You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. Your French company is registered, the Kbis extract (the official certificate proving that a French company exists, issued by the greffe<\/i>, the clerk’s office of the Commercial Court) is in your inbox, and a candidate in Paris or Lyon is ready to start on Monday. This is the moment when many foreign founders discover that French employment law shows little mercy to paperwork mistakes. The hiring declaration must be filed before the employee starts work, the trial period must be written into the contract to exist at all, every payslip must be delivered and every month must be reported to URSSAF (the Union de recouvrement des cotisations de s\u00e9curit\u00e9 sociale et d’allocations familiales<\/i>, the body that collects employers’ and employees’ social contributions). Miss one of these steps and the dispute that follows will be judged in France, under French law, by the conseil de prud’hommes<\/i> (the specialised labour court), even if you signed everything from abroad. This guide explains, in English and in practical order, how a foreign founder hires a first French employee lawfully from abroad: the prior hiring declaration (DPAE, d\u00e9claration pr\u00e9alable \u00e0 l’embauche<\/i>), the written contract and trial period (p\u00e9riode d’essai<\/i>), payslips (bulletins de paie<\/i>) and the monthly social declaration (DSN, d\u00e9claration sociale nominative<\/i>), compulsory health cover, and the daily obligations that decide cases before the labour courts. Each rule is tied to the exact statutory text and to recent decisions of the Cour de cassation, the French supreme court for labour matters.<\/p>\nI. Hiring and Declaring Your First Employee Correctly From Abroad<\/h2>\n
A. How Do You Declare the Hiring Before the First Day: DPAE, URSSAF and Social Affiliation?<\/h3>\n
French law makes the declaration the legal starting point of the employment relationship, not an administrative afterthought. Article L1221-10 of the Code du travail<\/a> (the Labour Code) provides: “L’embauche d’un salari\u00e9 ne peut intervenir qu’apr\u00e8s d\u00e9claration nominative accomplie par l’employeur aupr\u00e8s des organismes de protection sociale d\u00e9sign\u00e9s \u00e0 cet effet.” In plain English: no hiring may take place until the employer has filed a nominative declaration with the designated social protection bodies. The declaration is called the DPAE (d\u00e9claration pr\u00e9alable \u00e0 l’embauche<\/i>, the prior hiring declaration). It identifies the company, the employee, the start date, the type of contract and the working time, and it is filed with URSSAF, in practice through the URSSAF online employer service described on the URSSAF hiring page<\/a> and on service-public.fr<\/a>. A founder living abroad files the same declaration as a Paris-based employer; distance changes nothing, and the company needs its SIRET registration number (the establishment identifier issued with the Kbis) and an URSSAF employer account before the first hire can be declared.<\/p>\n The sanction for skipping the DPAE is both administrative and criminal in its logic, and it is expensive. Article L1221-11 of the Code du travail<\/a> states that a missing prior hiring declaration found by the labour inspectors “entra\u00eene une p\u00e9nalit\u00e9 dont le montant est \u00e9gal \u00e0 trois cents fois le taux horaire du minimum garanti”. In other words, an inspector’s finding of a missing DPAE triggers a penalty equal to three hundred times the hourly minimum garanti<\/i> (the statutory reference wage used as a penalty base, close to but distinct from the SMIC, the national minimum wage). This penalty applies per undeclared employee and it is only the beginning, because the same omission feeds the offence of concealed employment (travail dissimul\u00e9<\/i>), which opens the door to a flat-rate court indemnity examined below.