You formed your French company from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, the Kbis (the official registration certificate issued by the greffe, the clerk’s office of the commercial court) is in a drawer thousands of kilometres away, and your business on the ground depends on one or two people in France. Then the message arrives: your sales representative is on sick leave for six weeks, or your office manager announces she is pregnant. You are the employer, French law applies in full, and distance changes nothing about your duties. This guide explains, for a foreign founder or foreign parent company running a French team from abroad, what you must pay during sick leave, how you can lawfully replace an absent employee, what pregnancy and maternity leave forbid you from doing, and how to organise the paperwork without boarding a plane. The starting point for the whole setting-up journey, from bank account to Kbis to first hire, is described in our founders’ guide to setting up a company in France, and the hiring formalities themselves are covered in our guide to the first hire, working time and proof. Here we deal with the next shock: absence.

I. Your French Employee Is on Sick Leave: What Must You Pay and File From Abroad?

A sick leave in France, the arrêt maladie (the medical certificate stopping work, sent to the health insurance fund and to the employer), triggers a chain in which three payers take turns: the health insurance fund, you as the employer, and sometimes a private top-up insurer. Missing one link exposes you to back pay, penalties and a dispute before the conseil de prud’hommes (the elected labour tribunal that hears individual employment disputes), defended from abroad on documents alone. The order below follows the money and the file, step by step.

A. How do daily benefits and your salary top-up work when you manage from abroad?

The first payer is the social security system. Article L321-1 of the Social Security Code provides: “L’assurance maladie assure le versement d’indemnités journalières à l’assuré qui se trouve dans l’incapacité physique constatée par le médecin, selon les règles définies par l’article L. 162-4-1 du présent code et au troisième alinéa de l’article L. 6316-1 du code de la santé publique, de continuer ou de reprendre le travail”. These daily benefits, the IJSS (indemnités journalières de sécurité sociale, the daily cash benefits paid by the health insurance fund), go to the employee, but they only start flowing if you do your part: every employer must send the salary certificate, the attestation de salaire, to the CPAM (caisse primaire d’assurance maladie, the local health insurance fund that pays the benefits), normally online through the payroll reporting chain. An employee who cannot get benefits because the employer never filed the certificate turns against the employer, so the founders who run payroll from abroad through an accountant must check that each sick leave produces its certificate within days, not weeks.

The second payer is you, under a statutory top-up that surprises many foreign owners. Article L1226-1 of the Labour Code provides: “Tout salarié ayant une année d’ancienneté dans l’entreprise bénéficie, en cas d’absence au travail justifiée par l’incapacité résultant de maladie ou d’accident constaté par certificat médical et contre-visite s’il y a lieu, d’une indemnité complémentaire”. Three conditions sit inside that one sentence, and each of them is a trap for a distant employer. First, the employee needs one year of service in the company, so a newcomer of three months gets the fund’s benefits but no employer top-up under the statute, unless your branch agreement or contract is more generous. Second, the absence must be justified within forty-eight hours by the medical certificate, and the Cour de cassation (the supreme court for labour and civil matters) applies this strictly: in its ruling of 14 May 2025, pourvoi 23-23.734, it recalled, in a ruling available on the official record of the Court, that the top-up is owed “à condition d’avoir justifié dans les quarante-huit heures de cette incapacité, sauf si le salarié fait partie des personnes mentionnées à l’article L. 169-1 du code de la sécurité sociale, d’être pris en charge par la sécurité sociale et d’être soigné sur le territoire français ou dans l’un des autres Etats membres de la Communauté européenne ou dans l’un des autres Etats partie à l’accord sur l’Espace économique européen”. Tell your team in writing where to send the certificate and to which email address, because a certificate lost between Paris and your inbox abroad is treated as a late justification. Third, the employee must be covered by social security and treated in France, the European Union or the European Economic Area, which matters when your employee falls ill while visiting family outside Europe.

