An employee returning from two weeks of leave and discovering that their request was never approved, or a missing payslip the day before applying for a mortgage: situations like these account for most HR inquiries at BNP Paribas.
The Alis portal was designed to centralize these processes and eliminate the back-and-forth emails between employees and their HR managers. Leave, payslips, certificates, health insurance: everything goes through this single space, accessible to the group’s employees.
Payslips on Alis: downloading, keeping and opting out
Viewing payslips accounts for the vast majority of portal visits. On Alis, each payslip is made available electronically and can be viewed and downloaded in a standard format. The habit to adopt: download each payslip as soon as it is published and save it to a personal device.
This precaution matters. When leaving the group, employees’ work credentials are deactivated. If payslips have not been downloaded beforehand, obtaining them later requires a formal request to the former employer, with processing times that can vary.
One point that standard guides often overlook: employees can refuse to receive their payslip electronically. French law provides for this option. In practice, employees can request a paper payslip by contacting their HR manager or through the BNP Paribas Alis HR portal, depending on the entity’s internal procedure. Employers cannot impose electronic delivery without leaving this option open.
Another legal requirement to be aware of: if the provider hosting the payslips ceases operations, users must be notified at least three months in advance so they can retrieve their documents. The employer, for its part, keeps a copy for several years. These two retention obligations (for the employee and the employer) are separate and do not replace one another.
Managing leave and absences: how approvals work
Submitting a leave request on Alis takes just a few clicks. The less visible part is the approval process. Each request is sent to the employee’s direct manager, who has a set period to approve or reject it. Until approval is confirmed in the portal, the leave is not approved.
In practice, two situations regularly cause problems:
- The manager is also absent, and the request remains pending because no approval delegation is in place. The employee goes on leave assuming that silence means approval, but that is not guaranteed.
- Changing a leave request after it has been submitted (for example, changing the dates) can sometimes create a duplicate in the system. This can leave two requests on record, one of them outdated, which may distort the displayed balance.
- RTT, additional leave and seniority-based days do not always appear in the same balance. Checking the breakdown, rather than just the total, helps avoid unpleasant surprises at the end of the period.
The portal sends notifications, but they go to the employee’s work email. When away from the internal network, they may not always be visible. Checking the request status directly in Alis before booking a flight is still the most reliable precaution.
Accessing the Alis portal off-site: VPN, mobile and contractors
Accessing the portal from a BNP Paribas workstation is straightforward. The situation changes when working remotely or traveling. A connection to the group’s VPN is required to access Alis from an external network. Without an active VPN connection, the page simply will not load.
On a mobile phone or tablet, the process is the same: browser, VPN, then work credentials. The interface adapts to smaller screens, but some features (downloading documents, changing bank details) work more smoothly on a computer.
Contractors and external workers
External employees and contractors working within the group do not access Alis in the same way as employees. Depending on the entity and contract type, access is provided through a virtualized environment (VDI) or a separate dedicated portal. Their credentials differ from those of permanent employees, and the initial login process is different. The host entity’s HR support team is the right point of contact for obtaining access.
Forgotten username or locked Alis account: what to do
An account being locked after several failed login attempts is the main reason people contact support. The portal blocks access for security reasons, in line with personal data protection requirements.
Resetting a password does not involve simply clicking a link sent by email, as it would with a consumer service. The process involves HR or internal IT support, and can take one to several business days, depending on the team’s workload.
To reduce the risk of being locked out:
- Use the password manager in your work browser to avoid repeated typing errors.
- Do not confuse Alis credentials with those for the BNP Paribas retail banking customer area: they are two completely separate systems.
- When logging in for the first time, make a note of the username provided by HR and keep it somewhere other than your workstation (for example, in a personal digital vault).
The portal’s URL is not indexed by public search engines. Searching for “Alis BNP Paribas” will only bring up third-party articles, not the actual login page. The exact address is shared internally, usually in the onboarding pack or on the group’s intranet.
The Alis portal brings together all administrative interactions between employees and the BNP Paribas group. Regularly downloading payslips, checking the actual status of leave requests and keeping credentials somewhere safe are the three habits that help prevent most day-to-day access issues.