<\/p>\n Behind the DPAE stands a wider principle that protects every person working in France regardless of nationality or contract form. Article L311-2 of the Code de la s\u00e9curit\u00e9 sociale<\/a> (the Social Security Code) provides: “Sont affili\u00e9es obligatoirement aux assurances sociales du r\u00e9gime g\u00e9n\u00e9ral, quel que soit leur \u00e2ge et m\u00eame si elles sont titulaires d’une pension” all persons, of either sex and whatever their nationality, who work in any capacity and in any place for one or more employers. Your first employee is therefore covered by the French general social security scheme from day one, and the DPAE is the switch that activates that cover. A foreign founder sometimes assumes that an employee hired by a foreign-owned company, paid from a foreign bank account or working partly from home, falls outside the French system. The statute says the opposite: what counts is working for an employer in France, and the Cour de cassation enforces that reading strictly.<\/p>\n The Cour de cassation said so again very recently in a case every foreign employer should read. In Social Chamber, 7 January 2026, appeal no. 24-17.725<\/a>, a ship’s captain hired under a fixed-term contract by a French company received no payslips and was never declared to the competent social body. The court of appeal had rejected his claim for a concealed-employment indemnity, reasoning that the file did not prove the employer intended to evade its duties. The Cour de cassation quashed that reasoning and restated the two controlling texts. It recalled, word for word: “Selon le premier de ces textes, l’embauche d’un salari\u00e9 ne peut intervenir qu’apr\u00e8s d\u00e9claration nominative accomplie par l’employeur aupr\u00e8s des organismes de protection sociale d\u00e9sign\u00e9s \u00e0 cet effet.” It then quoted the second: “est r\u00e9put\u00e9 travail dissimul\u00e9 par dissimulation d’emploi salari\u00e9 le fait pour tout employeur de se soustraire intentionnellement \u00e0 l’accomplissement de la formalit\u00e9 pr\u00e9vue \u00e0 l’article L. 1221-10, relatif \u00e0 la d\u00e9claration pr\u00e9alable \u00e0 l’embauche.” The lesson is direct: omitting the DPAE is not a clerical oversight the judge will forgive because you live abroad and run payroll from another country. The appeal court, the supreme court held, had to investigate whether the employer had filed the hiring declaration and, if not, whether that failure, added to the missing payslips and the missing affiliation, proved the intentional element of concealed employment: “En se d\u00e9terminant ainsi, sans rechercher, comme il le lui \u00e9tait demand\u00e9, si l’employeur avait proc\u00e9d\u00e9 \u00e0 la d\u00e9claration d’embauche du salari\u00e9 et, dans la n\u00e9gative, si ce manquement \u00e0 ses obligations, ajout\u00e9 \u00e0 ceux dont elle avait constat\u00e9 l’existence, ne caract\u00e9risait pas l’\u00e9l\u00e9ment intentionnel de dissimulation d’emploi, la cour d’appel n’a pas donn\u00e9 de base l\u00e9gale \u00e0 sa d\u00e9cision.”<\/p>\n The price of concealed employment is fixed by statute and it is heavy. Article L8223-1 of the Code du travail<\/a> provides: “En cas de rupture de la relation de travail, le salari\u00e9 auquel un employeur a eu recours dans les conditions de l’article L. 8221-3 ou en commettant les faits pr\u00e9vus \u00e0 l’article L. 8221-5 a droit \u00e0 une indemnit\u00e9 forfaitaire \u00e9gale \u00e0 six mois de salaire.” Six months’ salary as a lump sum, payable when the relationship ends, on top of all other indemnities. For a first hire on a Paris salary, that single line can cost more than a year of payroll management fees. The practical conclusion for a founder abroad is simple: file the DPAE before the start date, keep the URSSAF acknowledgement, and treat the declaration receipt as the first exhibit of your future labour file. If you use an accountant (expert-comptable<\/i>) or a payroll manager (gestionnaire de paie<\/i>) in France, give them the employee’s identity documents early enough to file on time; if you file yourself through the URSSAF portal, test your access before the hiring week, because a blocked login on a Friday evening is how DPAEs get filed late. For the broader incorporation sequence into which this hiring fits, from bank account to Kbis and VAT number, our companion guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder<\/a> walks through the full chain in order.