News : In the second quarter of 2026, salaried employment in France was almost flat, down 0.1 % or 23,500 jobs, and down 0.3 % over a year, or 72,500 jobs, while self-employment kept rising: up 0.9 % over the quarter, 33,500 more people, and up 3.4 % over a year, 119,500 more (INSEE, Informations rapides no. 214, 28 August 2026). Two curves crossing: skills are not leaving the labour market, they are changing contract. That is the movement that leads a company director to hand me an HR assignment rather than open a post they are not sure they can sustain.

An independent HR consultant is a human resources professional who works on a service basis, with no relationship of subordination, for a company that has no structured HR function. They take on defined assignments, recruitment, personnel administration, appraisals, skills, at an agreed rhythm. The choice turns on their real experience, their availability and what they refuse to do.

You have no HR department: the accountancy firm produces the payslips, you sign contracts between two meetings, and a manager discovers that a career conversation is not an annual appraisal. Nothing is catastrophic, and nothing is solid either. The day a long absence or a team conflict arrives, everyone improvises, and improvisation in HR is paid for later.

What an independent HR consultant concretely does

I am an independent HR consultant and I work on a fractional HR basis. I do not come to produce a report, I come to hold a function: a regular rhythm, subjects with a beginning and an end, and tools your teams can use without me.

When I arrive in a company, I almost always start with the same move: opening the contracts and checking which collective agreement actually applies. It is a frequent blind spot. In France the applicable agreement is the one covering the employer’s main activity (in French), under article L. 2261-2 of the Labour Code, not the one copied from a template nor the one deduced from the business classification code. As long as that base is wrong, everything built on top of it is wrong too: probation periods, premiums, minimum pay.

That is where the difference with classic consulting sits: a consultant who spends two days and hands over a note will never see the manager who does not dare run their appraisal, nor the employee coming back from sick leave with nobody having prepared their return. Someone who comes back every week does.

The assignments I am given most often

• Supporting the implementation of the company strategy and its local adaptation where it needs one: a policy that comes from head office or from another market only becomes viable here once it holds up legally and culturally.
• Structuring personnel administration: contracts, amendments, files, absences, the interface with payroll.
• Running a recruitment end to end, from the real need through to onboarding.
• Putting appraisals in place, both career conversations and annual reviews, and training managers to run them, which is often where I discover the real state of the working climate.
• Building a skills development plan that matches the activity, not a training provider’s catalogue.
• Supporting a change of organisation: rapid growth, a new director, the departure of a key person.
• Preventing psychosocial risks, equipping managers, and acting as a third party when an individual situation tightens.

On recruitment, the order matters more than people think. I always run it like this:

1. Clarify the real need: the job as it will actually be done, not the description copied from elsewhere.
2. Write the advertisement from that need.
3. Screen applications against criteria set before reading them.
4. Run the interviews, with the manager who will work with the person.
5. Formalise the offer of employment.
6. Prepare onboarding before day one, not on the morning itself.

What an independent HR consultant does not do

• They do not decide in your place. Termination, pay rise, promotion: the decision remains the employer’s.
• They do not replace a lawyer. I am an HR professional, not a lawyer: on litigation, a delicate termination or the interpretation of a clause, I prepare the ground and refer you to an employment lawyer.
• They do not replace the occupational physician: on a health situation, they signpost.
• They do not stand in for your managers: holding the difficult conversations in their place manufactures dependence instead of competence.
• They are not your employee: no relationship of subordination, a service framed by contract.

That boundary is the first mark of seriousness: a consultant who accepts everything, including what amounts to legal advice, exposes you. If your subject is primarily regulatory, start with my article on French labour law for foreign employers, then have your case validated by a lawyer.

Independent consultant, HR consultancy or salaried HR director: three postures

The independent consultant works alone and signs in their own name: you know who is coming, and it is the same person from one week to the next. A consultancy mobilises a team and more production capacity, with a contact who may change. A salaried HR director brings permanent presence, with the fixed cost that goes with it.

No option is better in the absolute. I have set out the comparison in fractional HR, an HR consultancy or an in-house hire; if your need is strategic rather than operational, the format that concerns you is that of the fractional HR director.

How to choose an independent HR consultant: the criteria that count

Most profiles will know how to talk about method. Few will tell you what they actually held, and what failed. Five points to press on.

1. Operational experience, not a list of methods

Ask what the person has done, not what they know how to do: how many recruitments run through to the end of the probation period, how many career conversations conducted. Picking up files, the mistake I find most often is a probation period renewed when nothing allowed it: renewal is possible only where an extended sector-level agreement provides for it (in French), under article L. 1221-21 of the Labour Code. Someone who has held the function knows that detail. Someone who has read the method does not.

