You wake up on Tuesday morning with a sore throat. In Mumbai you would have downed two Crocins, sent your manager a Slack saying you were "WFH today, feeling a bit off", and worked through it. In Paris you message your manager and say "je vais voir un médecin ce matin, je te tiens au courant". Two hours later a doctor has signed an arrêt de travail for three days, your manager has replied "prends soin de toi, on gère", and your laptop stays closed until Friday.
The first time this happens you feel guilty, like you got away with something. You did not. You used a system designed to keep teams healthy and to keep workers from coming in to spread their bugs.
Here is how the system actually works.
What an arrêt maladie is
An arrêt de travail is a document signed by a doctor, stating you are unfit to work for a stated number of days. The doctor decides the length. You can get one from a généraliste in person, from a téléconsultation (Doctolib, Livi, Qare and others), or from a hospital after an emergency visit.
You need three things in the first 48 hours.
Send the avis d'arrêt de travail to your employer's HR. Most companies will accept it by email or via their HRIS. The doctor usually emails it to you as a PDF.
Send the same document to your local CPAM within 48 hours. Many employers handle this automatically through subrogation, but check.
Reply to your manager once with the dates. "Je suis en arrêt jusqu'au vendredi inclus." That is the entire message. You do not owe an explanation of the illness.
What happens to your pay
The headline is that most French employees on a CDI with a few months of seniority keep close to their full salary while on arrêt maladie. The exact numbers matter, so here they are.
The Sécurité Sociale pays indemnités journalières equal to 50 percent of your base daily salary, capped at 42.97 euros gross per day for 2026 (service-public.gouv.fr fiche F3053). The first 3 days are the délai de carence on the SS side, so SS payments start on day 4.
The employer adds an indemnité complémentaire on top under the 1978 mensualisation law. The default rules: starting from day 8 of your arrêt, the combined employer plus SS payment brings you to 90 percent of your gross salary for the first 30 to 90 days, depending on your seniority. From there it tapers. Your convention collective often improves on these floors, sometimes covering you at 100 percent from day 1 with no carence.
In practice, on a CDI with subrogation (most companies), you log off on Tuesday with a fever and your November payslip looks close to October's. On a CDD, short tenure or weaker convention collective, the dent can be more visible. Check your contract before you panic, and check your payslip after.
You will not lose your job. You will not be penalised at your annual review. You will not be expected to make up the time. The system was built on the premise that an unwell worker is bad for the team.
What you should not do
Do not work from home with a fever. You are on arrêt, which legally means you are unfit to work. Logging in to "just check Slack" is technically a breach of the arrêt and can be used against you if it comes up.
Do not apologise repeatedly to your team. One message is enough. They will adapt. The work will be redistributed or it will wait.
Do not push through to look committed. Indian managers often read powering through as dedication. French managers often read it as bad judgement, both for your own health and for the office that now has to share your virus. Présentéisme has a bad reputation here.
Do not negotiate the length with your doctor. They give you what you need based on the diagnosis. Asking for fewer days is seen as strange, not noble.
When you do come back
A short email to your manager the day before you return is enough. "Je suis remis, je serai de retour demain comme prévu."
If you have been out for more than thirty days, there is a visite de reprise with the médecin du travail before you start again. Your HR will book it for you. It is a quick formality.
Pick up your work from where it left off. Your team has covered for you. They will not bring up the absence. You do not need to bring it up either.
Honest take
The Indian instinct is to feel guilty about an arrêt maladie. Drop that instinct. You are using a feature of French employment law that exists precisely so that you are not on the métro coughing on strangers at 8 in the morning.
Take the day. Stay home. Drink your kashayam if you want to. The team will handle it, and your French colleagues will quietly respect that you used the system as it was built.