You hired your first employee in France with enthusiasm, and a few months later the relationship is falling apart: missed targets, repeated absences, tension with clients, or simply a hire that was a mistake. You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and your instinct is to end the contract quickly with a letter and a cheque. In France, that instinct is dangerous. Dismissal (licenciement) follows a mandatory step-by-step procedure, and every skipped step has a price tag attached by the labour courts. The good news is that the procedure is predictable: invite the employee to a preliminary meeting, hear them, wait, then notify the dismissal by registered letter with precise reasons. The second piece of good news is that the cost can be computed in advance: notice period (préavis), statutory severance pay (indemnité de licenciement), unused paid leave and three final documents. This guide walks a foreign founder or foreign parent company through the full dismissal of a first French employee on an open-ended contract (contrat à durée indéterminée, CDI), from the invitation letter to the labour court (conseil de prud’hommes), with the exact articles of the French Labour Code (Code du travail) and three recent decisions of the Social Chamber of the Court of Cassation (Cour de cassation, chambre sociale) that show where employers win and where they lose.

I. Follow the mandatory dismissal procedure to the letter, even from abroad

A. How do you invite, hear and notify your first employee of the dismissal?

French law imposes the same preliminary procedure on every employer, whether you run a CAC 40 group or a newly registered société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) with a single employee. The steps are set out in articles L1232-2 to L1232-5 of the Labour Code and detailed in articles R1232-1 to R1232-3, and the official employer guide published by the French administration describes each of them in practical terms (see the service-public.fr guide to dismissal for personal reasons). Skipping or compressing any step does not make the dismissal automatically unfair, but it opens a separate claim for damages for procedural irregularity (irrégularité de procédure), which is why foreign employers should treat the timetable as sacred.

First, you invite the employee to a preliminary meeting (entretien préalable) by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt (lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception) or by letter delivered by hand against a signed receipt (remise en main propre contre décharge), which has the same legal value. The invitation must state its purpose, the date, time and place of the meeting, and remind the employee that they may be assisted by a staff member of the company or, where there is no staff representative in the company, by an outside employee adviser (conseiller du salarié) chosen from an official list. In a one-employee company there is by definition no colleague to assist, so expect the employee to arrive with an outside adviser: that is normal and you cannot refuse it. Between the first presentation of the registered letter (or the hand delivery) and the meeting, you must leave at least five full working days (jours ouvrables, every weekday except the weekly rest day, generally Sunday, and public holidays not normally worked). Neither the day of delivery nor the day of the meeting counts. If you live abroad, organise this step through a person physically present in France: a local manager, your French accountant with a written mandate for logistics, or a lawyer. The meeting itself is your legal obligation, and case law accepts that the employer may be represented, but the representative must have authority to hear the employee and report back, because the whole point of the meeting is that the employee can explain themselves before any decision is taken.

During the meeting, you state the reasons you are considering dismissal and you listen to the employee’s explanations. There is no obligation to reach an agreement, and there is no obligation for the employee to speak. Take notes, keep them, and do not announce the dismissal on the spot: the administration’s guide is explicit that the employer may only notify (notifier) the dismissal by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt once a cooling-off period of at least two full working days after the meeting has expired. The notification letter is the most important document of the whole process. Under article L1232-6 of the Labour Code, it must set out the reasons for the dismissal, and those reasons fix the boundaries of any future court dispute: you will not be allowed to add new grievances later. A recent decision illustrates how strictly the courts read this letter. In a case where an employer had first proposed a disciplinary demotion and then dismissed the employee for poor performance (insuffisance professionnelle), the Court of Cassation held, in Cass. soc., 9 March 2022, no. 20-17.005, that “c’est le motif de la rupture mentionné dans la lettre de licenciement qui détermine le caractère disciplinaire ou non du licenciement” (it is the reason stated in the dismissal letter that determines whether or not the dismissal is disciplinary in nature). In plain terms: the letter, and only the letter, defines what the case is about. Draft it in French, be factual, date every grievance precisely, and have it reviewed before sending, because vague formulas such as loss of confidence or professional incompatibility, without concrete facts, are routinely treated by the courts as having no real and serious cause (cause réelle et sérieuse). If you run a French subsidiary of a foreign group, remember that the dismissal is pronounced by the French employing entity, on French letterhead, signed by a person with authority to hire and fire; a decision announced from headquarters abroad, without a compliant French procedure, is exactly the kind of file that ends badly before the labour court. For the broader picture of setting up and running that French entity, our companion guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder covers the bank account, the Kbis (the official company identity certificate issued by the commercial court registry, the greffe) and VAT registration that precede any hire.

B. Which deadlines will trap a foreign employer: the two-month disciplinary rule and the notice period?

Two clocks run against the employer, and both regularly destroy dismissals prepared from abroad. The first clock applies to misconduct. Under the rules verified in the official guide to disciplinary sanctions, which cites articles L1332-4 to L1332-5 of the Labour Code, no wrongful act may on its own trigger disciplinary proceedings more than two months after the day the employer learned of it. The two months run from exact knowledge of the facts, meaning their reality, nature and scale, not from rumours or partial information. The trap for foreign founders is obvious: headquarters often hears about a problem informally, waits, investigates slowly across time zones, and only starts the procedure once the two months have expired. The sanction is severe, because a time-barred disciplinary dismissal has no real and serious cause.

