employer must keep from the very first employee. The register records the identity of each worker, the dates of arrival and departure and the nature of the contract, and labour inspectors ask for it at every visit. Alongside this internal record, the employer must affiliate the employee to the whole French social protection system. The foundation is article L. 311-2 of the Social Security Code, which provides that “Sont affiliées obligatoirement aux assurances sociales du régime général, quel que soit leur âge et même si elles sont titulaires d’une pension, toutes les personnes quelle que soit leur nationalité, de l’un ou de l’autre sexe, salariées ou travaillant à quelque titre ou en quelque lieu que ce soit, pour un ou plusieurs employeurs et quels que soient le montant et la nature de leur rémunération, la forme, la nature ou la validité de leur contrat ou la nature de leur statut.” Nationality, age, place of work and even the validity of the contract change nothing: anyone working for your French company as an employee is compulsorily covered by the general scheme, and contributions are due on the salary. In practice the employer registers with Urssaf as a contributor, declares each pay run through the DSN, the declaration sociale nominative or single monthly electronic payroll return sent to all the social bodies, and affiliates the employee to the Agirc-Arrco scheme, the compulsory supplementary pension for private-sector employees, and to the unemployment insurance now managed alongside France Travail, the public employment service formerly known as Pole emploi.

The health side of the hiring sequence is often discovered too late by foreign employers. Article L. 4624-1 of the Labour Code provides that “Ce suivi comprend une visite d’information et de prévention effectuée après l’embauche par l’un des professionnels de santé mentionnés au premier alinéa du présent article.” Every worker must therefore receive individual health monitoring including an information and prevention visit after hiring, organised with the SPST, the service de prevention et de sante au travail or occupational health service to which the employer belongs, and the visit produces a written attestation to keep in the file. Joining an SPST is compulsory and, in Paris and the Ile-de-France region, several inter-company services cover employers depending on the business address, so membership should be arranged as soon as the DPAE is filed rather than after the employee falls ill. The official hiring guide confirms that the employer must request this visit from the occupational health service and must also register the employee with the health insurance fund, which matters for daily sickness benefits later. Employers who manage these steps from abroad frequently instruct Paris counsel at this stage to align the DPAE, the DSN settings and the SPST membership before the first payroll; our firm advises foreign-owned companies on these formalities from Paris and can be reached at +33 6 46 60 58 22 for file-specific questions.

Two further registrations complete the picture. First, identify the applicable convention collective, the industry-wide collective bargaining agreement that supplements the Labour Code for your sector, often with more generous notice periods, bonuses and trial durations. The agreement is determined by the main activity of the company, it must be mentioned on the pay slip, and its text must be made available to the employee. A technology startup, a restaurant and a construction firm in the same Paris street can each fall under a different agreement with different minimum salaries, so check the APE activity code assigned by Insee and confirm with the agreement’s scope clause rather than guessing. Second, prepare the annual cycle from the start: approving the accounts, holding the shareholders meeting and filing with the greffe, the registry of the commercial court, all interact with payroll because dividends, director remuneration and salary policy are decided together, as detailed in our guide to the annual legal calendar of a French company managed from abroad. Our broader founder guide to setting up a company in France, from bank account to Kbis to first hire places these employment steps inside the full incorporation sequence, from the Kbis extract, the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe, to VAT registration and the first recruitment.

II. Choose the right contract and run the trial period correctly

A. Open-ended, fixed-term or part-time: put the right terms in writing

French employment starts from a simple default: the CDI, or contrat de travail a duree indeterminee, the open-ended contract, is the normal and permanent form of employment, while the CDD, or contrat de travail a duree determinee, the fixed-term contract, is an exception reserved for temporary tasks such as replacing an absent employee, handling a temporary increase in activity or filling a seasonal post. A foreign founder hiring a first sales representative, developer or office manager for an ongoing role should therefore default to a CDI. A full-time CDI may legally be concluded orally, but an oral contract is a trap for an employer managing at a distance: without a written document, the salary, duties, place of work, working time and trial period become a matter of testimony, and the trial period in particular cannot be enforced at all unless it is written down. The safe rule for a first hire is to always sign a written contract before the start date, in French or in two languages with the French version prevailing in practice, and to have the employee sign each page or use a compliant electronic signature so that no clause is later disputed.

