While the importance of managing the career paths of civil servants is not new, it has taken on a particularly strategic and urgent dimension, in a context where career support is one of the key factors in the public sector's critical attractiveness.. The convergence of a number of political initiatives - and their profusion - reveals a strong desire on the part of the government to tackle the subject from a number of angles. A case in point is the work initiated as part of the "careers and remuneration" project at the start of the last quarter of 2022, which should enable exploratory work to establish concrete proposals in terms of supporting and structuring the careers of civil servants, and enhancing the value of these careers. What levers are available to address this major strategic challenge for the civil service? How can the HR function tackle this issue?
MANAGING AND SUPPORTING AGENTS' CAREER PATHS
5.7 million. This is the number of employees in the civil service on December 31, 2020. This represents more than 25% of jobs in Francewith a growing proportion of contract staff (almost 20% by 12/31/2020).
43 years old. This is the number of years that civil servants who began their careers will have to work. in the 70'swith a gradual increase in the average retirement age.
More than 700 professions, reflecting the diversity of services and activities carried out within the three branches of the civil service in a wide range of fields (safety, health, education, transport, ecology, finance, culture, etc.).
These figures illustrate how important it is for the civil service to manage and support the career paths of its employees, especially in a context where career management is a key response to a number of challenges:
- A attractiveness to be strengthened to meet the challenges of continuity and public performance
- Evolving skills and professions in line with the changing expectations of users and public authorities, the services delivered, the technologies used, and so on. This challenge is particularly acute in the light of major transitions - particularly ecological ones - which are having an ever-greater impact on the nature and content of our professions.
- The changing profiles and expectations of public servants with increasing recourse to contractualization and attention to working and career conditions (recognition, individualized service offering, work/life balance, etc.).
In view of the sheer volume of staff managed by the civil service, and the endogenous and exogenous changes it is faced with, the management of staff career paths raises a number of issues.
Optimizing employment and workforce adaptability
Capitalize on available skills and support their development. The (long) career length of our employees should be seen as an opportunity rather than a constraint, through the favorable organization of mobility conditions.
Improving the match between needs / resources / priorities
Facilitate the identification of the current and projected needs of public-sector organizations in terms of their specific characteristics, missions and locations. More specifically, this involves working on the convergence between the needs/appetitasions expressed by employees and those of their public employers.
Enhancing the attractiveness of our professions and building staff loyalty
Propose measures to improve the agent experience in terms of career support, in line with HR policies.
Supporting administrative modernization projects
Facilitate career transitions in the context of organizational transformations likely to affect government departments (reorganization, restructuring, devolution of activities, etc.). The aim is to maintain employees' employability.
Managing career paths is therefore a major strategic and HR challenge. However, it comes up against a number of obstacles that limit our ability to support staff and help them put their plans into practice. We need to develop a genuine service offering for public sector employees. To achieve this, our support and experience have enabled us to identify a number of prerequisites that need to be taken into account.
CAREER MANAGEMENT: A STRUCTURAL AND STRATEGIC CHALLENGE FOR THE CIVIL SERVICE...
Career management has been a key issue for over 15 years. A number of regulatory changes have been undertaken by the French government's interministerial delegation for senior management (DIESE) in the service of :
- training
- career diversification
- or the development of a personalized service offering for senior management staff.
The law of August 6, 2019 The plan to transform the civil service includes a major section on mobility and support for career transitions. It aims to facilitate mobility between the 3 levels of the civil service, and to provide better support for employees in the context of public-sector transformations.
All these developments have been underpinned by the ambitions of better management (development of a forward-looking vision of professions and workforce, articulation of HR policies, strengthening the match between employee profiles and career paths, and the needs of administrations, etc.) and of greater performance of public action (adaptability, flexibility, HR performance, etc.).
The "post-crisis" situation has heightened the acuteness of the subject. The interministerial strategy for supporting mobility and career development 2022-2024, unveiled by the DGAFP, bears witness to this.. Its close link with the attractiveness issue has also helped to broaden its scope to now include the dimension of agent experience. This expansion is all the more legitimate and necessary given that the profiles of public-sector employees are evolving in favor of a growing proportion of contract workers, and that "lifetime employment" is no longer a unique and powerful lever of attractiveness and loyalty.
This makes career management more comprehensive, but also more complex to grasp., Even so, it comes up against structural obstacles linked to the way administrations operate and are organized.
... WHICH COMES UP AGAINST TECHNICAL, REGULATORY AND RH
The 2009 law on the mobility of civil servants aimed to develop career diversification by strengthening the right to mobility. To achieve this, it notably removed statutory and compensation obstacles. However, more than 10 years on, it has to be said that obstacles of this kind remain.
Statutory management limits the scope for genuine skills-based management
Despite a great deal of work to formalize skills and competency frameworks, HR and social management principles are based primarily on the "corps-grade-step" dimension, which is designed to guarantee equal treatment for all civil servants. The ability of HR staff and managers to think in terms of experience and skills is undermined in favor of mass management. For example, despite the publication of job profiles, major mobility campaigns leave little room for appreciation of the specific features of a profile, in favor of the application of standardized management rules, based on status, seniority in the corps-grade, family characteristics, etc., to the benefit of a mass management approach.