The Court of Cassation has just restated who carries the burden of proof, in a decision every foreign employer should read. In Cass. soc., 15 October 2025, no. 24-11.188, concerning a technical director dismissed for serious misconduct after documents showing his involvement in a competing transport business were found on his work computer, the Court recalled that “aucun fait fautif ne peut donner lieu à lui seul à l’engagement de poursuites disciplinaires au-delà d’un délai de deux mois à compter du jour où l’employeur en a eu connaissance” (no wrongful act may on its own trigger disciplinary proceedings more than two months after the day the employer learned of it). Crucially, where the acts were committed more than two months before proceedings began, the employer must prove that it only gained exact knowledge of the reality, nature and scale of the facts within the two months preceding the start of proceedings. In that case the employer won, because the appeal court had sovereignly found that exact knowledge only dated from December 2017, when two colleagues reported the documents, so the summons of 15 January 2018 was in time. The lesson is operational: as soon as you suspect misconduct, date-stamp everything, record when and how each fact reached the decision-maker, and start the invitation procedure within two months of that moment. A foreign reporting chain with undated emails is the classic way to lose this point.

The seriousness of the misconduct also determines what the dismissal costs, so qualify the facts carefully before writing the letter. French law distinguishes simple misconduct (faute simple), serious misconduct (faute grave) and gross misconduct with intent to harm (faute lourde), with different consequences for notice and severance as explained in the official guide to dismissal for simple, serious or gross misconduct. Serious misconduct is conduct that makes it impossible to keep the employee in the company even for the notice period: it removes both the notice period and severance pay. Gross misconduct additionally allows a claim for damages against the employee. Reserve the serious-misconduct label for cases that genuinely justify an immediate exit, such as theft, violence, or proven work for a competitor on company time, and build the file with attestations, bailiff reports (constats d’huissier) and dated documents, because the courts review the qualification strictly and reclassify abusive serious-misconduct labels, which then reopens the right to notice and severance with interest.

The second clock is the notice period itself. Except in cases of serious or gross misconduct, and except during the probation entirely, the dismissed employee is entitled to a notice period whose length is set by the employment contract, the applicable sector-wide collective agreement (convention collective), or, failing that, by articles L1234-1 to L1234-8 of the Labour Code, including article L1234-3; the official guide to dismissal notice walks through the duration rules and the cases with no notice. As the employer, you may release the employee from working the notice, but they cannot be forced to accept it and you then owe compensatory notice pay (indemnité compensatrice de préavis) for the unworked period. If the employee asks to skip the notice and you accept, no such payment is due. Note that the release does not change the date on which the contract formally ends. For a founder abroad, the practical question is who supervises a bitter employee during a two- or three-month notice: in small structures, a negotiated release with compensatory pay is often cheaper than months of tension, provided the release letter is explicit and signed.

II. Price the exit correctly and survive a labour court challenge

A. How much does the dismissal really cost: severance, leave and final documents?

Put a number on the exit before you start, because French severance follows a legal formula, not a negotiation. The statutory severance (indemnité légale de licenciement) is due to any employee on an open-ended contract with at least eight months of continuous service with the same employer, except in cases of serious or gross misconduct. The calculation rules are set by article L1234-9 of the Labour Code and articles R1234-1 to R1234-5, and the official severance guide confirms the thresholds with worked examples: the payment cannot be less than one quarter of a month’s salary per year of service for the first ten years, plus one third of a month’s salary per year beyond ten years, with pro-rating for incomplete years. The reference salary is the most favourable of the average of the last twelve months or the last three months (with bonuses pro-rated). Take a concrete first-hire example: a gross monthly reference salary of 3,000 euros and two full years of service gives a statutory minimum of 3,000 × 1/4 × 2 = 1,500 euros. Always check the applicable collective agreement and the employment contract as well, because the higher conventional or contractual severance (indemnité conventionnelle) replaces the statutory minimum whenever it is more generous, and in sectors such as banking, chemicals or audiovisual production the conventional formula can be significantly above the legal floor.

Add the paid-leave balance. An employee accrues 2.5 working days of paid leave (congés payés) per month of actual work, and any leave earned but not taken on the last day must be paid as a leave allowance (indemnité compensatrice de congés payés) under article L3141-28 of the Labour Code. Foreign founders frequently underestimate this line: an employee dismissed in May who has taken little leave can easily hold five or six weeks of accrued rights. Add any pro-rated bonus, overtime arrears (a sensitive topic we covered in our guide on overtime, pay rates and time records for a first French employee), and the compensatory notice pay if you release the employee. Social charges and income tax treatment differ by line, so have your French payroll provider (prestataire de paie) validate the final payslip before payment.