The amount of the top-up is fixed by regulation, and the figures below come from the Cour de cassation itself, which repeated them word for word on 14 May 2025, pourvoi 23-23.734, available on the official record of the Court: “Pendant les trente premiers jours, 90 % de la rémunération brute que le salarié aurait perçue s’il avait continué à travailler” and “Pendant les trente jours suivants, deux tiers de cette même rémunération”. The durations grow with seniority under the regulatory scale, but the method never changes: the fund’s daily benefits and any private provident benefits are deducted from your top-up, so you pay the difference, not the full salary twice. In practice, many employers choose subrogation (the mechanism by which the employer collects the fund’s daily benefits directly and passes on a single maintained salary to the employee), which simplifies life for an employee who would otherwise wait for two payers. Subrogation is set up through your payroll provider and shown on the pay slip, the bulletin de paie (the itemised monthly statement showing gross pay, contributions, net pay and hours), whose delivery each month is mandatory under Article L3243-2 of the Labour Code: “Lors du paiement du salaire, l’employeur remet aux personnes mentionnées à l’article L. 3243-1 une pièce justificative dite bulletin de paie.” Keep every slip, because if the amount is later disputed, the slip alone will not save you: the Cour de cassation held on 29 April 2025, pourvoi 24-13.894, published on the official record of the Court, that “nonobstant la délivrance de la fiche de paie, l’employeur doit prouver le paiement du salaire”. From abroad, that means bank transfer records for every month, archived with the slips.

B. Can you replace the absent employee and check the absence without flying to France?

Yes to both, but each follows a written procedure, and informality is what loses cases. Start with the replacement. French law offers the fixed-term contract, the CDD (contrat à durée déterminée, the contract with a fixed end date), expressly for replacing an absent employee, while the default contract remains the open-ended CDI (contrat à durée indéterminée, the standard permanent contract). The replacement contract must be in writing with its exact reason, because Article L1242-12 of the Labour Code provides: “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 same article adds a detail that sinks replacements hired in a hurry: “Il comporte notamment : 1° Le nom et la qualification professionnelle de la personne remplacée lorsqu’il est conclu au titre des 1°, 4° et 5° de l’article L. 1242-2”. A replacement contract that says “maternity cover” or “sick cover” without naming the absent employee and stating her post can be reclassified as a permanent contract, with the rupture then analysed as a dismissal without real and serious cause. And the price of sloppy paperwork is not limited to reclassification: Article L1245-1 of the Labour Code lists the breached provisions that turn a fixed-term contract into a permanent one, while Article L1242-2 of the Labour Code restricts fixed-term hiring to precise temporary tasks such as replacing an absent worker. The Cour de cassation enforces the formalism strictly: on 23 November 2022, pourvoi 21-13.059, published on the official record of the Court, it held that “le délai de prescription d’une action en requalification d’un contrat à durée déterminée en contrat à durée indéterminée, fondée sur l’absence d’une mention au contrat susceptible d’entraîner sa requalification, court à compter de la conclusion de ce contrat”. In plain terms, the missing name on day one starts the clock immediately, and the employee can act on it. From abroad, the safe routine is a template replacement contract pre-approved by counsel, naming the absent employee and her qualification, with a term tied to the return, signed before the replacement starts, and declared to the URSSAF (union de recouvrement des cotisations de sécurité sociale et d’allocations familiales, the body collecting social contributions) through the pre-hiring declaration, the DPAE (déclaration préalable à l’embauche, the declaration filed before any hire takes effect). Skipping that declaration is treated as concealed work: Article L8221-1 of the Labour Code prohibits it in all its forms, and the Cour de cassation recalled on 22 October 2025, pourvoi 24-14.430, published on the official record of the Court, 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”. The key word is intentionally, but a systematic failure to declare replacements hired from abroad looks intentional to a tribunal.

Checking the absence is your second lever, and it works by post and by mandate, not by personal visit. The statute itself mentions the contre-visite (the employer’s medical counter-examination, ordered and paid by the employer to verify that the sick leave is genuine), since the top-up under Article L1226-1 of the Labour Code applies to absence “constaté par certificat médical et contre-visite s’il y a lieu”. You appoint a doctor through a specialised provider, the doctor visits the employee’s declared address, and if the employee refuses the visit or is absent without reason, the employer’s top-up can be suspended while the fund’s benefits continue under their own rules. What you must never do is harass the employee for proof beyond the procedure or draw conclusions from silence alone: a sick employee has no duty to answer your daily messages, and dismissal during sick leave is one of the most heavily litigated acts in French labour law. If the absence stretches for months and genuinely disorganises the company, French courts accept dismissal only under narrow conditions centred on proven disruption and definitive replacement, assessed case by case, so a founder living abroad should never send a dismissal letter for absence without counsel reviewing the file first. Keep instead a clean paper trail: the initial and extension certificates received within forty-eight hours, the salary certificates sent to the CPAM, the pay slips showing the top-up and its deductions, the replacement contract with the absent employee’s name and post, and the counter-visit reports. That file is what wins or loses before the labour tribunal when you cannot attend the hearing in person.