<\/p>\n An open-ended contract (contrat \u00e0 dur\u00e9e ind\u00e9termin\u00e9e<\/i>, CDI) may in theory be oral under French law, but hiring your first employee without a written contract from abroad is a gamble no founder should take. Writing fixes the job title, the workplace, the working time, the pay, the applicable collective agreement (convention collective<\/i>, the branch-level bargain that adds minimum pay scales, notice periods and bonuses on top of the statute) and, above all, the trial period (p\u00e9riode d’essai<\/i>), which does not exist unless it is written. A fixed-term contract (contrat \u00e0 dur\u00e9e d\u00e9termin\u00e9e<\/i>, CDD) is stricter still. Article L1242-12 of the Code du travail<\/a> provides: “Le contrat de travail \u00e0 dur\u00e9e d\u00e9termin\u00e9e est \u00e9tabli par \u00e9crit et comporte la d\u00e9finition pr\u00e9cise de son motif. A d\u00e9faut, il est r\u00e9put\u00e9 conclu pour une dur\u00e9e ind\u00e9termin\u00e9e.” A CDD without a written document stating its precise legal ground (replacement of an absent employee, temporary increase in activity, seasonal work and the other cases listed by statute) is automatically reclassified as an open-ended contract, with all the dismissal protection that follows. The CDD must also state the end date or minimum duration, the job description, the applicable collective agreement, any trial period, the pay components and the pension and provident institutions. And the clock runs fast: Article L1242-13 of the Code du travail<\/a> provides: “Le contrat de travail est transmis au salari\u00e9, au plus tard, dans les deux jours ouvrables suivant l’embauche.” The signed document must reach the employee no later than two working days after the hiring.<\/p>\n Late transmission is punished separately from reclassification, and the two indemnities cumulate. In Social Chamber, 25 March 2026, appeal no. 23-19.526<\/a>, an employee whose fixed-term contracts had been reclassified as open-ended also claimed the specific indemnity for late transmission of the contracts. The court of appeal had refused, reasoning that the reclassification indemnity already covered the harm. The Cour de cassation quashed: “Il en r\u00e9sulte que l’indemnit\u00e9 pour m\u00e9connaissance du d\u00e9lai de transmission du contrat \u00e0 dur\u00e9e d\u00e9termin\u00e9e fix\u00e9 par la loi et l’indemnit\u00e9 au titre de la requalification, qui n’ont pas pour objet de r\u00e9parer le m\u00eame pr\u00e9judice, peuvent, lorsque les conditions d’allocation de l’une et de l’autre sont r\u00e9unies, se cumuler.” The late-transmission indemnity (up to one month’s salary) and the reclassification indemnity (no less than one month’s salary) repair different harms and may be awarded together. A founder who emails the contract a week late thinking the reclassification risk is the only exposure is therefore wrong twice over. Send the contract for signature before the start date, use electronic signature with a reliable audit trail, and keep proof of the transmission date.<\/p>\n The trial period deserves its own warning because foreign founders constantly assume it. Under French law the trial period must be agreed in writing at the time of hiring; it is never implied by the job offer, the pay level or a foreign habit of three-month probation. Article L1221-23 of the Code du travail<\/a> provides: “La p\u00e9riode d’essai et la possibilit\u00e9 de la renouveler ne se pr\u00e9sument pas. Elles sont express\u00e9ment stipul\u00e9es dans la lettre d’engagement ou le contrat de travail.” The maximum initial durations are fixed by Article L1221-19 of the Code du travail<\/a>: two months for manual and clerical staff (ouvriers et employ\u00e9s<\/i>), three months for supervisors and technicians (agents de ma\u00eetrise et techniciens<\/i>), and four months for executives (cadres<\/i>). Renewal is possible only once, only if an extended branch agreement allows it, and within capped totals. Article L1221-21 of the Code du travail<\/a> provides: “La p\u00e9riode d’essai peut \u00eatre renouvel\u00e9e une fois si un accord de branche \u00e9tendu le pr\u00e9voit.” The overall duration including renewal cannot exceed four months for manual and clerical staff, six months for supervisors and technicians, and eight months for executives.