OD FLASH | Fixed-hour work arrangements: the absence of an annual review does not, in and of itself, constitute a compensable injury

Cass. Soc., March 18, 2026, No. 24-15143, F-D

A salaried employee, contractually subject to a clause for calculating his working hours according to the terms of a fixed-day allowance, requested damages for the unfair execution of his employment contract. He claimed that his employers did not organize the annual interviews required by his contract and did not implement effective control of his workload.

The Court of Appeals dismissed this claim. The employee filed a cassation appeal, arguing that the absence of an annual review of workload necessarily caused harm.

The Cour de cassation rejected the appeal. It approved the Court of Appeals’ decision to rule that, while the employers did not prove the holding of the required annual meetings or the existence of an effective time management control system, these shortcomings alone were not sufficient to demonstrate an indemnifiable injury.

Indeed, the lower court had found that the employee’s digital calendars for 2019 and 2020 did not show work hours exceeding the legal daily or weekly maximums. They also noted that the listing of 25,000 emails sent between 2015 and 2020 did not allow them to conclude that frequent late emails were sent in connection with professional activity.

The Court of Cassation deduces that the mere absence of meetings on workload, in the absence of elements establishing concrete overwork or an indemnifiable prejudice, does not open the right to compensation. The ruling thus confirms that, in the case of a fixed-day allowance, an employer’s failure to fulfill their monitoring obligations does not automatically entitle the employee to compensation. The employee must also prove the existence of a resulting prejudice.