Your first French hire has been on sick leave for weeks. The pay slips kept going out, the DSN (the monthly online payroll return through which your payroll provider declares wages and social charges) kept recording the absence, and then an email arrives from your accountant: the employee has been declared inapte — medically unfit — and you must now either find this person another job inside your business or dismiss them through a procedure that has nothing in common with an ordinary firing. You live in London, New York, Toronto or Dubai. You have one employee in France, no human-resources department, and no idea what the French occupational doctor expects from you. Meanwhile a silent clock has started: one month after the medical examination, if the employee is neither reclassified nor dismissed, you must resume paying the full salary for work you will never receive.

French law treats medical unfitness as a protected status, not as a performance problem. The médecin du travail (the occupational doctor employed by the SPST, the prevention and occupational-health service your company pays for) alone decides whether your employee can stay in their job, and the Code du travail (the French Labour Code) then forces you through a rigid sequence — study the notice, search seriously for another position, consult the staff representatives if you have any, and only then dismiss, with a dismissal letter that states one of three legally accepted justifications. Skip the search, miss the one-month deadline, or write the wrong reason in the letter, and the dismissal is declared without real and serious cause, which opens the Macron damages scale plus back pay. This guide walks you through each step in business language, with the exact statutory wording your counsel will rely on, three recent Cour de cassation rulings you can cite, and the practical moves a non-resident employer can run from abroad. For the full journey from incorporation to first payroll, start with our hub guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder, and for the day-to-day rules that applied before the sick leave, see our companion guide on your first French employee, overtime and time records.

I. Your French Employee Is Declared Unfit: What the Doctor’s Notice Means and How to Challenge It

A. What Makes an Unfitness Notice Valid: Job Study, Written Findings and Reclassification Guidance

Nothing in this procedure starts with you. It starts with the employee’s return-to-work medical examination — the visite de reprise — organised by the SPST after a sick leave, a maternity leave or a work accident absence. Only the occupational doctor can declare unfitness, and the statute micromanages how the doctor must reach that conclusion. Article L4624-4 of the Labour Code provides: “Après avoir procédé ou fait procéder par un membre de l’équipe pluridisciplinaire à une étude de poste et après avoir échangé avec le salarié et l’employeur, le médecin du travail qui constate qu’aucune mesure d’aménagement, d’adaptation ou de transformation du poste de travail occupé n’est possible et que l’état de santé du travailleur justifie un changement de poste déclare le travailleur inapte à son poste de travail.” Three safeguards sit inside that single sentence, and each of them matters to you as the employer. First, someone must actually study the workstation — the étude de poste — so an unfitness declared without any examination of the real working conditions is vulnerable. Second, the doctor must exchange with both the employee and you, the employer, which means your written description of the job, the duties, the possible adjustments and the constraints of a one-person French operation belongs in the file before the notice is issued, not after. Third, the doctor must positively find that no adjustment, adaptation or transformation of the current position is possible; unfitness is legally a last resort, not a routine label.

The same provision adds a second paragraph that shapes everything that follows; Article L4624-4 of the Labour Code continues: “L’avis d’inaptitude rendu par le médecin du travail est éclairé par des conclusions écrites, assorties d’indications relatives au reclassement du travailleur.” Read the written findings — the conclusions écrites — the day you receive them, and read them literally. They tell you what the employee can still do, what is forbidden, whether training for an adapted position is conceivable, and sometimes the decisive sentence for a small employer: an express statement that any continued employment would seriously harm the employee’s health, or that the health condition blocks any reclassification at all. That express mention — the mention expresse — is the only document that can release you from the reclassification search described in Part II, as the Cour de cassation confirmed word for word: “La cour d’appel en a exactement déduit que l’employeur était dispensé de rechercher et de proposer à la salariée des postes de reclassement” (Cour de cassation, social chamber, 8 February 2023, no. 21-19.232, available at courdecassation.fr). Without that sentence, the search is mandatory even if your French business employs exactly one person and you are convinced no other job exists. With it, keep the notice like gold, because the dismissal letter will quote it.

