how to navigate French workplace culture

One day I sat in a French corporation watching its esteemed chief executive record a video. When his staff videographer accidentally messed up a take, he bawled her out in front of a room full of employees. She went red and tried not to cry. He was displaying his authority.

Half the world dreams of moving to Paris for the supposed 35-hour work week (not a reality in the city’s upper reaches) and long lunches (often a reality), but what is it really like to work in a French company? Living in Paris since 2002, I have become fascinated with the differences between its work culture and that of its rival cities of London and New York. 

The codes of French workplaces often surprise foreigners. There are shocking weaknesses (such as generalised mistrust), and great strengths (quality of work, and work-life balance). There are also creeping changes, as France globalises. Based on interviews with foreign and French employees, here’s a guide to navigating the modern French workplace.

How to win over the boss

The most striking particularity of French offices is the almighty — and in most sectors, usually male — boss. French work hierarchies tend to be relatively “vertical”. A British woman who worked in a Parisian luxury-goods corporation says she observed “a kind of cult of leader worship”. 

Bosses are typically graduates of elite grandes écoles, and even 60-year-old chief executives might still reference their alma maters (yes, even more so than in the UK). Anders Fogelström, a Swedish former CEO in France explained to me: “The French boss is expected to know things. He is not supposed to be a co-ordinator of decentralising power. The boss should convince, but also seduce” — a matter of personal panache. 

Le sexe and sexisme

It should be added that attempts at literal seduction are declining, as #MeToo finally takes root in French workplaces. There have also been several recent rape trials of prominent Frenchmen, not to mention the most prominent rape trial in French history, that of Gisèle Pelicot’s husband and the dozens of men he invited to rape her, due to conclude before Christmas. Delphine Dhilly, who made the documentary Sexe sans consentement (“Sex without Consent”), says of everyday workplace sexism: “I don’t necessarily observe less arrogance from men, but I see less tolerance from women.”

Tactics and strategies  

Underlings, it seems, still rarely challenge the boss. Pierre Forthomme, an executive coach who works with senior French executives, says that those in charge “would value feedback and teamwork. They don’t want to be alone. But the system puts them in this place of power, so that we can bash the elite for our problems.”  

Corporate decisions are rarely made in formal meetings. A French boss might consult only a few trusted lieutenants, behind closed doors. (This is also President Emmanuel Macron’s preferred mode.) An American working in a Parisian bank adds: “Where it gets cut-throat is how you get to be one of those trusted lieutenants.” One strategy is to give your boss your ideas, let him take the glory and hope to rise with him. True, this might sound like universal boss behaviour, but it’s probably more pronounced in Paris.

Few executives are initiated into the boss’s thinking. The banker says: “Communication is intentionally uneven. You get privileged information based on who you know and how much you are trusted.” 

Strict hierarchies make for distrustful labour relations. The company’s “social and economic committees”, which consist of elected employees and trade union representatives, frequently confront the boss. However, the boss can win the connivance of these interlocutors by giving them discreet perks, such as the use of a company car, says Fogelström. 

How to be unsackable

Hanging over every workplace is the massive French Code du travail, the labour code. Many employees can enumerate their legal rights like trained attorneys. Those who have achieved the holy grail of obtaining a CDI, a contrat à durée indéterminée (“contract of indefinite duration”), the layperson’s equivalent of an academic getting tenure, become almost unsackable. This is now true of about 73 per cent of all French workers, if you include civil servants, who are very hard to sack too. That means companies have to find other ways to ditch unwanted staff. Sometimes they’ll give the person a pay-off. Another favourite method is placardisation: the employee is metaphorically put in a cupboard, a placard, and given pointless or no work. It’s an exercise in humiliation. The person might sit reading the newspaper for years until they agree to leave.  