II. Your French Employee Is Pregnant: What Are You Forbidden to Do and How Do You Organise From Abroad?

Pregnancy changes the legal landscape completely. Where sick leave is mostly about money and organisation, pregnancy adds prohibitions punished by nullity, meaning the act is treated as if it never existed, with reinstatement or full damages following. A foreign employer who discovers the pregnancy by email must freeze every ongoing plan affecting that employee, including a trial-period termination or a redundancy already under discussion, and re-examine it under the protective rules before moving a millimetre.

A. Which dismissals and decisions are void during pregnancy and maternity leave?

The protection starts earlier than most founders imagine: from the medically confirmed pregnancy itself, not from the maternity leave. Article L1225-1 of the Labour Code provides: “L’employeur ne doit pas prendre en considération l’état de grossesse d’une femme pour refuser de l’embaucher, pour rompre son contrat de travail au cours d’une période d’essai” Three practical consequences follow for a company run from abroad. First, you cannot reject a candidate because she is pregnant, and you must never ask about pregnancy in interviews or in writing, since the article forbids seeking such information. Second, you cannot end a trial period because of the pregnancy; if a trial termination coincides with the announcement, the tribunal will connect the two dates. Third, you cannot sideline the employee into a lesser post by invoking the pregnancy, except through the temporary reassignments the statute organises with medical supervision. Our guide to failed trial periods explains how strictly tribunals review every trial termination in our analysis of dismissals challenged from abroad, and pregnancy multiplies that strictness.

The core ban then covers dismissal through pregnancy, maternity leave and beyond. Article L1225-4 of the Labour Code provides: “Aucun employeur ne peut rompre le contrat de travail d’une salariée lorsqu’elle est en état de grossesse médicalement constaté, pendant l’intégralité des périodes de suspension du contrat de travail auxquelles elle a droit au titre du congé de maternité, qu’elle use ou non de ce droit, et au titre des congés payés pris immédiatement après le congé de maternité ainsi que pendant les dix semaines suivant l’expiration de ces périodes.” Note the breadth: the ban covers the whole pregnancy once medically confirmed, the full maternity suspension whether or not she takes all of it, paid leave taken immediately after, and ten further weeks. Only two exits exist, and the statute states them restrictively: “Toutefois, l’employeur peut rompre le contrat s’il justifie d’une faute grave de l’intéressée, non liée à l’état de grossesse, ou de son impossibilité de maintenir ce contrat pour un motif étranger à la grossesse ou à l’accouchement.” Serious misconduct unrelated to the pregnancy, or an impossibility such as a genuine economic impossibility to maintain the contract for a reason unrelated to pregnancy or childbirth, must be proved by you, and even then “la rupture du contrat de travail ne peut prendre effet ou être notifiée pendant les périodes de suspension du contrat de travail mentionnées au premier alinéa”. A dismissal notified during the suspension is void, and a dismissal for another stated reason that is really driven by the pregnancy is equally void once the tribunal sees through it.

The sanction is nullity, and recent case law raised its European stakes. The Cour de cassation recalled on 6 November 2024, pourvoi 23-14.706, published on the official record of the Court, the European rule that “un licenciement pendant le congé de maternité, mais également pendant toute la durée de la grossesse ne peut concerner que les femmes et constitue, dès lors, une discrimination directe fondée sur le sexe”. A discriminatory dismissal does not end with severance talks: the employee can demand reinstatement in her post, or, if she prefers money, full compensation for the harm suffered, with no ceiling compressing the loss the way ordinary dismissal scales do. The same ruling recalled the domestic nullity rule: “Selon l’article L. 1225-71 du code du travail, la nullité du licenciement est encourue lorsque l’employeur licencie la salariée en état de grossesse médicalement constaté, pendant l’intégralité des périodes de suspension du contrat de travail auxquelles elle a droit au titre du congé de maternité, et au titre des congés payés pris immédiatement après le congé de maternité ainsi que pendant les dix semaines suivant l’expiration de ces périodes”. For a foreign owner, the message is arithmetic as much as legal: one rushed dismissal letter during the protected period can cost reinstatement plus back pay, or damages covering the entire loss, decided by a tribunal that needs no further proof once the dates overlap. When in doubt, suspend the procedure, date-stamp the pregnancy announcement in the file, and take advice before signing anything.

