You run a company from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore and you need hands on the ground in France. Your first hire in France is not an administrative detail. It is the moment your foreign-owned company enters the French social system, with a declaration that must come before the start date, a written contract that must be delivered within days, a registration with URSSAF, the French network for collecting social security contributions, and payroll reporting through the DSN, the monthly online social declaration every employer files. Miss the first declaration and the law treats the omission as a penalty case and potentially as concealed work. Leave the contract oral or late and a fixed-term hire becomes a permanent one by operation of law. Renew a trial period with a nod instead of a signed agreement and the dismissal you thought happened inside the trial period becomes a dismissal without real and serious cause, with damages set by a labour court, the conseil de prud’hommes. This guide walks through the procedure in the order a company actually meets it, for a founder or foreign parent who lives abroad and hires in France.

The scope here is deliberately narrow. This article covers hiring your first employee under French employment law: the DPAE, the declaration préalable à l’embauche, the prior declaration of hiring filed with URSSAF before any work starts, the written contract, the trial period, the registration steps and the monthly declarations. It does not cover choosing between a SAS, a simplified joint-stock company with flexible governance, a SARL, a limited liability company with stricter transfer rules, a branch or a subsidiary, and it does not cover the director’s own social status, VAT registration or the annual approval of accounts. Those questions are treated in our companion guide for foreign founders on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder, with bank account, Kbis, VAT and first hire, where the Kbis is the official company identity extract delivered by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court. Read that guide first if your company is not yet registered with the INPI one-stop shop, the Institut national de la propriété industrielle which now runs the guichet unique, the single online business registration portal, and published in the BODACC, the official bulletin of civil and commercial announcements. Once the company exists and holds its Kbis, the hiring procedure below applies in full, whether the employee works in Paris, elsewhere in Ile-de-France, the Paris region, or in any other French city.

Every French acronym is explained the first time it appears, every deadline is given with its legal basis, and every decisive statement is tied to the exact article or court ruling that supports it. French employment law is heavily procedural and the courts enforce the procedure strictly. A foreign employer who discovers this only at the labour court stage usually discovers it through penalties. The sections below follow the chronology you must respect: declare before the employee starts, deliver the written contract immediately after hiring, register and organise payroll, then manage the trial period with written proof at each step.

I. How do you legally hire your first employee in France from abroad?

A. How do you file the DPAE declaration before the start date?

No employee may start work in France before the employer has filed a nominative declaration with the designated social protection bodies. Article L1221-10 of the Labour Code states this rule in one sentence: “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.” Hiring of an employee can only take place after a nominative declaration made by the employer to the designated social protection bodies. The Cour de cassation, the highest French court, repeats the same sentence word for word. In Cour de cassation, Social Chamber, 7 January 2026, appeal no. 24-17.725, the Court held: “Selon le premier de ces textes, 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.” According to the first of these texts, hiring can only take place after the nominative declaration made by the employer to the designated social protection bodies. For a foreign employer, the practical meaning is simple. The declaration comes first, the first day of work comes second, and no internal arrangement, no promise of a contract next week, no trial day presented as unpaid changes that order.

The declaration is the DPAE, and it is filed with URSSAF, the union for collecting social security and family allowance contributions, before the planned hiring date. Article R1221-4 of the Labour Code provides that “La déclaration préalable à l’embauche est adressée au plus tôt dans les huit jours précédant la date prévisible de l’embauche.” The prior declaration of hiring is sent at the earliest in the eight days preceding the expected hiring date. In practice you file it online on the URSSAF employer’s portal or through the simplified employment procedures, a few days before the start, never after. The content of the declaration is fixed by regulation. Article R1221-1 of the Labour Code lists what the DPAE must contain: the company name or employer name, the APE activity code, the employer address, the SIRET company registration number and the occupational health service, then the employee’s surname, first names, sex, date and place of birth and social security number if already registered, then the date and hour of hiring, and finally the nature and duration of the contract and the length of any trial period for open-ended contracts and for fixed-term contracts whose term or minimum duration exceeds six months. A DPAE that omits the hour of hiring or misstates the contract type is not a formality problem. It is evidence, later, that the employer did not take the declaration seriously.

