News : Under French decree no. 2026-498 of 12 June 2026, for sick leave prescribed or extended from 1 September 2026, a first prescription may not exceed 31 days and each extension 62 days, unless the employee’s state of health justifies otherwise (Decree no. 2026-498 of 12 June 2026, Code du travail numerique). The text changes nothing about what produces distress at work: it frames the prescription, not the working conditions. What it does make more visible is the moment a company saw nothing coming, the moment an employee goes off sick.
I work as a fractional HR director in small and mid-sized companies, and the sentence I hear after a long absence is always the same: “nobody saw this coming”. That is rarely true. The signals were there, but nobody had named them. This article gives HR managers, site directors and line managers what to look at, what can be said, and who to hand over to.
Distress at work: the short answer
Distress at work refers to psychological harm, exhaustion or anxiety, that working conditions sustain or worsen. You spot it through lasting changes in a person: withdrawal, irritability, unusual mistakes, repeated short absences. A manager’s job is to describe those facts, listen and signpost, never to label a state of health.
Individual warning signs
None of these signs means anything on its own. What counts is the change against that person’s own habits and how long it lasts. Someone quiet who stays quiet is not a signal; someone talkative who goes silent for three weeks is.
When I work inside a company, it is almost never the spectacular signal that was missing: it is the one everybody saw without naming it. The markers below are the ones teams describe to me most often, once you give them time to say it.
- Withdrawal. No longer eating lunch with the team, camera off, no longer speaking up when they used to.
- Irritability. Curt answers, annoyance over details, friction with colleagues where there had never been any.
- A change of rhythm. Unusual lateness, abrupt departures, days that stretch out although the workload has not moved, emails at 11pm or on a Sunday.
- Unusual mistakes. Things forgotten, checks skipped, files late from someone who has been reliable for years: attention is the first function to give way.
- Presenteeism. The person is there permanently, no longer books leave, comes in ill. They get called “committed”: it is the latest and costliest signal of all.
- Repeated short absences. Two days here, three there, at ever shorter intervals.
Collective warning signs
Distress at work also reads in team indicators HR already holds: factual, free of any medical interpretation, and available before a single interview.
It is the first thing I look at when a director tells me that “overall, things are fine”: I ask for the same indicators department by department. The gap between two teams always teaches me more than the company average.
- Localised turnover. Not overall turnover, one department’s: three departures in six months out of twelve people is information, not chance.
- Rising tension. Conflicts escalating more often, a hardening tone in written exchanges, growing demands on employee representatives.
- Repeated short absences at department level, often clustered after the same deadlines.
- Meetings emptying out. People decline, delegate, arrive late: disengagement shows up in calendars before it shows up in results.
- Internal applications fleeing one team, and refusals to move into it.
In its Absenteeism study published on 9 June 2026, Malakoff Humanis reports that psychological disorders were, in 2025, the reason for 37.8% of sick leaves longer than 30 days, against 30.3% in 2020, and notes that half the employees concerned do not dare raise the subject at work. Waiting for the person to speak first means waiting, half the time, for nothing.
Observing is not interpreting
This is the line I have people draw first in my training sessions, because it protects everyone.
Observing a change is legitimate. A manager is entitled to note that deadlines are slipping, meetings are being missed, the tone has changed: article L. 4121-1 of the French Labour Code (in French) places the protection of workers’ physical and mental health among the employer’s obligations, and article L. 4121-2 (in French) sets out the general principles.
Interpreting a state of health is out of bounds. “I think you are depressed”, “you are burning out”: these are diagnoses made by someone who is not a clinician, about data that is not theirs.
The rule fits on one line: name observable facts and offer a referral, never label a state.
Where my role stops. I am an HR professional, a trainer and a coach, not a doctor and not a psychologist. What I describe helps you spot and signpost, not assess anyone’s health. For an individual situation, the referral routes are the occupational physician, the treating doctor or a psychologist. In case of immediate danger in France, call 15; in case of suicidal distress, 3114, the national suicide prevention line, free and open 24 hours a day.
The 48-hour grid
A signal left aside for two weeks is a signal lost. Here is the grid I leave with the managers I work with.
| Signal observed | What I do within 48 hours | What I do not do |
|---|---|---|
| Withdrawal, no longer taking part | I offer a one-to-one, with no agenda and no witness | I do not raise it with the team to “get their view” |
| Unusual irritability | I describe the precise, dated fact and ask how they are experiencing it | I do not correct anyone before I have listened |
| Mistakes from someone reliable | I look first at workload, priorities and the means the job is given | I open neither a disciplinary process nor a performance plan |
| Presenteeism, leave not taken | I set an explicit limit on workload and check the leave balance | I do not praise the commitment publicly |
| Repeated short absences | I alert HR and offer contact with the occupational health service | I never ask the medical reason for the absence |
| Worrying statements about themselves | I stay, I listen, I do not leave them alone, I activate a referral route immediately (occupational physician, 3114, 15 if urgent) | I do not play it down and I do not put it off to tomorrow |
The four-step conversation
Most managers do not stay silent out of indifference, but out of fear of saying the wrong thing. Here is the outline I have people rehearse in training: ten minutes, and it holds up even when you are uncomfortable.
- Open on an observable, dated fact. “For the past three weeks you have not spoken up in meetings. I noticed, and I wanted to talk to you about it.” One fact, one date, no conclusion.
- Listen, and stay quiet long enough. One open question, “how are you finding this period?”, then silence. The three seconds that follow are the most useful of the whole conversation.