Golden cages and glass ceilings

Unsackability shapes the peculiar flavour of French workplaces. Most employees on CDIs eventually run out of ambition, because top jobs tend still to be reserved for male alumni of grandes écoles. A French-Senegalese consultant in Paris also notes: “If you are Black or Arab, there is a glass ceiling.” He says that a Black employee speaking in a meeting is seldom taken fully seriously.

The excluded might be stuck for decades in jobs they dislike. Yet few dare exchange their CDI for the dreaded life of what the French call précarité — precarious, often temporary work or none at all. The American banker says many long-term French employees end up “in a golden cage”: “You’re cared for, you’re wellfed, but there is little upward mobility. The US mentality of ‘I’m going to work as hard as I can and rise up the company’ barely exists here.”  

Many company lifers have known each other for decades. But sociologists consider France a “low-trust” country, and that also applies to most French workplaces. Heads of department often behave like rivals fighting “turf wars”, says the French-Senegalese consultant. Again, this happens everywhere, but perhaps more so in France. 

The language of lunch

A strong company-wide “team mindset” is rare. However, trust can be built between individuals, typically at lunch — a key site where gossip and other information is exchanged. If a colleague invites you out for lunch, always say yes, no matter how busy you are, recommends a French lawyer. You might buy a sandwich from the boulangerie or, better, you might go to a local restaurant for the prix-fixe menu, which given the efficiency of Parisian kitchens, means you can be in and out in 45 minutes. Smokers can also acquire useful gossip during the chilly huddle in front of the building.

To build trust in these moments, and to catch the company’s undercurrents, speaking French remains essential, even if English is now spreading through some French corporations. Fogelström explains: “No one trusts anyone, and if you are a foreigner you’re by definition naive, as you don’t understand the unwritten rules.” 

Subsidised champagne and other matters

Other than lunch, French workers spend relatively little social time together. After-work drinks or Christmas parties are rare, though there will be leaving toasts for people heading off into the 25-year French retirement. Employees aren’t expected to bring their whole selves to work or stick up pictures of their children. Taking your child to the doctor is accepted, but be discreet about it — your colleagues don’t need to know your family ins and outs.  French workers are allowed to keep their personal life separate, and to give it priority. French full-time workers devote an average of 16.2 hours a day “to personal care (eating, sleeping, etc.) and leisure”, the second-highest among 41 developed countries after Italy, reports the OECD. People in the middle ranks of Parisian offices might stick to the official 35-hour week or take extra holiday time if they work late, though some people at the top will routinely put in much longer days. Most offices practically close in August, allowing employees to disappear without missing anything. 

The American banker points out the upsides of French workplaces: “It’s easy to have work-life balance, to have kids. Our union gives us subsidised vacations and subsidised champagne.” She believes she lives better than peers in the US earning four times more, who fear being fired the moment there’s a downturn.  

Vocation vocation vocation

The Briton who worked in French luxury notes another strength of French workplaces: “The teams I worked with had incredible attention to detail, and huge pride in delivering outstanding work.” Some employees have specialised in their field since their student years, as degrees here are typically vocational. 

Anna Sophia Beetschen, a Swiss doctor who worked in a Parisian hospital, saw her colleagues’ pride in being members of the medical guild. That’s why they almost invariably wore hospital blouses even when there was no hygienic benefit. They found status in their educational CV and their job status more than in their pay.

That pride extends across the French spectrum. Here, “baguette-maker and ski instructor are vocations, not for dilettantes,” writes Kevin Bryan, economist at the University of Toronto, on X. He says French culture is “not of hard work but of care in work”.  That may help explain why French productivity per hour is about 17 per cent higher than in the UK.

Les coworkings

To glimpse the future of Parisian workplace culture, look at les coworkings, which have sprouted across town and attract younger digital nomads. Julien Karyo, a French tech entrepreneur, who has spent years in coworkings, notes how the meet-and-greet apéritifs have changed. English has become more common, and wine and flirtation less so. These changes may later sweep the older corporate sector. Everything eventually globalises, even French work culture.

Share your experiences of French office life in the comments below. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter

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