Two frequent traps deserve a paragraph each because foreign employers fall into them constantly. The first is confusing the phases: during the sick leave itself, the contract is suspended, you pay no salary (the daily allowances come from the health insurance), and you cannot dismiss for the illness or the absence. The unfitness procedure only opens at the return-to-work examination, and dismissing during the suspension for a reason linked to the health condition is discriminatory and void. The second trap is the origin of the unfitness. French law runs two parallel tracks with different price tags: non-occupational illness or accident (the ordinary case, governed by Articles L1226-2 to L1226-4-4) and work accident or occupational disease (governed by Articles L1226-10 to L1226-22, with a doubled severance payment under Article L1226-14). Ask your accountant and the SPST immediately which track your file sits on, because the origin determines the severance math in Part II and because an employee whose condition looks private may argue it is work-related. If the origin is disputed, do not decide the point yourself from abroad; that dispute belongs to the health-insurance and labour courts, while your reclassification duty runs in parallel.

From abroad, your first-week file is therefore a reading and writing exercise, not a decision. Collect the unfitness notice, the written findings, the job-study report if one exists, the sick-leave history and the job description. Send the SPST a short dated letter — email with acknowledgment is fine — describing the company (single French employee, activity, premises, organisation), listing every position that exists in France, stating factually whether adjustments were already tried, and asking the doctor to clarify in writing any ambiguity about residual capacities or the scope of the express mention. That letter costs nothing and does three jobs at once: it feeds the doctor the employer-side exchange the statute requires, it starts your written proof of a serious reclassification search, and it fixes the facts in writing before memories fade. If the notice already contains the express mention blocking any reclassification, move to the dismissal track with counsel; if it does not, or if it limits the blockage to one site while you operate several, the search duty is live, and Part II explains how to run it.

B. How to Contest the Doctor’s Notice Before the Labour Court From Abroad

Sometimes the notice is simply wrong: no job study was done, the findings contradict the medical reality your employee shows every day, the restrictions described do not match the position, or the express mention is missing or ambiguous in a way that forces you into a futile months-long search. The employer has the same right as the employee to challenge the notice, and the challenge goes to the conseil de prud’hommes (the French labour court, the elected-judge tribunal that hears all individual employment disputes) in fast-track proceedings. Article L4624-7 of the Labour Code provides: “Le salarié ou l’employeur peut saisir le conseil de prud’hommes selon la procédure accélérée au fond d’une contestation portant sur les avis, propositions, conclusions écrites ou indications émis par le médecin du travail reposant sur des éléments de nature médicale” — the challenge covers medical-based notices issued under Articles L. 4624-2, L. 4624-3 and L. 4624-4. The same article adds the sentence that gives the challenge its teeth: “La décision du conseil de prud’hommes se substitue aux avis, propositions, conclusions écrites ou indications contestés.” The court does not merely annul; it replaces the doctor’s assessment with its own, after entrusting an expert review to the médecin inspecteur du travail (the labour inspectorate doctor), whose technical findings illuminate the judges on the medical facts.

Three practical consequences follow for a non-resident employer. First, speed matters more than perfection: the challenge runs on a short time limit that starts when the notice is notified, so the week you spend wondering whether to contest is the week that can close the door. Instruct French counsel the day the notice arrives if anything looks contestable, and let counsel file while you gather evidence from abroad. Second, contesting does not automatically suspend your parallel duties, so coordinate the two tracks explicitly with counsel: the reclassification search and the one-month salary clock keep running while the court case proceeds, and stopping the search because “we challenged the notice” is exactly how employers manufacture a no-real-and-serious-cause finding against themselves. The safe posture is to challenge and search at the same time, documenting that any dismissal remains conditional on the outcome where the strategy requires it. Third, distance is no obstacle to the case itself: your lawyer represents you, the expert examination concerns the employee and the workstation in France, and your contribution — job descriptions, adjustment history, organisational charts, correspondence with the SPST — travels by email. You will almost certainly never need to attend.

A short word on geography, because it strengthens the file. If the workplace is in Paris or the inner suburbs, the competent court is the Conseil de prud’hommes de Paris (19 boulevard de la Villette), which runs a dedicated fast-track docket for medical-notice disputes and appoints the territorially competent inspectorate doctor; file there, not at the company’s registered address if the two differ, because jurisdiction follows the place of work. Paris SPST services (SPSTI) are also accustomed to single-employee foreign subsidiaries and generally respond faster to a structured employer letter describing the organisation than to silence followed by a dispute. Mentioning the Paris establishment, the SPST involved and the applicable timetable in your correspondence shows the judges a diligent foreign employer, which is precisely the impression that decides close cases on the seriousness of the search. And if the employee works elsewhere in Île-de-France, the same logic applies to the prud’hommes of Boulogne-Billancourt, Nanterre, Bobigny, Créteil or Versailles selon the département of the workplace — verify the venue once, then stop worrying about it.

