Create value without growing. Multiply customers without multiplying the pay sheets. For some French leaders, growth does not go through hiring. By strategic choice or by economic realism, they develop their activity without constituting a salaried team, based on models based on automation, subcontracting or partner networks. Far from being anecdotal, these companies without employees sometimes display profitability levels higher than those of more conventional structures, and question the standard of growth accompanied by an enlargement of the workforce.
A model lightened by design
Some entrepreneurs structure their activity from the start without integrating the salary dimension. This is the case of Clément Lhomme, founder of the Studio Module agency, specializing in temporary modular architecture. Since 2017, it has called exclusively to self -employed (architects, designers, editors) for each project. His company, without permanent employment contract, works in a flexible network, each mission activating a constellation of skills. “This allows me to respond to important tenders without supporting fixed loads,” he explained in the entrepreneurs echoes.
This approach, if it supposes a great rigor in project management, also offers a rare operational freedom. It makes it possible to modulate the activity according to the order book, to avoid the cash tensions linked to the long cycles, and to remain agile in front of the economic situation.
Subcontracting as a steering lever
Other leaders adopt a more industrial logic by outsourcing all non -strategic operations. At RCUP, SME based in Bordeaux, manager Charles Rollin has developed a model for the production of reusable cups fully subcontracted: logistics, cleaning, storage and transport are operated by specialized providers. The company only pilots customer relations, commercial development and the CSR component.
Result: RCUP doubled its turnover between 2019 and 2022 without exceeding three internal employees. This minimum structure allows a strong responsiveness, and a concentration of resources on the heart of added value. “I prefer a committed and contractual service provider that an employee must train for six months and who can leave after twelve,” entrusted Charles Rollin in Sud Ouest Eco.
Tools to automate customer relations
In some sectors, technology today makes it possible to manage several hundred customers without a sales team. This is what the entrepreneur Emilie Cabot set up with her online training platform for professional coaches. Hosted on Podia, automated via Zapier, with a simplified CRM on HubSpot, its activity works in tense flows with zero employees. Customer requests, invoices, reminders and satisfaction surveys are fully automated.
This strategy is based on an important initial phase of investment in processes. But once the operational digital ecosystem is, it achieves a very stable balance. “I have 200,000 euros in turnover per year, with a single day of customer relations per week,” she said in an interview with Madyness.
Collectives of self -employed self -employed without wage
In some cases, the growth model without hiring is based on cooperative structures where the self -employed mutualize their means without going through an employee contract. Several collectives of freelancers in design or communication thus operate in Lyon or Nantes, by sharing the fixed charges while retaining their legal autonomy. These forms of hybrid organization allow a rise in power without classical hierarchical structuring.
This model is increasingly attracting professionals in search of collective stability without hierarchical dependence. These structures avoid the administrative heaviness linked to the wages while offering a solid entrepreneurial anchoring.
High -end positioning to compensate for the volume
Directing without hiring also means reviewing your price strategy. Many performing unprereated companies are betting on premium positioning to balance their low production capacity. This is the case with the artisanal Montabo artisanal workshop, based in Angoulême. The founder, Cécile Davenne, manufactures ultra-short series alone, sold online at high prices, with a delivery time of six to eight weeks.
Its strategy is based on scarcity, transparency on deadlines, and strong storytelling. Each bag is numbered, and accompanied by an original certificate. “I never wanted to hire, I prefer to master the whole chain, even if it means producing little,” she declared in a report by the New Republic. Its activity is profitable from 80 pieces sold per year, with net margins greater than 35 %.
Growth braked by the fear of the first recruitment
Among some entrepreneurs, non-recourse to wage earners do not derive an assertive strategy, but to a form of persistent inhibition linked to the first recruitment. This step is often perceived as a risky legal jump, with its share of social obligations, managerial responsibilities and administrative complexity. In a survey by the Urssaf Île-de-France in 2022, a quarter of managers without employees interviewed declared that they have pushed a recruitment yet envisaged, for lack of comfortable with the legal framework or the procedures. The acting is all the more difficult since the support resources remain exploded, and that the public devices, although many, are rarely mobilized at this stage.
Under these conditions, many leaders prefer to capitalize on what they master: their own time, their network and their tools. They adjust their economic model to stay in a regulatory comfort zone, even if it means limiting their development. This non -technical, but psychological brake, fuels growth with a constant workforce and nourishes another form of performance: that of the total control of the entrepreneurial perimeter.
