Mutual termination of an employed trainer's contract: procedure and impact on Qualiopi compliance

When an employed trainer and their training organization decide, by mutual agreement, to end the employment contract, mutual termination (rupture conventionnelle) is almost always the route chosen: faster than dismissal, less legally risky than an informal negotiated resignation. But for a Qualiopi-certified organization, or one preparing for certification, a trainer’s departure is not just an employment-law matter: it directly affects the skills file, the staff register, and the continuity of ongoing sessions. Here is the full procedure and what it changes on the compliance side.

Mutual termination: what exactly is it

Individual mutual termination, created by the law of 25 June 2008 and codified in articles L. 1237-11 and following of the French Labor Code, allows an employer and a permanent-contract (CDI) employee to jointly agree on the terms for ending the employment contract. It differs from dismissal (a unilateral employer decision, which must be based on a real and serious cause) and from resignation (a unilateral employee decision, with no severance pay). Under certain conditions it opens entitlement to unemployment benefits — unlike a simple resignation — which explains much of its popularity: more than 500,000 mutual terminations were approved in France in 2024, compared with roughly 315,000 in 2015.

For a training organization, the employed permanent-contract trainer is a particularly relevant profile: unlike an independent or subcontracted trainer, whose end of assignment falls under commercial law, an employed trainer is fully governed by employment law and, most often, by the collective bargaining agreement for training organizations (IDCC 1516).

Step-by-step procedure

Mutual termination follows a strict formal process, and failure to comply with it can lead the labor tribunal to annul the termination.

1. One or more meetings

The employer and employee meet to agree on the principle of the termination and its terms (end-of-contract date, severance amount). The employee may be assisted by a person of their choice from within the company or, where there is no staff representative body, by an outside advisor; the employer may then also be assisted in return. There is no obligation to draft written minutes, but keeping one helps prove that both parties freely consented.

2. Signing the termination agreement

The agreement is signed using the dedicated official form or, more commonly today, via the online TéléRC service. It sets the planned end-of-contract date and the amount of the severance payment, which cannot be lower than the legal or collective-agreement minimum (see below).

3. The 15-calendar-day withdrawal period

Starting the day after signature, each party has 15 calendar days to withdraw, by letter or any means proving the date it was received. This is a hard deadline: the request for administrative approval can only be submitted once this period has elapsed.

4. Approval by the DDETSPP

The approval request is sent to the departmental labor and social affairs authority (DDETSPP), which has 15 working days to review the file. It checks in particular that the withdrawal period was respected and that the minimum severance amount was met. If there is no response within this period, approval is deemed granted — administrative silence counts as agreement.

Overall, between signing the agreement and the effective end of the contract, expect roughly five to six weeks in practice.

The severance payment: the minimum floor to respect

The severance payment can never be lower than the legal dismissal indemnity, calculated on length of service: a quarter of a month’s pay per year of service for the first ten years, then a third of a month per year beyond ten years. If the IDCC 1516 collective agreement provides for a more favorable indemnity, that higher amount applies — something many employers only discover when they calculate a lower amount that the DDETSPP ends up rejecting, delaying the whole procedure.

The reference salary used is whichever is more favorable between the average of the last 12 months and the average of the last 3 months (with annual bonuses prorated in the latter case).

What a trainer’s departure changes for your Qualiopi compliance

The national quality framework does not address mutual termination as such, but two documentary obligations apply as soon as an employed trainer leaves the organization:

• Updating the single staff register: the departure date must be recorded as of the effective end of the contract, not just when the agreement is signed.
• Continuity of the trainer’s skills file (indicator 21) for the replacement: CV, diplomas, and references must be gathered before their first session, never after the fact. An auditor who finds a gap between a trainer’s departure and the documented arrival of their replacement rightly reads it as a broader HR management gap.
• Traceability of skills development (indicator 22): if the outgoing trainer completed training or a professional interview shortly before leaving, keep the evidence — it remains valid for the period they were in post and may be requested during a retrospective audit.

On the pedagogical side, also plan for the continuity of ongoing sessions: an enrolled trainee should never be left without a qualified trainer overnight. If the end-of-contract date falls in the middle of a training cycle, it is often better to push it back until after the session ends, or to secure a replacement with an already-built skills file beforehand.

Pitfalls to avoid

• Termination during sick leave unrelated to work: possible, but closely scrutinized by labor tribunals if a dispute later arises — better to wait until the employee returns if the situation is already tense.
• Mutual termination used to bypass a collective economic-dismissal procedure: the French Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) sanctions this workaround when several mutual terminations are agreed at the same time for an undisclosed economic reason.
• Pressure or absence of genuine consent: a flaw in consent (harassment, obvious pressure) allows the employee to have the termination annulled before the labor tribunal, with possible reclassification as dismissal without real and serious cause.
• Severance set below the legal or collective-agreement minimum: grounds for the DDETSPP to refuse approval, delaying the whole procedure by several weeks.

What research shows about mutual termination

Mutual termination is not simply an administrative substitute for dismissal or resignation: a study by Nathalie Berta, Camille Signoretto, and Julie Valentin, published in 2012 in the Revue française de socio-économie, shows that the mechanism also responds to implicit issues specific to each employment relationship — securing a separation in a context of latent disagreement, avoiding an uncertain labor-tribunal dispute, or facilitating a negotiated rather than imposed career transition (see the study) (DOI: 10.3917/rfse.009.0191). For a small training organization, where a key trainer’s departure can weaken an entire program, this negotiated framework often makes for a smoother transition than a contested dismissal.

Take action

A departing employed trainer should never leave a gap in your Qualiopi file: an up-to-date staff register, the replacement’s skills file built before their first session, and professional-development evidence kept for the outgoing trainer. The Complete Kit Certif (€297) provides the skills-file and HR-tracking templates auditors expect for indicators 17 to 22. If you’re just starting your organization, the ebook Create your training organization in 30 days (€67) lays the HR groundwork from day one. The complete pack (€347) combines both resources.