- Do not interpret, reformulate. “If I understand you, the workload has not moved but you have lost your grip on priorities. Is that it?” Reformulate without adding a single health word, without “you are at the end of your rope”.
- Offer a referral and set a follow-up point. “I am not the right person on the health side and I do not want to leave you alone with it. You can request a visit with the occupational physician on your own initiative. On workload, here is what I am deciding this week. Let us take stock again on Friday.”
The fourth step makes all the difference: a conversation that ends without a referral and without a date leaves the person exactly where they were, with the feeling of having spoken for nothing.
The referral routes to activate
A manager does not have to carry a situation of distress alone, and does not have the competence for it. Their job is to spot, to speak, and to hand over.
When I run a career review, I often meet people who held on for months without saying a word to anyone in their company. It is not that they had nobody to talk to: it is that nobody had opened the door.
- HR. The first internal route: they see the collective indicators and can act on organisation, workload and mobility.
- The occupational physician and the occupational health service. They propose workplace adjustments and carry out individual health monitoring (article L. 4624-1 and following, in French). An employee can request a visit on their own initiative (in French), and the employer has no access to what is said.
- The harassment officer, on the employer side and on the staff committee side, as soon as there is any suspicion of repeated conduct degrading working conditions (article L. 1152-1, in French).
- The staff committee and its health and safety commission, which carry collective alerts and the update of the single risk assessment document (article R. 4121-1, in French).
- Outside the company: the treating doctor, a psychologist, including those registered with Mon soutien psy (in French), and the labour inspectorate.
Legal point: have it validated. Decree no. 2026-498 of 12 June 2026 quoted at the top, like anything touching sick leave, fitness for work or harassment, calls for a case-by-case reading. What I write here is a general HR marker, not legal advice: on a specific situation, have it validated by an employment lawyer or your occupational health service. I am not a lawyer.
Equipping managers before the crisis
Spotting assumes you have learned to spot, which was the theme of the French national quality of working life week run by Anact from 15 to 19 June 2026: “Managing is a job in itself”. In the companies I work with, two things do most of the work.
The first is mental health first aid training, over two days: a clear action plan for approaching someone in difficulty and signposting them. I repeat it at every session: a mental health first aider signposts, and does not treat. They replace neither the occupational physician nor a psychologist, and the limits of the role are as important as its content.
The second is a collective moment to open the subject before a crisis. That is what I run the workshop for talking about mental health at work for: a few hours, as a team, to put shared words on what each person observes. It is often there that managers discover they were all seeing the same signals.
Both belong to prevention, not to handling individual cases, and neither excuses you from assessing psychosocial risks in the single risk assessment document.
What this article does not cover
- No diagnosis. Nothing here allows anyone to say a person has a psychological disorder: the signals described are an invitation to talk and to signpost, they are not clinical criteria.
- An established situation, a long absence, fitness for work in question, a harassment procedure, belongs to the occupational physician, to HR and sometimes to legal counsel.
- Employer obligations on psychosocial risks and the single risk assessment document are only touched on here; on a real case, have them validated by an employment law specialist.
- Return after a long absence, a critical moment in its own right, is not covered here.
- Emergencies. Faced with expressed suicidal thoughts, you do not follow a conversation outline: you call 3114, or 15 if the danger is immediate.
FAQ
At what point should a signal really put me on alert?
When it is a lasting change against how that person usually functions. An isolated signal over two days says nothing; the same signal in place for two or three weeks, or several signals appearing together, justify a conversation. The useful criterion is not intensity, it is persistence.
As a manager, am I allowed to talk about an employee’s health?
You are allowed, and indeed expected, to talk about what you observe at work: deadlines, attendance, quality, relationships. You are not to label a state of health or ask the medical reason for an absence. The work facts are yours; the health data belongs to the employee.
The employee refuses to talk. What now?
Insisting will get you nothing, and refusing is their right. What remains possible: name what you observed, say the door stays open, remind them they can request a visit with the occupational physician on their own initiative, and act on what depends on you, which is workload, priorities and means.
Does the decree of 12 June 2026 on sick-leave duration change anything about prevention?
No. Decree no. 2026-498 frames how long sick leave can be prescribed and extended; it says nothing about the causes of distress at work and is in no sense a prevention tool. On how it applies in practice, rely on specialist employment law advice.
Going further
Spotting early is not a matter of sensitivity: it is a skill that is learned. If you are seeing signals in a team and do not know where to start, write to me. I will tell you honestly whether awareness raising, training or work on the organisation is the right first step.
Sources
- Decree no. 2026-498 of 12 June 2026, presented by the Code du travail numerique, page published 27 July 2026. code.travail.gouv.fr
- Malakoff Humanis, absenteeism press release, Paris, 9 June 2026. newsroom.malakoffhumanis.com
- Anact, quality of working life week 2026, “Manager, c’est tout un travail !”, 15-19 June 2026, reported by My Happy Job, 20 May 2026. myhappyjob.fr
- French Labour Code, Legifrance: L. 4121-1, L. 4121-2, R. 4121-1, L. 1152-1, L. 4624-1
- “Prevenir les risques psychosociaux (RPS). Ce qu’il faut retenir”, INRS, accessed 2 September 2026. inrs.fr
- Quality of working life week, Anact. anact.fr
- “Les visites medicales et examens medicaux dans le cadre du travail”, French Ministry of Labour. travail-emploi.gouv.fr
- “Remboursement de seances chez le psychologue : dispositif Mon soutien psy”, Assurance Maladie. ameli.fr
- 3114, French national suicide prevention line, free, 24 hours a day. 3114.fr
