Hiring your first employee is the moment your French company stops being a registration number and becomes an employer. The Kbis extract — the official birth certificate of your company issued by the greffe, the clerk’s office of the commercial court — proves your company exists. It does not authorise you to have someone work for you. From the first hour of the first day, a separate body of rules applies: the French Labour Code requires a pre-hiring declaration, written documents, a health cover scheme, a risk assessment file and a medical follow-up, even when the founder signs everything from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. This guide explains the full checklist in the order a foreign director should handle it: first the déclaration préalable à l’embauche (DPAE, the pre-hiring declaration filed with URSSAF, the social security collection agency), then the written contract and the staff register, then the real cost of the hire computed from the legal minimum wage, and finally the sanctions courts actually impose when a step is skipped — including a May 2025 appeal decision in which an employer paid more than 20,000 euros for a missing DPAE. If you are still choosing the vehicle for your project, read first our step-by-step guide to setting up a company in France as a foreign founder.
I. What paperwork must be completed before your employee’s first day when you run the company from abroad?
A. How do you file the pre-hiring declaration (DPAE) when you live outside France?
The DPAE is the single most urgent formality. Article L. 1221-10 of the Labour Code states: “L’embauche d’un salarié ne peut intervenir qu’après déclaration nominative accomplie par l’employeur auprès des organismes de protection sociale désignés à cet effet.” In plain terms, your employee is not allowed to start work until you have filed a nominative declaration with the designated social protection bodies, and the same article adds: “L’employeur accomplit cette déclaration dans tous les lieux de travail où sont employés des salariés.” Every place of work is covered, including a single Paris office or a remote worker’s home declared as the workplace. The official text is published on Légifrance, Article L. 1221-10 of the Labour Code.
In practice the declaration is filed online with URSSAF, the network that collects social security contributions, through the employer’s online account or the Guichet unique hiring portal. It must be completed before the employee takes up the post; the employer may file it no earlier than the days immediately preceding the expected hiring date, so the task belongs to the final week before the start, not to the first week of work. The declaration identifies both sides precisely. Article R. 1221-1 of the Labour Code lists its mandatory contents, and the full official text is available on Légifrance, Article R. 1221-1 of the Labour Code: the company’s name, APE activity code, address and SIRET identification number, the health-at-work service (service de santé au travail) covering the company, and for the employee the family name, first names, sex, date and place of birth, national identification number if already registered, plus the date and hour of hiring and the nature and duration of the contract. A foreign founder should prepare these items before flying in or, better, before signing: a passport copy of the employee, their French social security number if they have one, the exact start date and time, and the SIRET number shown on the company’s Kbis.
The DPAE is far more than a notification. Article R. 1221-2 of the Labour Code provides: “Au moyen de la déclaration préalable à l’embauche, l’employeur accomplit les déclarations et demandes suivantes : 1° L’immatriculation de l’employeur au régime général de la sécurité sociale” — one filing simultaneously registers the employer with the general social security scheme, registers the employee with the primary health insurance fund, affiliates the employer to the unemployment insurance scheme, requests membership of an occupational health service and requests the first medical visit. See the full text of Article R. 1221-2 on Légifrance. For a company hiring for the first time, the DPAE is therefore the act that creates the employer in the eyes of the social security system. Founders living abroad commonly delegate the filing to a French payroll provider (prestataire de paie) or an accountant (expert-comptable) holding a written power of attorney, which is entirely lawful as long as the declaration itself is filed on time and its acknowledgement of receipt (accusé de réception) is kept. Keep that receipt with the employment file: in every dispute about undeclared work, the first document the URSSAF inspector and the labour court ask for is the dated DPAE receipt.
Two practical warnings follow from this. First, distance is no excuse. The declaration is filed online in minutes, so a founder in another time zone who lets the employee start on Monday while the paperwork catches up commits the exact omission the courts punish most severely, as Section II.B shows with a recent case. Second, the DPAE does not replace the employment contract. It declares the hiring to the authorities; it does not set the salary, the duties, the trial period or the applicable collective agreement. Both are required, and the contract is the subject of the next section.
B. Which written documents must exist on day one: employment contract, staff register and medical follow-up?
French law starts from a simple default: the open-ended contract is the norm. Article L. 1221-2 of the Labour Code provides: “Le contrat de travail à durée indéterminée est la forme normale et générale de la relation de travail.” The official text of Article L. 1221-2 is on Légifrance. A permanent contract (contrat à durée indéterminée, CDI) does not have to be in writing to be valid, but a foreign employer who relies on an oral agreement makes every later dispute — duties, salary, working time, termination — a matter of conflicting testimony. Put every CDI in writing, signed before or on the first day, stating the job title, duties, workplace, working time, gross salary, applicable collective agreement (convention collective) and trial period. The collective agreement matters more than newcomers expect: it sets minimum pay scales, notice periods and bonuses for the sector, and the Paris-region employer should confirm with the Dreets (direction régionale de l’économie, de l’emploi, du travail et des solidarités) of Île-de-France or with counsel which agreement covers the activity, because applying the wrong one is a recurring source of back-pay claims.