One declaration triggers six registrations at once, which is why the DPAE is the single most efficient step in French hiring law. Article R1221-2 of the Labour Code provides that through the DPAE the employer completes the employer’s registration with the general social security scheme, the employee’s registration with the CPAM, the primary health insurance fund, the employer’s affiliation to the unemployment insurance scheme, the request for membership of an occupational health service, and the request for the information and prevention visit or the pre-hire medical fitness examination. For a foreign company hiring its first employee, this means the DPAE simultaneously creates the employer’s social existence. There is no separate URSSAF employer number to obtain beforehand through another channel for a standard hire. File the DPAE correctly and the affiliations follow. Skip it and none of them exist, which is exactly what an URSSAF audit, the control procedure run by URSSAF inspectors, will pick up months later when payroll records and bank transfers show work without any prior declaration.

The price of skipping the DPAE is twofold, administrative and criminal-adjacent, and both apply to a foreign employer without any leniency for distance. First, the administrative penalty is automatic once the omission is established by the competent inspectors. Article L1221-11 of the Labour Code provides that “Le non-respect de l’obligation de déclaration préalable à l’embauche, constaté par les agents mentionnés à l’article L. 8271-7 , entraîne une pénalité dont le montant est égal à trois cents fois le taux horaire du minimum garanti prévu à l’article L. 3231-12 […]” Failure to comply with the prior declaration obligation, established by the inspectors listed in Article L8271-7, leads to a penalty equal to three hundred times the hourly rate of the guaranteed minimum. The minimum garanti is a statutory reference amount close to the hourly minimum wage, so three hundred times that rate is a substantial fixed sum per undeclared employee, ordered by URSSAF on top of any back contributions. Second, intentional omission is reclassified as concealed work, travail dissimulé, with a flat-rate court indemnity for the employee. Article L8221-5 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 , relatif à la déclaration préalable à l’embauche […]” Concealed work by concealment of salaried employment is constituted when any employer intentionally evades the formality of Article L1221-10 on the prior declaration of hiring. And Article L8223-1 of the Labour Code provides 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.” On termination of the employment relationship, the employee hired in the conditions of Article L8221-3 or through the acts of Article L8221-5 is entitled to a flat-rate indemnity equal to six months of salary. Six months of salary, ordered by the labour court, for a deliberate failure to declare, is the figure a foreign founder should keep in mind before treating the DPAE as paperwork that can wait until the accountant returns from holiday.

B. What written contract must you give the employee and when?

French law treats the open-ended contract, the CDI or contrat à durée indéterminée, as the normal form of employment, and the fixed-term contract, the CDD or contrat à durée déterminée, as a strict exception that must be written, reasoned and delivered fast. If you hire your first employee on a permanent basis, the contract may in some cases be oral for full-time work, but everything about proof, trial period, working time and collective agreement pushes strongly toward a written document signed before or on the start date. If you hire on a fixed-term basis, writing is not advice, it is validity. Article L1242-12 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.” The fixed-term employment contract is drawn up in writing and contains the precise definition of its reason. Failing that, it is deemed concluded for an indefinite duration. The list that follows in the same article is long and each item has generated litigation: the name and professional qualification of the replaced person for replacement contracts, the end date and any renewal clause for contracts with a precise term, the minimum duration for contracts without a precise term, the job description and any particular health or safety risk, the title of the applicable collective agreement, the length of any trial period, the amount of pay and its components including bonuses, and the name and address of the supplementary pension fund and any provident institution. A CDD that says the employee is hired for extra work without naming the precise legal reason, or that omits the end date, or that forgets the collective agreement, is a CDI waiting to be declared by a judge.

The courts apply this reclassification mechanically, including against large and well-advised employers, which tells a small foreign company everything about its own risk. In Cour de cassation, Social Chamber, 14 November 2018, appeal no. 16-19.038, La Poste had hired an employee on twelve successive fixed-term replacement contracts, and the court of appeal had set reclassification at a late date because the missing employer signatures were, in its view, a minor irregularity where the contracts had been performed as written. The Cour de cassation quashed on a visa of Article L1242-12, holding that “faute de comporter la signature de l’une des parties, les contrats à durée déterminée ne pouvaient être considérés comme ayant été établis par écrit et qu’ils étaient, par suite, réputés conclus pour une durée indéterminée […]” Lacking the signature of one of the parties, the fixed-term contracts could not be regarded as drawn up in writing and were therefore deemed concluded for an indefinite duration. An unsigned CDD is not a CDD with a small defect. It is not a CDD at all. For a foreign employer managing signatures from abroad, the lesson is operational: circulate the contract for electronic or handwritten signature before the start date, verify that both signatures are on the returned copy, and keep the signed file with the hiring records. A countersignature promised for next month is worth nothing if the employee seizes the labour court in the meantime.