Do not contest reflexively. A challenge makes sense when the notice is technically defective (no job study, no exchange with the employer, missing written findings), when the restrictions are incoherent with the position and a corrected notice could keep the employee at work, or when an ambiguous mention forces an impossible search that a clarified notice would close. A challenge makes little sense when the medical situation is undisputed and only the consequences are painful — in that case the energy belongs in the reclassification file, not in court. Your counsel’s first memo should therefore answer one question before any filing: what better notice could the court realistically substitute, and would that notice change what you must do? If the answer is nothing, search and dismiss cleanly instead of litigating the inevitable.

II. Reclassify or Dismiss Your Unfit Employee: The Search Duty, the One-Month Salary Trap and Severance

A. Where and How to Search for Another Job Before Any Dismissal

The reclassification duty is the heart of the procedure and the point most foreign employers underestimate. Once unfitness is declared without a fully dispensing express mention, you must offer the employee another job suited to the remaining capacities, and you must do it before any dismissal. Article L1226-2 of the Labour Code states the rule: “Lorsque le salarié victime d’une maladie ou d’un accident non professionnel est déclaré inapte par le médecin du travail” — expressly by reference to Article L. 4624-4 — “à reprendre l’emploi qu’il occupait précédemment, l’employeur lui propose un autre emploi approprié à ses capacités, au sein de l’entreprise ou des entreprises du groupe auquel elle appartient le cas échéant, situées sur le territoire national et dont l’organisation, les activités ou le lieu d’exploitation assurent la permutation de tout ou partie du personnel.” Every phrase carries weight. The requirement that the other job suit the remaining capacities means the proposal must fit the doctor’s written findings, not your commercial convenience. The search extends beyond the French subsidiary to the group — but only to entities located on French national territory, so your London, New York or Dubai entities are outside the perimeter, a point worth stating in writing when the employee demands a foreign posting. Only entities whose organisation, activities or operating site ensure the interchange of all or part of the staff count, which defines the group functionally through real staff mobility, not through shareholding charts alone.

The statute then describes the quality of the offer; Article L1226-2 continues: “L’emploi proposé est aussi comparable que possible à l’emploi précédemment occupé, au besoin par la mise en oeuvre de mesures telles que mutations, aménagements, adaptations ou transformations de postes existants ou aménagement du temps de travail.” Comparable pay and status as far as possible, real adjustments to existing posts, possible part-time adaptation — and the proposal must take into account “les conclusions écrites du médecin du travail et les indications qu’il formule sur les capacités du salarié”, after the opinion of the CSE (the comité social et économique, the elected staff committee) where one exists. A one-employee company has no CSE, which simplifies the file, but every group entity with a CSE must be left to run its consultation before the offer crystallises. Concretely, from abroad, the search file is a dated paper trail: list every French position in the company and in each French group entity, match each against the doctor’s restrictions, request the SPST’s view on any borderline post, consult the CSEs where they exist, and send the employee each suitable offer in writing with the doctor’s findings attached. Unsuitable posts should be listed too, with one line explaining why the restrictions exclude them. Judges do not expect a five-person startup to invent a job; they expect proof that every existing job was examined against the medical findings.