Fixed-term contracts (contrats à durée déterminée, CDD) follow a stricter regime. Article L. 1242-12 of the Labour Code states: “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.” Read the full Article L. 1242-12 on Légifrance. A fixed-term hire without a written contract stating its precise legal ground — replacement of an absent employee, temporary increase in activity, seasonal work — is automatically reclassified as a permanent contract by the labour court, with the back-pay and severance consequences that follow. The same article requires the contract to state the end date, the job description, the applicable collective agreement, any trial period, the full remuneration and the supplementary pension fund. For a foreign founder, the lesson is direct: never use a fixed-term contract as a casual “trial run” documented by email; either sign a proper CDD with its exact statutory contents or hire on a CDI with a trial period.
The trial period (période d’essai) itself must be written into the contract or the letter of engagement to apply at all. Article L. 1221-19 of the Labour Code provides: “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.” See the official text of Article L. 1221-19 on Légifrance. These ceilings apply unless the sector’s collective agreement allows a shorter period, and renewal is possible only once and only if the agreement and the contract both allow it. During the trial period either side may end the relationship with the statutory notice, which is precisely why documenting the start date in the DPAE and the signed contract matters: without a written trial clause, the employee is deemed confirmed from day one.
Alongside the contract, the employer must keep a single staff register (registre unique du personnel). Article L. 1221-13 of the Labour Code states: “Un registre unique du personnel est tenu dans tout établissement où sont employés des salariés.” Consult the official Article L. 1221-13 on Légifrance. Names are entered in hiring order, in indelible form, on arrival — a digital register kept by the payroll provider satisfies the rule. Labour inspectors check it on every visit, and its absence is itself an offence that colours the whole inspection.
Finally, the employer must arrange the employee’s medical follow-up from the start. As noted above, the DPAE itself carries the request for the information and prevention visit (visite d’information et de prévention) or, for positions with specific risks, the fitness examination. Once running, the company must also hold its own safety documentation: Article L. 4121-1 of the Labour Code provides that “L’employeur prend les mesures nécessaires pour assurer la sécurité et protéger la santé physique et mentale des travailleurs”, and Article R. 4121-1 adds: “L’employeur transcrit et met à jour dans un document unique les résultats de l’évaluation des risques pour la santé et la sécurité des travailleurs”; the same article then requires an inventory of the identified risks in each work unit. Both texts are on Légifrance (Article L. 4121-1, Article R. 4121-1). This single risk-assessment document (document unique d’évaluation des risques professionnels, DUERP) is mandatory from the first employee — even for an office with one workstation — and must be updated at least yearly. A founder abroad should ask the payroll provider or the occupational health service to supply a template on day one rather than discovering the obligation during an inspection.
II. What does your first French hire really cost, and what happens if you skip a step?
A. How do you compute the real employer cost: minimum wage, social charges, health cover and commuting?
The starting point is the legal minimum wage, the salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance (Smic). Article L. 3231-2 of the Labour Code states: “Le salaire minimum de croissance assure aux salariés dont les rémunérations sont les plus faibles : 1° La garantie de leur pouvoir d’achat ; 2° Une participation au développement économique de la nation.” See the official Article L. 3231-2 on Légifrance. The rate is revalued every 1 January; the current figures published on the official service-public.fr page on the Smic are 12.31 euros gross per hour and 1,867.02 euros gross per month for full-time work at 35 hours per week. No employee may be paid less, and the applicable collective agreement usually imposes a higher sector minimum that overrides the Smic. Overtime above 35 hours carries statutory surcharges, a subject we cover in our guide to overtime, pay rates and time records for a first French employee — budget it before promising extra hours.
On top of gross salary, the employer pays employer social contributions (cotisations patronales): health, family allowances, work-accident, unemployment, supplementary pension and wage-guarantee contributions. As a rough planning rule used by accountants, a Smic-level hire costs the employer around 42 to 45 percent above gross salary before reductions, which turns a monthly gross of about 1,867 euros into a total cost near 2,650 euros — but this is only a benchmark, and the exact figure depends on the contribution rates in force, the work-accident rate of the sector and the applicable reductions. The main relief is the general reduction of employer contributions: Article L. 241-13 of the Social Security Code provides that “Font l’objet d’une réduction dégressive les cotisations à la charge de l’employeur dues au titre des assurances sociales et des allocations familiales” — a degressive reduction that is largest at Smic level and phases out as salary rises. Read the official Article L. 241-13 on Légifrance. For an exact figure, run the official URSSAF salary-cost simulator on urssaf.fr with the planned gross salary before signing anything; it applies the current rates and reductions and remains the only number a founder should put in a business plan.