Timing is the second trap, and it applies even when the contract is complete on substance. Article L1242-13 of the Labour Code provides that “Le contrat de travail est transmis au salarié, au plus tard, dans les deux jours ouvrables suivant l’embauche.” The employment contract is sent to the employee no later than within two working days following hiring. Two working days, jours ouvrables, means the clock runs fast, excluding only Sundays and public holidays in the usual counting. A CDD emailed on day five with a correct reason and correct dates is late, and lateness alone supports reclassification to a CDI at the employee’s request. Combine this with the DPAE rule and the sequence for a compliant hire becomes a short checklist that a company run from abroad must organise in advance: sign the offer with the reason for fixed-term use and the collective agreement title, file the DPAE within the eight-day window before the start, have the employee start on the declared day and hour, and transmit the signed CDD within two working days. Each step has its own proof: the URSSAF acknowledgement of the DPAE, the timestamped contract, the delivery receipt. When the founder lives in another time zone, the practical fix is to give a French contact, an accountant, a payroll provider or counsel, a standing instruction to file and send on fixed days, rather than improvising from abroad the night before the start.

Two further points complete the contract picture for a first hire. First, the applicable collective agreement, the convention collective, is not optional decoration. It is named in the contract, it sets minimum pay scales, trial-period rules where the branch has negotiated them, notice periods and overtime regimes, and it determines which supplementary pension fund appears on the payslip. Hiring a developer, a restaurant manager, a sales representative or a cleaner without checking the branch agreement for that activity exposes the company to back-pay claims for the difference between the agreed salary and the branch minimum. Second, the job description and workplace determine the employer’s safety duties from day one, including the affiliation to an occupational health service triggered through the DPAE and the information and prevention visit for the new employee. A foreign employer who treats the first contract as a one-page letter in English, without a French version aligned with the Labour Code and the branch agreement, saves one day of legal work and buys a year of litigation. Have the contract drafted or reviewed in French, keep an English working translation for the parent company if needed, and make the French version the signed reference, because the labour court will read the French text.

II. How do you register, pay and end the trial period without a French labour court case?

A. How do you register with URSSAF, arrange the medical visit and run DSN payroll?

Once the DPAE is filed and the contract is signed, the company enters the running phase: affiliation of the employee to social insurance, occupational health, payslips and monthly declarations. The foundation is compulsory affiliation. Article L311-2 of the Social Security Code 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.” All persons, whatever their nationality, of either sex, employees or working in any capacity or place, for one or more employers, whatever the amount and nature of pay, the form, nature or validity of the contract or the nature of status, are compulsorily affiliated to the general social insurance scheme. Nationality, age, part-time status and even the validity of the contract change nothing. A foreign employee hired in France, a French employee hired by a foreign-owned company, and an employee whose contract turns out to be irregularly drafted are all affiliated. The DPAE starts this affiliation, the monthly DSN continues it, and the CPAM registration gives the employee health coverage. There is no opt-out negotiation at hiring, and a clause in which the employee agrees not to be declared is void and aggravates the employer’s position.

Occupational health is the step foreign employers most often discover late. Through the DPAE the employer requests membership of a service de santé au travail, the occupational health service, and requests the visite d’information et de prévention, the information and prevention visit, or where required the examen médical d’aptitude à l’embauche, the pre-hire medical fitness examination. The visit must be organised within the statutory time limit after hiring, and for positions with particular risks the fitness examination comes before assignment. Practically, the employer or its payroll provider contacts the designated health service as soon as the DPAE acknowledgement arrives, books the visit, keeps the summons and the certificate, and files them with the personnel record. An URSSAF control rarely checks health visits directly, but a labour court file about working conditions, an accident at work, or a dispute over unfitness will. For a first hire where the founder is abroad, the simplest robust system is to delegate in writing: the payroll provider books the health visit automatically for every DPAE it files, and reports the date back to the founder with the payslip.