When a temporary need genuinely justifies a CDD, the writing requirements become strict conditions of validity. Article L. 1242-12 of the Labour Code provides that “Le contrat de travail à durée déterminée est établi par écrit et comporte la définition précise de son motif. A défaut, il est réputé conclu pour une durée indéterminée.” A fixed-term contract must therefore be in writing and must state the precise legal ground, and any failure on either point reclassifies the relationship as an open-ended contract, with back-pay consequences the labour court will draw automatically. The contract must also name the replaced employee where the ground is a replacement, state the end date or minimum duration, and describe the post, and it must be transmitted to the employee within two working days of hiring. Duration itself is capped: a branch agreement can set the total length, but article L. 1242-8 of the Labour Code provides that “Cette durée ne peut avoir ni pour objet ni pour effet de pourvoir durablement un emploi lié à l’activité normale et permanente de l’entreprise.” A CDD can never durably fill a permanent job of the company, so chaining renewals for a role that is plainly structural invites reclassification into a CDI with seniority counted from the first day. For a first hire abroad-managed, use the CDD only for a genuinely temporary assignment, such as a six-month market-entry mission or a maternity replacement, and put the motive, term and renewal clause in the signed document.

Part-time hiring follows the same written-discipline logic. Article L. 3123-6 of the Labour Code provides that “Le contrat de travail du salarié à temps partiel est un contrat écrit. Il mentionne : 1° La qualification du salarié, les éléments de la rémunération, la durée hebdomadaire ou mensuelle prévue et, sauf pour les salariés des associations et entreprises d’aide à domicile et les salariés relevant d’un accord collectif conclu en application de l’article L. 3121-44 , la répartition de la durée du travail entre les jours de la semaine ou les semaines du mois”. Qualification, pay components, weekly or monthly hours and the distribution of hours across days or weeks must all appear in the document, together with the conditions for changing that distribution and the procedures for communicating daily schedules. Without these mentions, the contract risks reclassification as full-time, meaning the employer owes full-time salary for part-time work. Whatever the format, three substantive floors apply from day one: the SMIC, the salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance or national minimum wage, sets the lowest lawful hourly pay; the 35-hour statutory week frames working time, with overtime beyond it paid at increased rates and tracked in reliable time records, a topic developed in our guide to managing overtime of a first French employee while living abroad; and the applicable collective agreement may impose a higher minimum salary and additional bonuses that override the contract. Check the agreement before signing, align the salary with its grid, and state the correct job classification in the contract, because classification determines both pay and trial-period caps.

B. Trial period and pay slip: caps, notice and proof of payment

The periode d’essai, or trial period, allows the employer to assess the skills of the employee and the employee to judge whether the post suits them, but it exists only if it is written into the engagement letter or the contract. Article L. 1221-23 of the Labour Code provides that “La période d’essai et la possibilité de la renouveler ne se présument pas. Elles sont expressément stipulées dans la lettre d’engagement ou le contrat de travail.” Neither the trial nor its possible renewal is ever presumed, so an offer letter silent on the subject means no enforceable trial at all. The initial durations are capped by statute according to seniority of the role, since article L. 1221-19 of the Labour Code provides that “Le contrat de travail à durée indéterminée peut comporter une période d’essai dont la durée maximale est : 1° Pour les ouvriers et les employés, de deux mois ; 2° Pour les agents de maîtrise et les techniciens, de trois mois ; 3° Pour les cadres, de quatre mois.” Two months for blue- and white-collar employees, three months for supervisors and technicians, four months for executives: these are ceilings for the initial period, and the collective agreement frequently shortens them while almost never being allowed to lengthen them beyond the statute. Renewal is possible only once and only where an extended branch agreement authorises it, because article L. 1221-21 of the Labour Code provides that “La période d’essai peut être renouvelée une fois si un accord de branche étendu le prévoit. Cet accord fixe les conditions et les durées de renouvellement. La durée de la période d’essai, renouvellement compris, ne peut pas dépasser : 1° Quatre mois pour les ouvriers et employés ; 2° Six mois pour les agents de maîtrise et techniciens ; 3° Huit mois pour les cadres.” Four, six and eight months all-in are the absolute ceilings, and a renewal clause signed by both parties during the initial period is required in addition to the branch agreement. A foreign founder should therefore read the collective agreement first, stipulate the trial and its renewal expressly in the contract, and calendar the expiry date, since any day worked beyond the lawful end without termination confirms the employment permanently.

