Funding options for employees
If you’re employed in France on a French contract, there are several options available to you. There are a few acronyms to learn though...
The CPF (Compte Personnel de Formation)
You don't pay anything - the course is paid for you at the end. It's a funding envelope that you accumulate every year from the moment you have a social security number.
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Who is it for ?
- Part-time or full-time employees
- Year-round contracted staff
- Gérant salarié et non-salarié
- Self-employed
- Unemployed
IMPORTANT: In order to use CPF, you must have a final social security number that has been active for at least 2 years.
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What is it?
- The CPF is like a bank account. You are the only person who can access it and every year, you are credited a certain amount that you can use towards training courses.
- You must have a final social security number to access your account.
- The amount credited is proportional to the work done the previous year. If you work full-time, you’ll get credited 500€ / year.
- If you wish to use your credit, you can only enrol on a course approved by CPF.
- PDS Formation is one of the training centres approved by the CPF platform and our packages respect all their requirements.
- All courses on the CPF platform must lead to a diploma or a certification. In our case, we work with a recognized French level certification which is very easy to complete.
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How does it work?
- You create your CPF account and check your balance.
- We guide you through the packages available, test your level and guide you through the best options.
- We guide you through the enrolment procedure and prepare your schedule.
- You attend the course
- At the end of the course, we send you details for your level test (or exam).
- Once completed, we declare your course finished, which you must also confirm online
- The course is paid directly to PDS Formation at the end of your course. You have nothing to pay.
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What do I need to do next?
- Open your CPF account and check your credit.
- Contact us so we can discuss your course options.
- You MUST have the Identité Numérique set up to use your CPF. If you are European or with a 5-year CDS, the procedure will be longer as you need to validate your ID Numérique manually. Contact us at least 6 weeks before you wish to start your course so we can guide you through the process.
- CPF accounts are only accessible after at least one year of having a final social security number.
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Important to know on this funding option:
- Allow time to set up your Identité Numérique with La Poste. We strongly recommend going directly to your Post Office to do this. Otherwise, click on our instructions below.
- If you don’t have enough credit to use your chosen package, you can pay the difference directly on the CPF platform when you enrol on the course.
- You must allow 2-3 weeks between applying and starting your lessons as the CPF platform has a 2 week ‘cooling-off’ period to avoid fraud etc..
- Your employer can top up your CPF account if they choose to. Contact us for more details on this.
Check out my CPF account
Open your CPF account in 2mn and check out how much you've already been credited towards training courses
The PDC (Plan de développement de Compétences)
An annual funding envelope accessible to employers in order to train their contracted staff.
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Who is it for ?
- Part-time or full-time employees
- Seasonnaires
- Year-round contract
- Gérant salarié
All that matters is that the employee is on a French contract at the time of the course.
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What is it?
- Every year, the company you work for pays a compulsory training tax for their staff.
- Once that tax is paid, the company has access to a set training envelope funded by a specific financer (called OPCO). This envelope enables your manager to request training for their staff in order to develop their skills.
- The OPCO have set criteria for each trade (specific hourly rate to respect, number of hours, number of students, etc…).
- PDS Formation takes all these details into account and designs learning packages that can be fully-funded. Where the OPCO’s funding is not sufficient for private lessons, we offer group courses.
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How does it work?
- We find out who your OPCO is and check that your employer is up to date with his Urssaf contributions.
- We inform you and your manager of the possible learning packages that can be funded, guide you through your choice, and assess your level.
- We work alongside your manager to prepare the application at least 3-4 weeks in advance.
- Your application is approved and you can attend your course.
- At the end of your training, we send documents proving you’ve attended the full course.
- PDS Formation is paid directly by the OPCO at the end of the course.
- Your employer won’t need to pay anything unless you don’t attend the course.
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What do I need to do next?
- Find out who your employer’s OPCO is and forward us your manager’s details.
- Fill out your evaluation and, if you’re joining groups, enrol on our booking system.
- Attend your course. Make sure you sign the presence sheet and documents required as this guarantees your course payment.
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Important to know on this funding option:
- Envelopes can be suspended from one month to another so it’s important to apply when it’s still available.
- Most OPCO only fund group courses and not private lessons.
- If the employer hasn’t created an account with their OPCO, it takes more time to prepare the funding application so please allow extra time.
- It’s essential to attend the lessons in order to be funded.