On the last day, or at least when the contract ends, you must hand over the final documents. The official end-of-contract guide lists them: the work certificate (certificat de travail, required by article L1234-19 of the Labour Code), the final account receipt (reçu pour solde de tout compte, governed by article L1234-20), the employer certificate for the unemployment agency France Travail (formerly Pôle emploi, which determines the employee’s benefit rights, so any error or delay directly creates a damages claim), and a summary statement of employee savings schemes (épargne salariale) where such schemes exist. If you manage the company from abroad, mandate someone in France to deliver these documents on time and to file the mandatory social declarations (déclaration sociale nominative, DSN, the monthly electronic payroll return to URSSAF, the social security collection agency): late or missing documents are among the easiest claims an employee’s lawyer can win, and they poison settlement discussions. A short Paris and Île-de-France note: where your employee works in Paris, the competent court in case of dispute is the Paris labour court, and Paris proceedings are heavy-volume, slow dockets where a clean procedural file settles faster; keep a Paris-based recipient for registered letters and court notices so nothing goes unanswered while you are abroad.

B. How do you prove real and serious cause before the labour court within the deadline?

Every dismissal must rest on a real and serious cause: real means based on exact, objective facts, serious means sufficiently grave to make continued employment impossible. The letter you sent sets the perimeter of the dispute, and then the burden is shared in a way foreign employers often misunderstand. Under articles L1235-1 to L1235-6 of the Labour Code, the judge examines all the evidence submitted by both sides and, where doubt remains, that doubt benefits the employee. You therefore go to court with a file, not with assertions: dated warnings, performance reviews signed by both sides, objective indicators, client complaints, attestations from witnesses drafted in the legal form, and proof that the facts in the letter are the facts you can document. Hearsay from a foreign manager who never met the employee carries little weight; contemporaneous written records carry a lot.

If the court finds no real and serious cause, compensation follows the statutory scale known as the Macron scale (barème Macron), unless the dismissal is void (nul, for example for harassment, discrimination or violation of a protected status), in which case the scale does not cap damages. Separately, the judge may order the employer to reimburse to France Travail all or part of the unemployment benefits paid to the employee, under article L1235-2 of the Labour Code. The scale sets a minimum and a maximum number of months of gross salary according to seniority, so a short-service first employee represents a capped risk while a ten-year employee represents a much larger one: another reason to address underperformance early rather than after years of documented tolerance, which the courts read as acceptance. Procedural irregularities alone, without loss of cause, give rise to a separate capped indemnity, which is why the invitation, meeting and notification timetable in Part I matters even when the underlying reasons are solid. The employee has twelve months from the notification of the dismissal to bring the case before the labour court, under article L1471-1 of the Labour Code, as confirmed by the official guide to seizing the labour court; after that deadline the claim is time-barred (prescrit). Do not read the twelve months as peace: employees often file in month eleven, and the employer must then produce a complete file, which is why you archive everything on the day of the dismissal. The court with jurisdiction is the labour court of the place where the establishment employing the worker is located, of the place where the contract was concluded, or of the employer’s registered office (siège social), so a Paris-based first hire will normally sue in Paris.

Poor performance cases deserve special attention because they are the most common ground for dismissing a first hire and the most frequently lost. Insufficient performance is a non-disciplinary ground: it must be assessed against the employee’s actual duties, objectives and resources, not against disappointment in general. A very recent decision shows how collective agreements can add a preliminary duty. In Cass. soc., 22 October 2025, no. 23-20.102, concerning an employee dismissed for poor performance, the Court recalled that under the applicable banking collective agreement “l’employeur doit, avant d’engager la procédure de licenciement pour un motif non disciplinaire, avoir considéré toutes solutions envisageables, notamment recherché le moyen de confier au salarié un autre poste lorsque l’insuffisance résulte d’une mauvaise adaptation de l’intéressé à ses fonctions” (before starting a dismissal procedure for a non-disciplinary reason, the employer must have considered all conceivable solutions, including looking for another position for the employee where the shortcomings result from the employee’s poor fit with their duties). The appeal court was overturned for assuming poor fit without checking whether the shortcomings came from another cause. Two lessons follow: first, always read the applicable collective agreement before dismissing, because it may impose reclassification searches, training duties or enhanced procedures that the Labour Code alone does not contain; second, document the resources given to the employee, training, warnings and support, so that poor performance cannot be reframed as your failure to adapt the position. Where the employee holds a protected status (pregnancy, staff representative mandate, work-related illness suspension), separate authorisation procedures apply and this guide’s standard procedure is not enough: take advice before acting.

Conclusion

Dismissing a first French employee from abroad is entirely possible, but only as a disciplined sequence: a compliant invitation leaving five full working days, a real preliminary meeting with the employee’s right to be assisted, a two-working-day pause, then a registered notification letter whose stated reasons will define the entire future dispute. Watch the two-month disciplinary clock from the day you gained exact knowledge of the facts, qualify serious misconduct narrowly, and compute the full cost in advance: notice or its compensatory payment, statutory or conventional severance from eight months of service, accrued paid leave, and three flawless final documents. Keep every dated proof from day one, because within the employee’s twelve-month window to seize the labour court, doubt benefits the employee and the dismissal letter alone sets the case. The companion pieces on choosing between an SAS, a SARL, a branch or a subsidiary and on structuring the hire itself complete the picture for a foreign founder doing business in France.