Only three exits excuse you from that search, and the dismissal letter must name the right one. Article L1226-2-1 of the Labour Code provides: “Lorsqu’il est impossible à l’employeur de proposer un autre emploi au salarié, il lui fait connaître par écrit les motifs qui s’opposent à son reclassement.” The same Article L1226-2-1 then lists the only three lawful exits: proven impossibility of offering a compliant job, refusal by the employee of the offered job, or “la mention expresse dans l’avis du médecin du travail que tout maintien du salarié dans un emploi serait gravement préjudiciable à sa santé ou que l’état de santé du salarié fait obstacle à tout reclassement dans un emploi.” Impossibility proven in writing, refusal by the employee of a compliant offer, or the express mention — pick the one your file actually supports, because the letter sets the boundaries of the dispute and the judge will test the reason you wrote, not the better reason you thought of later. Two Cour de cassation rulings frame the trap from both sides. On the employer’s side, the express mention must be exactly that — express: the court approved dispensing with any search where “l’avis d’inaptitude mentionne expressément que l’état de santé de la salariée faisait obstacle à tout reclassement dans l’emploi”, holding that “La cour d’appel en a exactement déduit que l’employeur était dispensé de rechercher et de proposer à la salariée des postes de reclassement” (8 February 2023, no. 21-19.232, at courdecassation.fr). On the employee’s side, a mention limited to one site does not close the wider search: “La cour d’appel en a exactement déduit que l’employeur n’était pas dispensé, par un avis d’inaptitude du médecin du travail limité à un seul site, de rechercher un reclassement hors de l’établissement auquel le salarié était affecté et avait ainsi manqué à son obligation de reclassement” (13 December 2023, no. 22-19.603, at courdecassation.fr). Read your notice’s exact wording against those two holdings before choosing your exit: a site-limited mention with sister establishments in France means search on, not search over.

For the foreign-owned single-employee company, the honest outcome is usually documented impossibility: one position exists, the doctor forbids its essential duties, no group entity operates in France, and the written findings exclude the only tasks available. That outcome still requires the full paper trail — group-structure note confirming no other French entity with staff mobility, list of the French positions examined, written impossibility notice to the employee — because “we are too small” is an argument, not a justification, until it is written, dated and sent. Where a French group does exist, extend the search in writing to each entity’s HR contact, keep their negative replies, and never let an intra-group email suggest a post was available but reserved for someone else. And if the employee refuses a compliant offer, secure the refusal in writing before dismissing: the refusal exit only works if the offer demonstrably complied with the doctor’s findings, so attach the findings to the offer letter and keep the proof of receipt. Official guidance on the dismissal mechanics is published by the administration on service-public.fr, which you can show your foreign board alongside this guide.

B. When Salary Resumes After One Month and What the Dismissal Costs

The one-month rule is the most expensive sentence in this procedure, and it runs whether you are ready or not. Article L1226-4 of the Labour Code provides: “Lorsque, à l’issue d’un délai d’un mois à compter de la date de l’examen médical de reprise du travail, le salarié déclaré inapte n’est pas reclassé dans l’entreprise ou s’il n’est pas licencié, l’employeur lui verse, dès l’expiration de ce délai, le salaire correspondant à l’emploi que celui-ci occupait avant la suspension de son contrat de travail.” Full salary, for no work, until reclassification or dismissal — and the Cour de cassation applies the text without mercy, holding that “lorsque, à l’issue d’un délai d’un mois à compter de la date de l’examen médical de reprise du travail, le salarié déclaré inapte n’est pas reclassé dans l’entreprise ou s’il n’est pas licencié, l’employeur lui verse, dès l’expiration de ce délai, le salaire correspondant à l’emploi que celui-ci occupait avant la suspension de son contrat de travail” (4 December 2024, no. 23-15.337, at courdecassation.fr). The starting point is the date of the return-to-work examination, not the date you received the notice, so log that date the day the SPST writes to you. Payroll must then resume the salary in the DSN even though the employee performs nothing, and every month of delay between month one and the dismissal notification is salary paid for nothing plus, symmetrically, evidence of a sloppy procedure that colours the whole file. The operational lesson is blunt: organise the search and the dismissal process to finish inside the month, and treat any overrun as a budgeted loss to be stopped fast, not as extra thinking time.

The dismissal itself follows the ordinary personal-grounds procedure, with one major difference on notice. The foundation is Article L1232-1 of the Labour Code: “Tout licenciement pour motif personnel est motivé dans les conditions définies par le présent chapitre. Il est justifié par une cause réelle et sérieuse.” Invitation to a preliminary meeting (entretien préalable) by registered letter or hand delivery, minimum five working days before the meeting, the right for the employee to be assisted, then notification by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt stating precisely the chosen exit — impossibility documented in writing, refusal of the compliant offer, or the express mention quoted from the notice. The detailed steps sit in Article L1232-2 (invitation) and Article L1232-6 (notification), and the official dismissal guide on service-public.fr tracks them step by step. From abroad, the meeting is the delicate point: you are not required to fly in — a duly authorised representative (counsel, accountant with a written mandate) can hold it — but the representative must be able to listen, to record the employee’s statements, and to report back before you finalise the letter, because the letter must answer what was said at the meeting. Never pre-write the dismissal letter before the meeting date; a letter demonstrably decided in advance voids the procedure’s fairness.

