Elixir Design puts autonomous staff on 218-day annual package from October

Advertising agency ELIXIR DESIGN has put its autonomous staff onto a forfait annuel en jours counting 218 working days a year, journée de solidarité included, under an accord ratified by 83.33% of employees in a referendumLegifrance on 14 September 2026Legifrance. The accord, signed at Boulogne-Billancourt, enters into force on 1 October 2026Legifrance for an indefinite termLegifrance and replaces every prior company agreement, usage or practice with the same object; it also prevails over the branch Convention Collective nationale de travail des cadres, techniciens et employés de la Publicité Française (IDCC 0086) on the same subjectLegifrance.

Eligibility follows article L. 3121-58 du Code du travailLegifrance: managers with autonomous schedules who do not follow collective hours, and employees whose working time cannot be predetermined and who organise their time autonomouslyLegifrance. Inside the company this covers, as cadres C1 to C4, client-facing and business-development roles, artistic direction and copywriting, graphic and production staff, IT and digital developers, strategic planners, HR managers, image staff such as photographers and retouchers, and employees with transversal or hierarchical management duties. The list is expressly non-limitative and may evolve with hiring and new functions.

The reference period is the calendar year. Staff without a full 25-working-day paid-leave entitlement see the 218-day count increased pro rata for the missing leave, unless they take leave progressively as it accrues at up to 2.08 working days a month, in which case nothing is added. A reduced day-count forfait can be agreed individually, with pay prorated and workload adjusted; it is not part-time and still counts time in days or half-days. Extra rest days (jours de repos supplémentaires, JRS) follow the standard formula of calendar days minus 218 worked days, weekends, 25 leave days and public holidays falling on working days, and must be taken in full or half-days with five working days' notice before 31 December, with no carry-over or payment in lieu. The company may impose up to four JRS dates a year with 45 working days' notice, may force scheduling when fewer than half the days are taken or booked by 30 June, and again when the balance is not booked by 30 November.

Absences treated as effective working time, such as statutory leave and public holidays, leave JRS untouched; other absences shrink them proportionally under a stated ratio, illustrated with sick-leave examples. Pay is flat and smoothed monthly regardless of days worked in the monthLegifrance; a day of absence is valued as annual gross pay divided by forfait days plus leave, public holidays and rest days, illustrated at 153.26 euros per day on a 40,000-euro salary with 8 holidays and 10 rest days.

Safeguards include 11 consecutive hours of daily restLegifrance, 35 hours of weekly restLegifrance, a six-day weekly maximumLegifrance and reasonable daily amplitude, monthly self-reporting through the HR system, monthly email reminders, a written alert procedure with prompt interviews, at least one dedicated annual interview with a written report kept five years, and disconnection rules barring professional use of remote tools during rest and leave, with absence messages and exceptional-contact limitsLegifrance. Each employee signs an individual written convention, and refusing it is neither misconduct nor a ground for dismissalLegifrance.

Legal basis: articles L. 3121-58, L. 3121-63 et L. 3121-64 du Code du travailLegifrance, applied through the ELIXIR DESIGN accord prevailing over the Publicité branch convention (IDCC 0086).