ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WORKING IN FRANCE
- Sep 25, 2017
- 3 min read
You are thinking about coming to France to work? This article may help you to take your decision. Discover here the working conditions and working life in France.
First of all, about the working conditions in France.
Worldwide France is known as the country with the most holidays… and that’s true we have many holidays during the year, minimum 5 weeks! That’s a lot right? But did you know that the French are among the most productive workers in the world? We are ranked 11 by the English company ExpertMarket. It surely explains why France’s economy is not going that bad even though we are 'lazy'.
Holidays are not the only advantage we got. We have working week of 35 hours (after which workers are supposed to be paid with an overtime rate) and 1-2 hours for lunch. The usual working hours are from 9am to 12pm – from 1pm to 5pm. However, be aware that the 35hours per week is really a cliché, the reality remains far away from this beautiful portrait. Public sector usually follows the 35 hours but not the private sector. From my work experiences, I can assure you that a lot of French people do overtime, among which many are not paid for those extras. The average is more 45 hours per week and lunch time is often shortened.
Furthermore, the socialist government of the president Hollande introduced a new right starting January 1st 2017. It is called “le droit à la déconnexion” (the right to disconnect) and gives the employees the right to stop working during lunch time and especially to not answer to emails.
The minimum wage in France is called SMIC (Salaire Minimum Interprofessionnel de Croissance) and in 2016 it was set at € 9.67 per hour (=1,466.62 monthly for full-time employment).
Despite living in France, the country of Human rights, the wages of women remain lower than men for the same job. It is even more true for jobs with high responsibilities such as managers (I will develop more about inequalities between men and women in France in another article, stay tune!).
Now that you know a little more about the global working conditions, let’s go one step further by talking about the everyday working life.
1 First of all, there is a strong hierarchy in French companies. Usually managers give clear guidance and the employees follow them, there is not much place for creativity. At the end, all the decisions will be taken by the managers. Things tend to change by giving the employees more decision power. However, the processus is very slow and it occurs more within start-ups than big companies.
2 There are no fixed hours nor duration for coffee breaks. In general, people take one in the morning and one in the afternoon for about 10 minutes. Of course you will not give a good image if you take too often and too long breaks.
3 In almost every companies, “afterwork” parties are organized at least one time per week, most of the time on Thursday or Friday. Everyone is free to come or not, it’s not mandatory to participate.
4 Team building and seminar are organized at least once a year. The number will depend on the size of the company. It is a moment supposedly used to reinforce the links between colleagues and an opportunity for the managers to hear feedbacks, recommendations and ideas of improvement from employees.
5 In most companies there is an employee representative committee. One of its responsibilities is to offer promotions to the employees on various activities (cinema tickets, products, trips…). It depends on the size, budget and policy of the company.
6 You will have to work with many interns if you work in a French company. Internships is very common in France (if you want more details about internships in France, do not hesitate to tell me in the comments). Interns are in majority young students from 18 to 25 years who are working 2 to 12 months in a firm to gain experience.
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