February 5, 2024 
France is not only the country of baguette, good cheese, and excellent wine. It is much more complex and offers its challenges when in day-to-day living. Below are some tips to ensure that your employees settle well when relocating to France:
Improve your employee experience.
A change in professional life leading to a change in personal life is a stressful situation that always affects employees when they take on a new position. It can even negatively impact their performance.
The implementation of the relocation assistance service can improve the employee experience and support them with mastering difficult obstacles and getting familiar with the new culture.
Make them aware of the business etiquette!
As a general rule, employees are expected to arrive at work between 9 AM and 10 AM and leave between 6 PM and 7 PM.
Arriving on time can often be difficult because of the public-transport system, especially in big cities like Paris.
Many employers offer meal vouchers, at a cost of which is shared between an employee and the employer. A lunch break can last up to a 2-hour lunch break. Eating at the desk is not accepted, same for contacting fellow employees for work over the weekend.
It will be important to make employees aware of the French business culture before joining.
Your employees need to speak French!
It is possible to move to Paris without learning French. However, most locals will expect everyone to at least try and speak French before switching to English. It is advised for your employees to take classes to have at least a basic understanding of French to interact daily and make connections with the local community.
The French bureaucracy is complex.
France has a complex and bureaucratic system, which comes with many challenges for new residents and even for French people.
Depending on your employee’s citizenship, it must be assessed which type of visa or residency permit is required. There are different options to choose from when handling a Visa application, the Passeport Talent (skilled worker visa) being oftenly the most applicable for relocations and the duration of the process can be lengthy (!) EU citizens can work in France without any Visa requirements.
In most cases employees meet the eligibility criteria to benefit from the public health care system: for this they need a social security number, which is their personal identification number. Obtaining this number can be a tricky process, not only because all the application forms are in French but also because it can take up to 6 months to receive the number. For this reason, it is always preferred to have the support from the employer to speed up the process as it can be managed digitally.
French Payroll? It can be overwhelming!
Starting with the French payslip, which is very detailed and sometimes reaches over 2 pages, payroll processing requires skilled expertise and longer processing time than in some other countries. Payroll is processed in French language, which can cause hurdles and demands training from international Finance and HR teams when dealing with payroll and company data.
Employee leaves must be tracked in payroll and every single absence must be justified.
The company has an obligation to provide 3 mandatory official offboarding documents, when an employee decides to leave the company, allowing them for example to apply for unemployment benefits.
Employment law is not always applicable!
The “ordinary” employment law in most cases is overruled by the collective agreement (convention collective). Every industry has a different collective agreement assigned to them, which is determined during the business setup procedure.
When it comes to drafting a HR contract or policies it is always important to consider the clauses mentioned in the collective agreement. The employer has the right to make changes only in case of improvements to the benefit of the employee.
Cost of living varies by region.
France has a high cost of living, especially in a big city like Paris or along the French Riviera.
The difference is significant for housing costs, which is highest in both of those areas. There is a decrease in pricing when it comes to renting or buying in suburbs, off-coast towns or smaller towns.
Relying on public transportation with buses, trains, and trams in areas such as Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, Nice, Aix-en-Provence, and a host of other cities with good transportation systems is a great way to save money.
This should be considered when offering a relocation package to an employee.