Two further mandatory items complete the budget. First, the supplementary health cover (mutuelle or complémentaire santé). Article L. 911-7 of the Social Security Code provides: “L’employeur assure au minimum la moitié du financement de la couverture collective à adhésion obligatoire des salariés en matière de remboursement complémentaire des frais occasionnés par une maladie, une maternité ou un accident.” See the official Article L. 911-7 on Légifrance. Every employer must therefore fund at least half of a compulsory collective health cover for its employees, including the first one, typically through a group contract chosen with an insurer; in Paris, monthly employer shares commonly range from 30 to 80 euros for entry-level cover. Second, commuting: Article L. 3261-2 of the Labour Code states: “L’employeur prend en charge, dans une proportion et des conditions déterminées par voie réglementaire, le prix des titres d’abonnements souscrits par ses salariés pour leurs déplacements entre leur résidence habituelle et leur lieu de travail accomplis au moyen de transports publics de personnes ou de services publics de location de vélos.” The official text is on Légifrance. In the Paris region this means contributing to the employee’s Navigo pass at the regulatory rate — a line foreign founders regularly forget and employees never forget. Added together, health cover, commuting and contributions explain why a 1,867-euro gross salary represents a monthly outlay approaching 2,800 euros in Paris once every mandatory item is counted.
B. What do you risk if the declaration or the written contract is missing?
Skipping the DPAE is not an administrative delay; it is the legal definition of concealed work. Article L. 8221-1 of the Labour Code states: “Sont interdits : 1° Le travail totalement ou partiellement dissimulé, défini et exercé dans les conditions prévues aux articles L. 8221-3 et L. 8221-5”. The official Article L. 8221-1 is on Légifrance. Deliberately avoiding the pre-hiring declaration is one of the characterised forms of this offence, and the consequences fall into three layers: a flat-rate payment to the employee, back-payment to URSSAF, and criminal exposure.
The employee’s remedy is automatic once the employment relationship ends. Article L. 8223-1 of the Labour Code provides: “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.” Read the official Article L. 8223-1 on Légifrance. Six months of gross salary, whatever the length of service — even a few weeks — and whatever the reason for departure, including resignation or the end of a trial period. Alongside it, URSSAF reassesses the unpaid contributions with surcharges and penalties, a process described in our guide to URSSAF audits, assessments and remedies for companies run from abroad. Finally, Article L. 8224-1 of the Labour Code states: “Le fait de méconnaître les interdictions définies à l’article L. 8221-1 est puni d’un emprisonnement de trois ans et d’une amende de 45 000 euros.” See the official Article L. 8224-1 on Légifrance. Prosecution remains rarer than the civil and reassessment consequences, but the text sets the scale of what the law treats the omission as.
Courts apply these texts without leniency for disorganisation, including during difficult periods. In a judgment of 27 May 2025 (RG No. 23/03865), the Toulouse Court of Appeal dealt with a pharmacist hired on 10 January 2021 whose employer had simply forgotten the DPAE — the declaration was only filed on 2 September 2021, after the employee’s lawyer demanded it — and whose trial period ended on 29 January 2021, barely three weeks later. The employer pleaded a mere oversight in the strained context of the Covid epidemic, with a written contract duly signed. The court recalled the rule first: “Il résulte des dispositions de l’article L.8221-5 du code du travail qu’est réputé travail dissimulé par dissimulation d’emploi salarié le fait pour tout employeur de se soustraire intentionnellement à l’accomplissement de la formalité prévue à l’article L.1221-10 relatif à la déclaration préalable à l’embauche.” It then rejected the oversight defence, noting that the written contract expressly stated that a pre-hiring declaration had been filed when that statement was materially untrue. The operative part reads: “Condamne la Selas Pharmacie de la Faourette à payer à M. [S] la somme de 20 784,84 euros à titre d’indemnité pour travail dissimulé”. The full decision is published on the official Cour de cassation Judilibre database, Toulouse Court of Appeal, 27 May 2025, RG 23/03865. For a three-week employment relationship, the missing online declaration cost the employer six months of salary — the arithmetic every foreign founder should keep in mind before letting anyone “start on Monday”.
Missing written contracts carry their own automatic sanction. As shown above, a fixed-term contract without the written statement of its precise ground is deemed open-ended, which converts a supposedly temporary hire into a permanent employee whom the company can then only dismiss through the full dismissal procedure with severance. And an oral trial period is unenforceable, so an employee dismissed in week six without a written trial clause is dismissed as a confirmed employee. These are not theoretical risks: they are the daily caseload of the Paris labour courts (conseil de prud’hommes de Paris), where a foreign company without local paperwork faces an employee whose lawyer knows exactly which document to ask for first.
Conclusion
Hiring a first employee in France from abroad reduces to a short ordered list. Before day one, file the DPAE and keep its receipt, sign a written contract stating the collective agreement and any trial period within the statutory ceilings, open the single staff register and trigger the occupational medical visit. From day one, pay at least the Smic or the higher sector minimum, apply the general reduction of employer contributions through the payroll, fund at least half of the compulsory health cover, contribute to the commuting pass and record the risks in the single assessment document. Each item takes minutes or hours online; each omission costs months of salary before the labour court, as the 2025 Toulouse decision demonstrates. Handle the checklist in this order, keep every receipt, and the first hire becomes what it should be — the step that turns a registered French company into a working business.