Employment law

Collective agreements: what foreign employers must check before the first payroll

· 5 min · Jeanne Paul

Your organisation runs the same HR handbook in London, New York and Singapore. Then it hires in France, and a text it never signed walks into the employment relationship: the convention collective, the French sectoral collective agreement. For foreign employers this is often the most disorienting feature of French employment law, and one with direct consequences for every contract and every payslip.

A branch agreement that applies without your signature

A convention collective is an agreement negotiated at the level of an industry branch, supplementing the labour code for a given sector: job classifications, pay, working conditions. The decisive point for a foreign employer is that you do not choose it. As service-public.fr explains, the applicable agreement is the one covering the main activity carried out by the employer; the APE or NAF code assigned by the national statistics office is an indicator, not a ruling.

The applicable collective agreement is determined by the employer's main activity as actually performed, not by internal policy, and not by the APE code alone.

The employer must then make the agreement visible. Its title appears on the payslip, as required by article R3243-1 of the labour code; employees receive written notice of the applicable texts within one month of hiring; and an up-to-date copy must remain available to them.

What it actually changes

The collective agreement reshapes very concrete parameters of the contract and the payslip:

  • Pay minima. The branch can set minimum salaries above the legal floor. That floor is the SMIC: since 1 January 2026, gross hourly SMIC stands at 12.02 euros, or 1,823.03 euros per month for a full-time 35 hour week.
  • Trial periods. For a permanent contract, the law caps the trial period at 2 months for blue-collar and clerical roles, 3 months for supervisors and technicians, and 4 months for executives; it can be renewed once only if an extended branch agreement allows it, the contract provides for it, and the employee agrees in writing during the initial period, per service-public.fr. Without checking the branch, you cannot know whether your renewal clause holds.
  • Fixed-term contract endings. The end-of-contract indemnity is in principle 10 percent of total gross pay, but a branch agreement can set it at 6 percent in exchange for counterparts. A payroll parameter dictated directly by the branch.
  • Leave and notice. The law guarantees 2.5 working days of paid leave per month of effective work, capped at 30 working days per year; the agreement can grant more favourable rights, and it can also frame the notice periods that apply in the branch.

Why "we follow our HQ policy" fails

Many foreign employers apply their global handbook in France, with a contract governed by home law. Article 8 of the Rome I Regulation neutralises that approach: choosing a foreign law cannot deprive the employee of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of the country where they habitually work. For a role performed in France, French mandatory protections therefore apply, whatever the contract says. And the collective agreement is not a voluntary programme you can decline: it applies according to the main activity your organisation performs.

The payslip makes any gap immediately visible. The agreement's title is one of the mandatory mentions, organised into 7 zones since 1 July 2023, and a non-compliant payslip carries a fine of up to 450 euros per payslip. In other words, the very first payroll run already states, in writing, which branch you claim to follow.

How to identify yours, and where to start

The exercise takes three steps:

  1. describe the main activity your organisation actually performs in France, which may differ from the corporate purpose registered at headquarters;
  2. start from the APE code, then test it against the real activity, since it is only an indicator;
  3. once the agreement is identified, update the payslips, give employees written notice within one month of hiring, and keep an up-to-date copy available to them.

The best moment for this exercise is before the first hire, or now if French contracts already exist without an identified agreement. OMAC Consulting performs this analysis for foreign employers and brings their contracts, payslips and payroll settings into line with the applicable branch, with delivery in English.

This is general information, not legal advice.