<\/p>\n Renewal is where foreign employers most often fail, and the Cour de cassation has just tightened the standard again. In Social Chamber, 11 June 2025, appeal no. 23-21.128<\/a>, an executive’s four-month trial period was renewed for three months. The employer had emailed a renewal letter before the initial period expired; the employee signed it under a statement that he acknowledged receiving it and returned it with the words confirming he was returning the signed renewal letter the same day. The employer argued this was an agreement. The Cour de cassation disagreed and quashed the appeal ruling, restating the rule word for word: “Selon le premier de ces textes, la p\u00e9riode d’essai peut \u00eatre renouvel\u00e9e une fois si un accord de branche \u00e9tendu le pr\u00e9voit. Cet accord fixe les conditions et les dur\u00e9es de renouvellement.” In that case the applicable branch agreement required the renewal to be the subject of a written agreement between the employee and the employer before the initial period expired, and the court held that the employer’s evidence did not establish the employee’s clear and unequivocal written agreement to the renewal. A signature that merely acknowledges receipt, even accompanied by a polite covering email, is not consent. The termination during the supposedly renewed trial period was therefore judged as the dismissal of a confirmed employee, with notice, paid leave and damages at stake. For a founder managing from abroad, the method is clear: check the applicable collective agreement before drafting the clause, reproduce the exact renewal wording the branch text requires, have the employee sign a distinct renewal agreement stating expressly that they agree to the renewal, and complete that signature before the initial period ends. Calendar the trial expiry date in two time zones if needed, but never let it pass unsigned.<\/p>\n A final drafting point for the contract: state the applicable collective agreement by its exact title, because it determines minimum salary, trial durations, notice periods and the mandatory provident scheme. Identify the workplace precisely when the employee works from home or across sites, define working time and pay with each component (base salary, variable part, bonuses, benefits in kind), and write the contract in French, adding a translation in the employee’s language for clarity. Keep a complete signed copy in the company’s records in France, accessible to your accountant, so that a labour inspector or a judge never hears that the paperwork is held by the founder abroad.<\/p>\n Once the employee starts, the monthly cycle begins, and it is relentless. Every pay triggers a payslip (bulletin de paie<\/i>), and the payslip is not a courtesy summary but a statutory document. Article L3243-2 of the Code du travail<\/a> provides: “Lors du paiement du salaire, l’employeur remet aux personnes mentionn\u00e9es \u00e0 l’article L. 3243-1 une pi\u00e8ce justificative dite bulletin de paie.” The employer hands over the payslip when paying the wage, with the content set by regulation (gross pay, each contribution line, net pay, net social amount, income tax withheld at source, paid leave balances). Electronic delivery is allowed unless the employee objects, provided integrity, availability and confidentiality are guaranteed. In the 7 January 2026 concealed-employment case discussed above, the employer’s failure to deliver any payslip from hiring onwards was one of the facts that pushed the file toward quashing; payslips are the monthly proof that declared work matches paid work, and their absence corroborates every suspicion of off-the-books employment. Issue them every month without exception, keep them for the full statutory retention period, and reconcile them with bank transfers so that the amounts, dates and net figures always match.<\/p>\n Alongside the payslip runs the DSN (d\u00e9claration sociale nominative<\/i>, the monthly nominative social declaration), the single electronic report through which the employer declares each employee’s pay, working time events (illness, maternity, absence), and the contributions due to URSSAF, the pension funds and the tax administration. The DSN replaces a former stack of separate returns; in practice your payroll software or your accountant generates it from the payslips and transmits it each month, and the contributions are collected by direct debit. Errors in the DSN propagate everywhere: wrong affiliation, wrong contribution base, wrong daily allowances when the employee falls ill. For a founder abroad, the operational rule is to appoint one person in France responsible for payroll data (the accountant or an outsourced payroll provider), to send them variable pay elements and absences on a fixed monthly date, and to review the DSN acknowledgement rather than assuming silence means success. Late, missing or systematically wrong declarations draw URSSAF reassessments with surcharges and late penalties, and they become exhibits in any later dispute about undeclared hours or bonuses.