The severance math then depends on seniority and on the track. Every employee on an open-ended contract (CDI, contrat à durée indéterminée) with at least eight months’ uninterrupted seniority is entitled to the statutory severance. Article L1234-9 of the Labour Code provides: “Le salarié titulaire d’un contrat de travail à durée indéterminée, licencié alors qu’il compte 8 mois d’ancienneté ininterrompus au service du même employeur, a droit, sauf en cas de faute grave, à une indemnité de licenciement.” The floor amounts sit in Article R1234-2: “L’indemnité de licenciement ne peut être inférieure aux montants suivants : 1° Un quart de mois de salaire par année d’ancienneté pour les années jusqu’à dix ans ; 2° Un tiers de mois de salaire par année d’ancienneté pour les années à partir de dix ans.” Check the applicable collective agreement (convention collective) too, because sector minima frequently exceed the statutory floor and the employee gets the higher of the two. The notice period (préavis) is not worked in unfitness dismissals — the same Article L1226-4 states: “En cas de licenciement, le préavis n’est pas exécuté et le contrat de travail est rompu à la date de notification du licenciement” — but it still counts for seniority and for computing the severance, and no payment in lieu is owed for the unworked part. Add the accrued paid-leave indemnity (indemnité compensatrice de congés payés), the final settlement (solde de tout compte), the employment certificate (attestation France Travail, formerly Pôle emploi, for unemployment benefits) and the final DSN entries: a foreign employer whose French payroll provider handles these routinely avoids the late-document damages that routinely accompany unfitness disputes.

Two cost multipliers close the picture. First, the occupational track doubles the bill: where the unfitness follows a work accident or occupational disease, Article L1226-14 of the Labour Code provides that the termination “ouvre droit, pour le salarié, à une indemnité compensatrice d’un montant égal à celui de l’indemnité compensatrice de préavis prévue à l’article L. 1234-5 ainsi qu’à une indemnité spéciale de licenciement qui, sauf dispositions conventionnelles plus favorables, est égale au double de l’indemnité prévue par l’article L. 1234-9” — a notice-equivalent payment plus twice the statutory severance, which is why establishing the correct track early changes the provision by tens of thousands of euros. Second, a dismissal that fails the search test is declared without real and serious cause, and the judge then applies the Macron scale in Article L1235-3, with minimum and maximum monthly-salary bands driven by seniority — on top of the resumed salary, the severance already paid, and possible orders to reimburse unemployment benefits. A failed unfitness dismissal is therefore the most expensive ordinary dismissal in French law: back salary from month one, full severance, scale damages, and documents penalties. That arithmetic is the business case for spending the search month properly rather than rushing a letter that the prud’hommes will undo.

Conclusion

An unfitness finding against your only French employee is manageable from abroad if you treat it as a four-week project, not as correspondence. Week one: read the notice and the written findings literally, confirm the occupational or non-occupational track, write to the SPST describing your organisation, and instruct counsel if anything looks contestable before the labour court under Article L4624-7. Weeks two and three: run the documented reclassification search across every French entity required by Article L1226-2, consulting the CSE where one exists, unless the notice carries the express mention that the Cour de cassation accepts as a dispensation (8 February 2023, no. 21-19.232) — and remember that a site-limited mention does not dispense with the wider search (13 December 2023, no. 22-19.603). Week four: hold the preliminary meeting through an authorised representative, notify the dismissal on exactly one of the three exits of Article L1226-2-1, pay the statutory severance of Article L1234-9 and Article R1234-2 (doubled on the occupational track under Article L1226-14), and issue the final documents. Above all, never let the one-month deadline of Article L1226-4 pass in silence: salary resumed without work is the meter running on your delay, and the meter never runs backwards.

Need a quick opinion on your case

Your French employee has been declared unfit and you manage the company from abroad. The firm offers a phone consultation: 80 EUR including VAT, within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 — Maître Reda Kohen. Send the unfitness notice, the doctor’s written findings and the employment contract through our contact page before the call so the advice is concrete.