Ending the trial is flexible but not form-free. During the period, either party may terminate without stating reasons and without the dismissal procedure, yet the employer must respect a minimum notice that grows with the time already worked. Article L. 1221-25 of the Labour Code sets notice of at least twenty-four hours below eight days of presence, forty-eight hours between eight days and one month, two weeks after one month and one month after three months of presence, and adds that “La période d’essai, renouvellement inclus, ne peut être prolongée du fait de la durée du délai de prévenance.” The notice cannot stretch the trial itself, and failure to observe it opens a right to compensatory indemnity equal to the salary and benefits the employee would have received through the end of the notice, paid leave indemnity included. Two practical cautions follow for an employer managing from abroad. First, the termination must genuinely relate to the appraisal of professional abilities: ending a trial for disciplinary reasons, for a discriminatory ground or to sidestep a dismissal procedure exposes the decision to challenge before the labour court, so document performance facts in writing, keep interview notes and avoid any message suggesting another motive. Second, notify in a provable form and state the last working day precisely, because disputes about whether notice fell inside the trial are common. The competent court for a Paris-based employee is the conseil de prud’hommes, the elected labour court, of the place of work, so a Paris hire means Paris proceedings with French procedural rules even if the shareholder lives on another continent. The official trial-period guide for employers on entreprendre.service-public.fr summarises these durations and renewal conditions for quick reference.

Pay is proved by the bulletin de paie, the itemised pay slip the employer must hand over with each salary payment. Article L. 3243-2 of the Labour Code provides that “Lors du paiement du salaire, l’employeur remet aux personnes mentionnées à l’article L. 3243-1 une pièce justificative dite bulletin de paie.” The slip details gross salary, social contributions with employer and employee shares, income-tax withholding at source and net pay, and it may be delivered electronically where the employee does not object, under conditions guaranteeing integrity, long-term availability and confidentiality. Keep every slip, every DSN return and every bank proof of transfer, because in a dispute the employer bears the burden of proving payment and declared hours. This evidentiary discipline connects directly to concealed-work liability: the same article L. 8221-5 that punishes a missing DPAE also covers an employer who deliberately issues no pay slip or understates the hours actually worked. Intent remains the key, as the Cour de cassation confirmed on 24 September 2025, appeal number 24-14.134, published under ECLI:FR:CCASS:2025:SO00878: an employee who had worked during sick leave claimed the concealed-work indemnity, and the Court held that “Il en résulte qu’un salarié qui a travaillé pour le compte de son employeur pendant son congé maladie ou son congé maternité ne peut prétendre au paiement ni d’un salaire ni d’une indemnité forfaitaire pour travail dissimulé.” Not every irregularity equals concealed work, but a deliberate absence of DPAE, pay slips or contribution returns squarely does, and it then attracts the six-month indemnity of article L. 8223-1 and the criminal penalties of article L. 8224-1 recalled above. Run payroll through compliant French software or an accountant connected to the DSN, reconcile net pay with bank transfers every month, and archive all records for the limitation periods, because a Urssaf audit or a prud’hommes claim can revisit several years of payroll in a single procedure.

Conclusion

Hiring a first employee in France while living abroad succeeds when the sequence is respected: file the DPAE within the eight days before the start, enter the recruit in the single staff register, affiliate employer and employee to Urssaf, health insurance, supplementary pension and unemployment cover, join an occupational health service and organise the prevention visit, sign a written contract with the correct motive for any fixed term and the full schedule terms for any part-time role, stipulate the trial period and its renewal expressly while observing the two, three and four-month caps and the four, six and eight-month all-in ceilings, respect the growing termination notice, and deliver a proper pay slip with every salary. The two recent Cour de cassation rulings recalled here show how courts enforce this architecture, sanctioning the missing DPAE with the six-month concealed-work indemnity while requiring proof of deliberate concealment before condemning. Keep the DPAE receipt, the signed contract, the health attestation, every pay slip and every DSN return in one file, diary the trial expiry and the collective-agreement minima, and treat each payroll as evidence for the audits and disputes that may come years later.