<\/p>\n Health cover is compulsory from the first employee and it is mostly funded by the employer. Article L911-7 of the Code de la s\u00e9curit\u00e9 sociale<\/a> requires companies whose staff lack collective cover to provide minimum complementary health insurance by unilateral decision, and it adds: “L’employeur assure au minimum la moiti\u00e9 du financement de la couverture collective \u00e0 adh\u00e9sion obligatoire des salari\u00e9s en mati\u00e8re de remboursement compl\u00e9mentaire des frais occasionn\u00e9s par une maladie, une maternit\u00e9 ou un accident.” The employer funds at least half of the compulsory collective top-up health cover (mutuelle<\/i> or compl\u00e9mentaire sant\u00e9<\/i>), which reimburses the part of medical, maternity and accident costs that the basic state scheme leaves to the patient, including the daily hospital charge and defined dental and optical costs. Set up the mutuelle<\/i> contract before or with the first hire, inform the employee in writing, affiliate them on day one, and apply the branch agreement’s higher minimums where they exist, since many collective agreements impose richer cover or a larger employer share. A parallel provident scheme (pr\u00e9voyance<\/i>) covering incapacity, disability and death is compulsory for executives and often extended by branch agreements to all staff; check the applicable text rather than assuming the basic scheme suffices.<\/p>\n Contributions follow affiliation automatically: employer and employee shares are computed on the pay, withheld and paid through the DSN circuit, and the employee’s payslip must show them exactly. Keep every URSSAF acknowledgement, every DSN return receipt and every mutuelle<\/i> affiliation certificate in the employee file. When URSSAF audits a young company, and first audits often arrive within the first years, the inspector asks for the DPAE, the contracts, the payslips, the DSN records and the contribution proofs in that order; a complete file shortens the audit and a gap in any month extends it. Our guide on URSSAF audits of French companies owned from abroad<\/a> details how controls unfold and how reassessments are challenged. If cash is tight in the launch months, never solve it by delaying payslips or contributions: the surcharges, the criminal exposure for concealed employment and the six-month indemnity described above cost a multiple of the contributions saved.<\/p>\n French labour litigation is won on documents, and the documents are the employer’s duty to keep. Start with working time. Article L3121-27 of the Code du travail<\/a> provides: “La dur\u00e9e l\u00e9gale de travail effectif des salari\u00e9s \u00e0 temps complet est fix\u00e9e \u00e0 trente-cinq heures par semaine.” Thirty-five hours per week is the statutory reference for full-time work; hours beyond it are overtime (heures suppl\u00e9mentaires<\/i>), paid with statutory surcharges or compensated with time off under rules our companion analysis of overtime, pay rates and time records for a first French employee<\/a> examines in detail, including the time-tracking evidence judges expect. Even before overtime arises, set the schedule in the contract, record hours worked from the first week with a reliable system (timesheets validated by the employee, badge logs, project time entries), and have the employee approve the record each month. When the founder works in another time zone and messages the employee in the evening, those messages become working-time evidence; agree on response-time rules and respect the right to disconnect (droit \u00e0 la d\u00e9connexion<\/i>) so that ordinary messages do not turn into unpaid overtime claims.<\/p>\nB. What Written Contract and Trial Period Protect a Foreign Employer?<\/h3>\n
II. Paying, Reporting and Protecting the Employee After the Hiring<\/h2>\n
A. How Do You Pay, Issue Payslips and File the DSN, Health Cover and Contributions?<\/h3>\n
B. What Daily Obligations Decide a Labour Court Case: Working Time, Safety File and Proof?<\/h3>\n