2. Real availability, not announced availability

The useful question is not “are you available?” but “how many clients are you supporting in parallel, and which day will you be with me?”. A predictable rhythm beats a large theoretical availability. Below an established weekly presence, the work is patching, not an HR function.

3. What they refuse to do

Ask the question directly: what do you not take on? An established professional answers without hesitating and names their referrals, employment lawyer, chartered accountant, occupational health service, training provider. It is the best indicator of maturity I know, and it costs one question.

4. Confidentiality and the third-party posture

An HR consultant sees pay, health situations, personal tensions. Check what the contract says about confidentiality, but above all listen to how the person talks about their other clients in front of you: if they recount their difficulties in detail, they will recount yours elsewhere.

5. What remains when the assignment ends

A good assignment leaves usable traces: interview frameworks, a recruitment procedure, files up to date, managers trained. Ask what will remain. If the answer is “my presence”, your company returns to its starting point the day it stops.

Warning signs before signing

• A guaranteed result on a recruitment or on the working climate.
• A firm legal opinion in the first conversation, without having looked at the applicable collective agreement.
• No question about your activity, your headcount, your employee relations history.
• A scope that widens with every sentence, all the way to financial strategy.
• A refusal to put the rhythm, the deliverables and the exit conditions in writing.

Framing the assignment from the first conversation

Support that lasts is framed upfront, not three months in when expectations diverge. What I put in writing:

• The rhythm: which days, how often, on site or remote, over what initial period.
• The scope: the subjects taken on, those that stay with you or with another provider.
• The deliverables: what will exist at the end, documents, procedures, trained managers.
• The people involved: who decides, who I see, what I can say to whom, and how personnel data is handled.
• The exit conditions: notice, handover of files, continuity.

One often neglected point: the service is performed without any relationship of subordination. The consultant is not part of your organisation chart and keeps their autonomy over how they organise their work. That is also what separates a service contract from the hiring out of labour: any profit-making operation whose exclusive purpose is the hiring out of labour is prohibited (in French) under article L. 8241-1 of the Labour Code, outside temporary work and the other cases the text provides for. I have turned down an assignment for that reason: what the director described, daily presence and hierarchical authority over a team, was a job, not a service. I told him so; he recruited. On the exact characterisation of the relationship, have your contract reviewed by an employment lawyer.

What this article does not cover

I stay here on the job itself and on choosing the provider. Three neighbouring subjects are deliberately dealt with elsewhere.

• Which assignments to delegate and in what order: see which HR tasks to outsource first.
• Why outsource when you are a smaller company: see outsourced HR for small and mid-sized companies.
• Legal advice: I do not give it. On a dismissal, a negotiated termination, litigation before the labour tribunal or the interpretation of a collective agreement, the right contact is an employment lawyer.

There are also situations where an independent HR consultant is not the right answer: a company of several hundred employees with dense employee relations needs an in-house HR team; open litigation calls first for a lawyer; a need for daily presence calls for a hire. I say so in the first conversation.

FAQ

What is the difference between an independent HR consultant and a fractional HR director?

The level of intervention. The independent HR consultant takes on defined operational assignments: recruitment, personnel administration, appraisals, the training plan. The fractional HR director carries the strategic dimension as well, pay, employee relations, target organisation. The same person can hold both roles: what changes is the responsibility entrusted, not the status.

How many days a week should be planned?

That depends on your headcount and on the state of your HR function at the outset. On the assignments I accept, I start from a minimum of two days a week, over a long period. Below that, the time goes on emergencies and nothing gets built.

Can an independent HR consultant sign employment contracts on my behalf?

No. The employer remains the employer and the signature commits the company. An HR consultant drafts, checks consistency with the applicable collective agreement and makes the process safer; the signature is yours. On sensitive clauses, a review by an employment lawyer remains good practice.

What happens when the assignment ends?

It all depends on what was built. A well-run assignment leaves written procedures, files up to date and managers who are autonomous on the basics. That is why the deliverables belong in the initial framing: the end of an assignment should never be a loss of information.

Let us talk about your situation

If you are hesitating between recruiting, going through a consultancy and handing your HR to an independent consultant, describe your situation to me: your headcount, what is stuck, what you have no time to hold. I will tell you frankly whether a fractional HR assignment makes sense in your company, and if not, where to turn. Get in touch: one call is enough to find out.

Sources

• INSEE, Informations rapides no. 214, 28 August 2026. Read the release
• Code du travail numerique, French Ministry of Labour, article L. 2261-2, page accessed 2 September 2026. code.travail.gouv.fr
• Legifrance, Labour Code, article L. 1221-21, page accessed 2 September 2026. legifrance.gouv.fr
• Code du travail numerique, French Ministry of Labour, article L. 8241-1, page accessed 2 September 2026. code.travail.gouv.fr