Background information

Articles L.1222-12 to L.1222-16 of the labour code, introduced by Law n°2013-504, allow workers to benefit, upon agreement of their employer, from a period of 'secured voluntary mobility' during which the performance of the employment contract is suspended.

This measure is supposed to help workers to enrich their career path by getting experience working in another company, without having to terminate their employment contract. During this period, as the employment contract is suspended in the company of origin, workers are paid by the receiving company.

Content of measure

During the secure voluntary mobility, the performance of the employment contract is suspended and this should enable employees to enrich their career path by discovering another company, without having to break their employment contract. The possibility of benefiting from a period of secure voluntary mobility is open to employees who meet the following two conditions:

• they are part of a company or group of companies with at least 300 employees

• they have at least 24 months' seniority, consecutive or otherwise, in the company.

This period of mobility must be established in an amendment to the employment contract, which will provide for:

• the objective, the duration, the starting and the ending day of this period (there is no minimum or maximum limit stated in the law);

• the arrangements in case of an early return to the company of origin, which is always possible.

At the end of this period, there are two possibilities: 

• workers come back to their company of origin and get back their job or a similar one;
• workers decide to stay in the company where they performed their period of mobility, and then they have to resign from their prior job.

The employer can refuse to grant such a period of mobility and does not have to justify it. If they refuse twice, the worker has direct access to individual training leave.

Use of measure

As this measure is not the object of a statistical monitoring (no administrative declaration to be produced in case the employment contract is amended in this respect), it is impossible to precisely take stock of the effectiveness of this instrument. Empirically, in light of expert experiences and exchanges with actors at company level (unions and companies), it does not seem to be widely used. However, one might notice that some large companies have included this tool in their company GPEC collective agreements.This indicates that the use of this tool is probably easier in companies with well developed HR departments. Anyway, this does not mean that such collective agreements do more than including the related legal provisions in force.

Last but not least, but again without extensive quantitative data, the communication by the employer to employee representatives of the list of requests made and answers given to employees twice a year, does not seem to be systematically carried out.

Target groups

Workers	Businesses	Citizens
Employees in standard employment	Larger corporations	Does not apply to citizens

Actors and funding

Actors	Funding
National government	Employer

Social partners

Social partners' role in designing the measure and form of involvement:

	Trade unions	Employers' organisations
Role	Unknown	Unknown
Form	Not applicable	Not applicable

Social partners' role in the implementation, monitoring and assessment phase:

• Unknown
• Main level of involvement: Unknown

Involvement

Unknown

Views and reactions

Unknown

Sources

• 26 July 2019: Décret n° 2019-797 du 26 juillet 2019 relatif au régime d'assurance chômage (www.legifrance.gouv.fr)
• 19 October 2021: UNEDIC, circulaire n° 2021-13 du 19 octobre 2021, Réglementation d'assurance chômage applicable au 1er octobre 2021 (www.unedic.org)
• 11 January 2022: La mobilité volontaire sécurisée (travail-emploi.gouv.fr)