Mandatory Clauses and Probation Period According to the CCN
In direct employment, the household employer alone bears the obligations of an employer: HR, payroll manager, and signatory of the employment contract, often without any training. However, the employment contract of a private employer does not follow standard labor law. It is governed by a specific collective bargaining agreement, the CCN for the private employer and home employment sector (IDCC 3239), which takes precedence over the labor code on many points.
Here’s what you need to know before drafting a contract or setting a probation period.
The employment contract must be written, with precise mandatory clauses
The CCN establishes the principle: the employment contract must be concluded in writing, and any subsequent modification must be formalized through a written amendment. A simple verbal agreement or SMS exchange is not sufficient to validly modify a contract.
The common framework of the convention (article 41-1) lists the clauses that must mandatorily appear in the contract:
- Identification of the parties
- Employer identification number (if not available, to be provided as soon as known)
- Employee’s social security number
- Hiring date
- Vehicle insurance, when the employee is required to drive as part of their job
- Occupied position, according to the classification grid in Annex 7
- Duration of the probation period
- Working hours
- Workplace
- Remuneration (hourly wage and monthly payment date)
- Allowances and benefits
- Paid public holidays worked
- Weekly rest period
- Paid leave
The specific framework for "private employer employees" adds further elements (work organization, absences of the private employer if applicable), and the "childminder" framework includes its own additional clauses (child’s name and birth date, approval, etc.). A contract omitting one of these clauses is not null and void, but it exposes both parties to interpretation disputes, particularly in the event of termination.
Note: an oral employment contract remains legally possible for an employee declared under the CESU, but it is then treated as a written contract with all the obligations that entails. In practice, this is a risky option: without a written document, it becomes very difficult to prove what was agreed upon regarding the probation period, working hours, or remuneration in case of disagreement.
Any subsequent modification of the contract (working hours, workplace, tasks, remuneration linked to a change in working conditions) must also be formalized through a written amendment. This formalism, its exceptions, and practical cases are covered in a dedicated article.
The probation period: neither automatic nor identical for all professions
First rule, often overlooked: the probation period is never presumed. If it is not expressly written in the contract, it does not exist, even if the household assumed it was implied.
Its duration depends on the profession concerned:
- Private employer employee (housekeeping, childcare at home, personal care, etc.): in a permanent contract, the initial probation period is one month, renewable once for the same duration, i.e., a maximum of two months. Renewal requires that the employee be informed in writing in advance and give their consent.
- Childminder: the duration varies depending on the weekly working schedule (up to 3 months if the child is cared for 1 to 3 days per week, 2 months beyond that), with a specific case of 30 calendar days when a contract is already in place for another child in the same family.
- Fixed-term contract: standard labor code rules apply, not those of the common framework.
During the probation period, either party may terminate the contract at any time, in writing, without compensation or specific procedure (except for childminders, which have their own rules). A frequently forgotten point: any suspension of the contract during this period (sick leave, holidays) extends its duration, as it must correspond to actual work performed.
The rule on public holidays, a technical point often misunderstood
The contract must specify the status of public holidays, but the rule differs for May 1st and other public holidays.
May 1st has a special status: if it falls on a day that is normally worked, it is automatically a paid day off, with no conditions. The parties may exceptionally agree that it will be worked, in which case the employee receives a 100% pay increase.
Other public holidays ("ordinary", i.e., the legal list: January 1st, Easter Monday, May 8th, Ascension Day, Whit Monday, July 14th, August 15th, November 1st, November 11th, December 25th, with variations in Alsace-Moselle and the DROM) follow a different logic:
- Whether they are worked or not must be indicated in the written contract. If not, the employee can only be required to work on a public holiday through a specific written agreement between the two parties.
- If worked, the hours are paid with a 10% increase.
- If taken as a day off and falling on a day that is normally worked, maintaining salary is not automatic: it requires that the employee has worked the last working day before the public holiday and the first working day after, unless prior authorized absence. An employee on leave or holiday just before or after a public holiday may, depending on the case, not receive pay for that day.
This is a nuanced mechanism, rarely anticipated when drafting the contract, and a frequent source of payroll errors throughout the year.
The most common mistakes
On Facebook groups dedicated to the CESU, responses often apply general labor law to the private employer relationship: the standard 35-hour workweek, probation period rules from the labor code, formalism of a classic payslip. All of these responses are incorrect since the CCN IDCC 3239 sets its own rules, which can be very different (conventional weekly duration of 40 hours, for example, or a probation period capped at one month renewable once for a private employer employee). A poorly understood collective bargaining agreement, even by well-meaning households, is a frequent source of poorly drafted contracts or contested terminations.
What Kiwisio brings in practice
Kiwisio was designed to avoid these approximations by directly using the models and text of the CCN IDCC 3239 rather than generic templates:
- A permanent or fixed-term contract compliant with the CCN model, automatically generated with all mandatory clauses from the common and specific frameworks, without risk of omission.
- Digital signature of the contract directly in the app, with the household and the worker signing from their respective Kiwisio spaces, eliminating the need for printing or organizing paper exchanges.
- A probation period calculated according to the correct reference: the proposed duration depends on the type of contract and, eventually, the profession, to avoid mistakenly applying a duration from general labor law.
- Planned absences of the household integrated from the drafting of the contract: without this written mention, any absence of the private employer remains due to the employee as normal working time. Including it from the start avoids misunderstandings about hours related to vacations or foreseeable unavailability of the household.
- The assistant is integrated into Kiwisio to ask precise questions about a clause or specific situation during drafting, with answers grounded in the CCN rather than general labor law.
The goal is not to replace legal advice when the situation requires it, but to provide households and workers with a compliant contract from the outset, which significantly reduces potential sources of disputes later on.