Payroll in France runs through the DSN, and the DSN is where a missing DPAE or a wrong contract resurfaces. Each month the employer files nominative social data: gross pay, hours, contract type, suspensions, and the contributions for URSSAF, unemployment insurance, supplementary pension and provident schemes. The DSN feeds the contribution calls, and discrepancies between the DPAE, the contract and the DSN are exactly what analytics flag before an inspection. A company that declared a part-time CDI in the DPAE, wrote a full-time CDD in the contract and reports yet another figure in the DSN has created three versions of the same hire, and the inspector will retain the version most favourable to reassessment. Consistency across the three documents is therefore a control in itself: same name spelling, same start date and hour, same contract nature, same full-time or part-time pattern, same branch agreement. Keep the URSSAF DPAE receipt, the signed contract with proof of delivery within two working days, every payslip, the DSN acknowledgements and the health visit certificate in one hiring file. If the company uses a French accountant or payroll provider, require that file as a deliverable each month rather than assuming it exists.

Paris and Ile-de-France add a layer of practical pressure without changing the legal rules. The competent URSSAF is determined by the establishment’s location, the labour court in case of dispute is generally that of the workplace or of the employer’s establishment, and the occupational health service is a local body, so a company registered in Paris with an employee working in Paris deals with Parisian bodies and Parisian timeframes. Deadlines are national, but appointment availability for health visits, the speed of URSSAF responses and the caseload of the Paris labour court make early filing more valuable in the capital than anywhere else. A foreign founder who hires a first employee in Paris should file the DPAE at the opening of the eight-day window rather than the day before, transmit the CDD on day one rather than day two, and book the health visit in the first week. Nothing in the statutes grants extra time because the founder was travelling. The Paris labour court will not treat distance as diligence.

B. How do you set and break a trial period without paying damages?

The trial period, the période d’essai, is the clause a foreign employer misunderstands most often, because it looks like probation elsewhere and works differently in France. Its purpose is defined by statute. Article L1221-20 of the Labour Code provides that “La période d’essai permet à l’employeur d’évaluer les compétences du salarié dans son travail, notamment au regard de son expérience, et au salarié d’apprécier si les fonctions occupées lui conviennent.” The trial period allows the employer to assess the employee’s skills in the work, particularly in light of experience, and the employee to assess whether the duties suit them. Either party may end the trial period quickly and without the dismissal procedure, but only within a valid trial period. An invalid trial period means the termination is analysed as a dismissal, with the full regime of real and serious cause, notice, severance and damages. Everything therefore turns on three questions: was the trial period agreed in writing, was its duration lawful, and was any renewal expressly agreed.

First, the trial period is never implied. It must be stipulated in the employment contract or the letter of engagement, and for a CDI its maximum initial duration depends on the employee’s category. Article L1221-19 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.” An open-ended contract may include a trial period with a maximum duration of two months for workers and employees, three months for supervisors and technicians, and four months for executives. Shorter branch minima apply where the collective agreement sets them, and the contract cannot exceed the statutory ceiling. A CDI that says nothing about a trial period has no trial period, even if the branch agreement mentions one in general terms. The employer who ends the relationship in month two believing a trial period existed is dismissing an employee with two months of seniority, without cause stated, without procedure, and the labour court will draw the consequences: no real and serious cause, damages within the Macron scale, plus notice and paid leave on notice. Write the clause, name the exact duration, and keep it within the ceiling for the category stated in the contract.

Second, renewal is where foreign-run companies lose most often, because renewal by habit, by email acknowledgement or by silence is void. Article L1221-21 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.” The trial period may be renewed once if an extended branch agreement provides for it. That agreement sets the conditions and durations of renewal. Renewal therefore requires three cumulative elements: an extended branch agreement that authorises renewal, a contract clause that provides for the possibility of renewal, and an express agreement of both parties during the initial period. The Cour de cassation enforces the third element strictly. In Cour de cassation, Social Chamber, 22 October 2025, appeal no. 24-15.053, concerning a partner-level executive whose employer had renewed the trial period by a document the employee had not countersigned with the required approval words, the Court held: “Il résulte de ces textes que le renouvellement de la période d’essai doit résulter d’un accord exprès des parties et exige une manifestation de volonté claire et non équivoque du salarié.” It follows from these texts that renewal of the trial period must result from an express agreement of the parties and requires a clear and unequivocal manifestation of will by the employee. Silence, continued work, or a signature that merely acknowledges receipt of the renewal letter does not satisfy this test. The same chamber confirmed the framework the same year for the branch-agreement condition, recalling in Cour de cassation, Social Chamber, 11 June 2025, appeal no. 23-21.128 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.” A trial period may be renewed once if an extended branch agreement so provides, and that agreement sets the conditions and durations. Operationally, this means the founder must check the branch agreement before any renewal, prepare a written renewal amendment stating the renewed duration within the authorised ceiling, and obtain the employee’s dated signature with express approval words before the initial period expires. A renewal signed after expiry, or accepted orally from abroad by telephone, is not a renewal. The termination that follows is then outside any trial period and is reclassified as a dismissal.

