Every year, employees are entitled to 5 weeks of paid leave (CP = congés payés), including 4 weeks that must be taken during the legal vacation period. However, when employees have not taken all of their leave during this period, they can request to benefit from the staggered leave system.
Staggered leave allows employees to be encouraged to take their paid leave outside of the legal vacation period and, in turn, ensures a better rotation of employees.
What is a staggered leave day (jour de fractionnement)?
According to the French Labor Law, staggered leave days are additional leave days granted to employees when they decide to stagger their leave.
In principle, an employee’s main leave, which corresponds to 4 weeks of leave, must be taken between May 1st and October 31st each year. As a result, the employee has 24 working days to take at their discretion during this period.
However, when the main leave is not entirely taken during this period, all employees, regardless of their seniority or type of employment contract, have the option to benefit from staggered leave days, which means obtaining additional leave days.
How to obtain staggered leave days?
Both the employer and the employee can initiate the request for staggered leave. However, when the employer initiates the request, they must obtain the employee’s agreement.
To benefit from staggered paid leave, the employee must:
- Take at least 12 days of leave between May 1st and October 31st.
- Have accrued at least 15 days of paid leave.
- Have an unused balance of at least 3 days of leave.
How to calculate staggered leave days?
The number of additional days is determined based on the remaining days to be taken. Therefore, when an employee has not used all of their main leave during the annual vacation period, they are entitled to:
- 0 additional leave days if the number of unused leave days is less than 3 days.
- 1 additional leave day if the number of unused leave days is between 3 and 5 days.
- 2 additional leave days if the number of unused leave days exceeds 6 days.
Example: An employee with 24 working days of paid leave decides to take 18 days during the legal vacation period, which is between May 1st and October 31st. After this period, the employee has 6 days of paid leave remaining to be taken between November 1st and April 30th of the following year. As a result, this employee can obtain 2 additional leave days.
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