MockoBalancing work and personal life is one of the most talked-about topics in contemporary French society, and it shows up regularly in TEF texts and listening tasks. At B1 level you need vocabulary for describing schedules, workloads, flexibility, and the tensions that arise when professional demands clash with personal commitments. This lesson organises that vocabulary into practical groups, shows each group in context, and gives you the phrases needed to speak or write about it confidently.
What you’ll learn
- Describe work schedules, hours, and flexibility arrangements in French
- Talk about workload, stress, and work-life balance
- Use key expressions for remote work, part-time arrangements, and family leave
- Produce natural sentences about professional organisation for speaking and writing tasks
Schedules and working time
French employment law and workplace culture have created a rich vocabulary around working hours. These words appear constantly in TEF texts about the modern workplace.
- les horaires de travail: working hours
- les horaires fixes: fixed hours
- les horaires flexibles / aménagés: flexible hours
- les horaires décalés: shift hours, staggered hours
- la journée continue: working straight through without a long break
- le temps plein (35 heures par semaine en France): full-time (35 hours a week in France)
- le temps partiel: part-time
- les heures supplémentaires: overtime hours
- la RTT (réduction du temps de travail): extra days off given in exchange for working over 35 hours
- le planning: schedule, rota
- les plages horaires: time slots
Depuis la naissance de son enfant, elle travaille à temps partiel avec des horaires aménagés du lundi au jeudi.
Since the birth of her child, she works part-time with flexible hours from Monday to Thursday.
Remote work and new ways of working
Télétravail exploded into everyday French vocabulary after 2020. TEF texts now regularly feature discussions about its advantages and drawbacks.
- le télétravail: remote work, working from home
- télétravailler: to work remotely
- le travailleur à distance: remote worker
- le bureau à domicile: home office
- la connexion internet: internet connection
- le flex office: hot-desking arrangement
- le coworking: coworking space
- les outils numériques: digital tools
- la visioconférence: video conference
- le droit à la déconnexion: right to disconnect (a legal concept in France)
Mon entreprise propose deux jours de télétravail par semaine, ce qui me permet d'éviter les transports aux heures de pointe.
My company offers two days of working from home per week, which lets me avoid public transport during rush hour.
Le droit à la déconnexion
- France introduced a legal "right to disconnect" (droit à la déconnexion) in 2017. Employees are not obliged to answer work emails or calls outside their contracted hours. This concept appears in contemporary TEF reading passages about workplace well-being.
Workload, pressure, and well-being
A common exam text format is an article or interview discussing burnout, excessive workload, or initiatives to improve employee well-being. These are the words you need.
- la charge de travail: workload
- la surcharge de travail: overload, excessive workload
- le burn-out / l'épuisement professionnel: burnout
- le stress au travail: workplace stress
- la pression: pressure
- les délais: deadlines
- respecter les délais: to meet deadlines
- le bien-être au travail: employee well-being
- la qualité de vie au travail (QVT): quality of working life
- la pause: break
- récupérer: to recover, to recharge
Face à une surcharge de travail persistante, l'entreprise a mis en place une politique de qualité de vie au travail pour réduire le stress des salariés.
In response to persistent overwork, the company introduced a quality-of-working-life policy to reduce employee stress.
Family and leave arrangements
TEF texts about work-life organisation often focus on family situations: parental leave, childcare, and school schedules. This vocabulary group ties the professional and personal spheres together.
- le congé maternité / paternité: maternity leave / paternity leave
- le congé parental: parental leave
- la garde d'enfants: childcare
- la crèche: nursery (state or private)
- la nounou / l'assistante maternelle: childminder
- les vacances scolaires: school holidays
- concilier vie professionnelle et vie personnelle: to balance professional and personal life
- l'articulation vie pro-vie perso: work-life balance (slightly more formal register)
- les obligations familiales: family commitments
Il a pris un congé parental de deux mois pour s'occuper de son nouveau-né, puis a repris son poste à temps partiel afin de concilier vie professionnelle et vie familiale.
He took two months of parental leave to look after his newborn, then returned to his post part-time in order to balance professional and family life.
Useful phrases for speaking and writing tasks
These sentence frames work directly in TEF oral or written tasks where you need to describe, compare, or argue about work organisation.
- Mon employeur me permet de... (My employer lets me...)
- Je bénéficie de... (I benefit from..., e.g. I benefit from flexible hours)
- Il est difficile de concilier... et... (It is difficult to balance... and...)
- Grâce au télétravail, je peux... (Thanks to working from home, I can...)
- La surcharge de travail a des conséquences sur... (Excessive workload has consequences for...)
- Pour améliorer la qualité de vie au travail, il faudrait... (To improve quality of working life, one would need to...)
Je bénéficie d'horaires flexibles, ce qui me permet de gérer mes obligations familiales tout en respectant mes délais professionnels. Cependant, il est parfois difficile de concilier la surcharge de travail et la vie personnelle.
I benefit from flexible hours, which lets me manage my family commitments while still meeting my professional deadlines. However, it is sometimes difficult to balance an excessive workload with personal life.
How to practise this
Practice routines for work-life vocabulary
- Write a short text (80 to 100 words) comparing two types of work arrangement, for example fixed hours versus flexible hours. Try to use five different terms from this lesson.
- Find a French podcast episode or news clip about télétravail or travail hybride. Write down every vocabulary item from this lesson that you hear. Most will appear within the first two minutes.
- Practise the sentence frames aloud. Swap in different nouns: "Il est difficile de concilier le temps partiel et un bon salaire." Vary the verb tense too: past (j'ai bénéficié), present (je bénéficie), conditional (je bénéficierais).
Key takeaways
- The 35-hour working week and RTT days are specifically French; mention them if a text is about French employment law.
- Télétravail and droit à la déconnexion are high-frequency contemporary terms that examiners include in current texts.
- Burn-out and qualité de vie au travail (QVT) signal texts about employee well-being.
- Concilier vie professionnelle et vie personnelle is the standard phrase for work-life balance in formal French.
- Learn the sentence frames: in a timed oral task, having a ready-made opening phrase saves seconds and reduces hesitation.