Third, even a valid trial period ends with a notice mechanism, the délai de prévenance, and breach of that notice costs money without necessarily saving the termination. When the employer ends the trial period, Article L1221-25 of the Labour Code provides that “Lorsqu’il est mis fin, par l’employeur, au contrat en cours ou au terme de la période d’essai définie aux articles L. 1221-19 à L. 1221-24 ou à l’article L. 1242-10 pour les contrats stipulant une période d’essai d’au moins une semaine, le salarié est prévenu dans un délai qui ne peut être inférieur à : 1° Vingt-quatre heures en deçà de huit jours de présence ; 2° Quarante-huit heures entre huit jours et un mois de présence ; 3° Deux semaines après un mois de présence ; 4° Un mois après trois mois de présence.” When the employer ends the ongoing contract or the trial period defined in Articles L1221-19 to L1221-24 or Article L1242-10 for contracts stipulating a trial period of at least one week, the employee is notified within a period of no less than twenty-four hours below eight days of presence, forty-eight hours between eight days and one month of presence, two weeks after one month of presence, and one month after three months of presence. The same article adds that the trial period, renewal included, cannot be extended by the notice period, and that failure to observe the notice opens a right to compensatory indemnity equal to the wages and benefits the employee would have received up to expiry of the notice, including compensatory paid leave. When the employee ends the trial period, Article L1221-26 of the Labour Code provides that “Lorsqu’il est mis fin à la période d’essai par le salarié, celui-ci respecte un délai de prévenance de quarante-huit heures. Ce délai est ramené à vingt-quatre heures si la durée de présence du salarié dans l’entreprise est inférieure à huit jours.” When the trial period is ended by the employee, the employee observes a notice period of forty-eight hours, reduced to twenty-four hours if presence in the company is below eight days. For a company run from abroad, the discipline is to calendar both the expiry date and the notice date, notify in writing with proof of receipt, and pay the compensatory indemnity whenever notice was short, rather than waiting for the employee’s claim. Abuse of the right to end the trial period, for example for a discriminatory reason or for an reason unrelated to the assessment of skills, remains sanctionable even inside a formally valid trial period, and the correspondence around the termination should reflect only the professional assessment.

Fixed-term contracts have their own trial-period arithmetic that is often miscalculated. The trial period for a CDD is capped by statute in proportion to the contract term, commonly one day per week of the term within statutory ceilings, and it must be stated in the written contract with its exact length. A CDD renewed or succeeded by another CDD does not restart a full trial period by default, and the branch agreement may restrict trial periods for short contracts. The safe method for a first hire on a CDD is to state the trial-period length in the contract transmitted within two working days, verify it against the term and the branch agreement, and never extend it informally. Where the hire is on a CDI, state the category, the initial duration within the two, three or four-month ceiling, the possibility of one renewal only if the extended branch agreement allows it, and the requirement of express written agreement before expiry. These four lines in the contract prevent the most expensive reclassification in French first-hire litigation.

Conclusion

Hiring a first employee in France from abroad succeeds when the chronology is respected and every step leaves written proof. File the DPAE with URSSAF in the eight days before the start, with the exact date, hour and contract type. Transmit the written contract within two working days, with the precise fixed-term reason where applicable, both signatures, the collective agreement, the pay components and the trial-period clause. Build one consistent file across the DPAE, the contract, the DSN and the health visit, because inconsistency is what triggers reassessment and what loses labour court cases. Set the trial period expressly and renew it only with a clear written agreement inside the initial period and within the branch ceiling. Observe the notice periods on termination and pay the compensatory indemnity when notice falls short. Each of these duties has a number attached to it: three hundred times the guaranteed minimum for a missing DPAE, six months of salary for intentional concealment, reclassification to a CDI for an unwritten or late CDD, and dismissal damages for a trial-period termination outside a valid trial period. A company that organises these steps before the start date hires with the same confidence in Paris as at home. A company that discovers them through an audit or a writ pays for the lesson at the scale French law sets for it.

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