B. How do you run the leave, the pay and the return from abroad?

Organisation beats improvisation, and every step can be handled remotely once the calendar is set. First, fix the dates. Under the official service-public guidance for maternity leave, the standard duration for a first or second child is sixteen weeks, six before the expected delivery and ten after, rising to twenty-six weeks from the third child and to longer periods for multiple births, with the prenatal part adjustable within limits on medical advice. Ask the employee for the medical certificate stating the expected date, diary the start of the leave, the expected return, and the end of the ten-week protected tail that follows the leave and any immediately attached paid holidays, because dismissing one week too early is the same nullity as dismissing in the middle of the leave. The health insurance fund pays maternity daily benefits during the suspension on the basis of the salary certificate you file, mirroring the sick-leave circuit, and your payroll provider keeps issuing the paper trail. Keep paying attention to the supplementary health cover, the mutuelle (the compulsory employer-funded top-up health insurance): Article L911-7 of the Social Security Code organises the minimum collective cover the employer must fund at least half of, and maternity suspension does not end the cover, so contributions and rights continue and the employee keeps her benefits while absent. An employer who lets the mutuelle lapse during the leave discovers the gap when the employee claims, and the bill lands in Paris while you sleep in another time zone.

Second, staff the gap with the same replacement discipline as for sick leave. A fixed-term contract naming the employee on maternity leave, her qualification and the expected term satisfies Article L1242-12 of the Labour Code, and the contract can provide for the leave plus the paid holidays frequently attached to it, so plan a term that covers both rather than chaining last-minute extensions. Declare the replacement through the DPAE before day one under Article L1221-10 of the Labour Code, affiliate her through the standard circuit recalled by Article L311-2 of the Social Security Code, under which all employed persons whatever their nationality are compulsorily affiliated to the general scheme, and hand over the files with a written confidentiality reminder rather than by forwarding the absent employee’s entire mailbox. Third, prepare the return before it happens. The employee comes back to her post or an equivalent post with equivalent pay, and the return interview, training catch-up and any requested part-time or remote-work arrangement must be handled as management, never as punishment for the absence. A return followed within weeks by a performance procedure started from abroad reads as retaliation to any tribunal, so rebuild the file patiently: set objectives in writing, hold the meetings by video with minutes, and document support before any criticism. For Paris and Île-de-France teams, remember that the competent labour tribunal is the conseil de prud’hommes of the place of work, commonly Paris for capital-based staff, and that proceedings run in French on documents, which is why every certificate, slip, transfer record and contract in the file should be complete, dated and consistent before a dispute ever starts.

Conclusion

An employee’s illness or pregnancy does not pause your duties as a French employer; it rearranges them into a strict order that distance must not disturb. During sick leave, file the salary certificate so the IJSS flow under Article L321-1 of the Social Security Code, pay the statutory top-up under Article L1226-1 of the Labour Code at ninety percent then two thirds once the forty-eight-hour and seniority conditions are met, replace through a written fixed-term contract that names the absent employee as Article L1242-12 of the Labour Code requires, and verify through counter-visits rather than pressure. During pregnancy and maternity, freeze every adverse decision from the medically confirmed pregnancy through the leave, attached paid holidays and ten further weeks as Article L1225-4 of the Labour Code commands, remember that a dismissal in that window is a direct sex discrimination and a nullity under the 6 November 2024 ruling of the Cour de cassation, pourvoi 23-14.706, and organise cover and return in writing. Keep the mutuelle alive, the pay slips exact, and the bank proofs beside them, since the slip alone never proves payment. Run from abroad with this discipline, and absence stays an administrative episode; improvise, and it becomes the most expensive letter you ever signed.

Need a quick opinion on your case

Your French employee is on sick leave or expecting a child while you run the company from abroad, and you need the pay, the replacement contract and the dismissal freeze set correctly within days. Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm to review your certificates, payroll and deadlines. Telephone consultation: 80 EUR including VAT. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 — Maître Reda Kohen — or write through our contact page. For Paris and Île-de-France teams, we act before the Paris labour tribunal and secure the file your case needs.