Lack of coordination between HR policies and information enhancement tools
Supporting the evolution of a career path means going beyond describing the various existing professions and the skills required. It means having a reliable, up-to-date view of existing profiles, skills, aptitudes, etc., so as to place the right people in the right places at the right time. All the HR systems in place (annual interview, career interview, appraisal, training follow-up, etc.) to collect and update this information appear to be insufficiently interlinked, either in terms of processes or tools for dynamic career management.
Insufficiently known jobs and needs
Due to a lack of suitable tools or information systems, employees do not always have easy access to the needs expressed by other local government departments/ministries within their catchment area, or to the jobs they offer. This lack of information can be an obstacle to matching an individual's appetite with a recruitment need. While a number of initiatives have been undertaken, such as the «ODAIM» website, to facilitate the identification of positions open to mobility on the PEP, there is a real need to rationalize these and better inform employees about where to find out about these opportunities.
Managerial obstacles and differences in treatment that discourage mobility
In a context of pressure on resources, hierarchical superiors may be very reluctant to encourage mobility among their staff, and find it difficult to compensate for the departure of their staff with new arrivals. In addition, there are still differences between administrative departments in terms of the compensation schemes that make up a significant proportion of civil servants' salaries, which can discourage a desire for mobility. This differentiation in compensation schemes is also a factor in retaining staff, particularly in view of the growing proportion of contract employees in the civil service.
Insufficient support for mobility
Functional and/or geographic mobility often means a change of environment for the employee and his or her family. Over and above the social and family complications, this change of environment can also lead to financial and material complexities linked to the cost of living, the accessibility of housing, and so on. While there are a number of support mechanisms and tools available, they are not always well known or understood by employees, who expect more support from their HR department.
A SERVICE OFFERING TO BE DEVELOPED TO IMPROVE CAREER MANAGEMENT
In order to meet the expectations of employees and administrations, one of the levers supported by the Decree of July 22, 2022 is to develop a coherent service offering, articulating and rationalizing existing tools and systems. Its aim is to enable agents to design, prepare and implement the evolution of their career path through 1) support in projecting their career development, in light of their profile; 2) identification of the means to make their project a reality (information on prerequisites and existing opportunities); 3) referral to support systems and services adapted to their project.
4 principles appear to be structuring in the design of such an offer.
A service offering to make career paths clearer
Job and career path management (GEPP) is an interesting tool that can be mobilized to facilitate, within the same public organization (or even on its bangs), possible gateways between professions. It is a tool that can be used to identify paths between professions and the prerequisites for deploying them in terms of development/training. However, the PPIM assumes that the reference systems used are up to date, and that HR has sufficient knowledge of what already exists to complete and enrich the implementation plan with regard to an individual employee's characteristics.
And that facilitates cross-fertilization between businesses to generate interest.
Facilitate the identification of the current and projected needs of public-sector organizations in terms of their specific characteristics, missions and locations. More specifically, this involves working on the convergence between the needs/appetitasions expressed by employees and those of their public employers.
One of the issues underlying these first two points is also that of reinforcing the internal and external attractiveness of the civil service through the promotion and enhancement of its resources and potential.
While integrating a project operationalization component
The service offering should also integrate all existing services (social and real estate) to support professional transitions. For example, it would be particularly relevant to consider the provision of support for spouses in their job search, housing assistance or access to childcare services, schooling, etc., to facilitate and support career changes.
And which covers the dimensions of the agent experience
The work currently being carried out by the government is constantly underlining the fact that career path management cannot be detached from any other approach. systems implemented to build loyalty and a positive experience of the job. Several levers are thus considered in terms of :
- QWL and working conditions: prevention / health - safety at work, wear and tear, teleworking, work environments
- Recognition: skills, initiatives, and the ability to adapt.
- Working group : managerial culture, team organization, working methods, transparency
Based on our experience with this type of project, we have identified 3 prerequisites for implementing such a service offering.
Better coordination of HR policies to support career development
In order to enter into a dynamic management of career paths and skills, fed and nourished by the various HR processes. In this way, the output products of the recruitment, training, appraisal and career interview processes will converge around a skills brick (whose uses will be able to go well beyond the sole dimension of supporting career paths, to also address strategic and forward-looking issues in terms of professions and HR policies).
A clear, accessible service offering
This is despite the fact that many different players are involved in career support: PFRHs, local HR departments, employee representatives, social action departments, etc., in a more or less coordinated fashion. The aim is therefore to coordinate the various players involved, clarifying their roles and responsibilities, and to promote the range of services on offer so that employees can take advantage of them. Many support, guidance and accompaniment systems are not mobilized, due to a lack of awareness of their existence.
Promoting this service offering and its network
It must then support its design so that it can achieve its objectives and targets. We need to continue structuring the agent support network, notably within the PFRHs, to optimize it and improve its impact.
The subject of career management has been the subject of a great deal of thought and work over the last few years, with a number of objectives in mind, such as improving the performance of public action, optimizing HR management, enhancing the attractiveness of the civil service, and so on. In the current context, the subject seems even more pressing.
While a number of initiatives have been launched to better equip employees to build their career paths, there are still a multitude of obstacles (organizational, regulatory, HR) to the implementation of flexible, tailored management of career paths. However, the levers do exist, but they need to be understood as a whole if we are to avoid a situation in which the emulation and proliferation of career path support initiatives result in a patchwork of systems that are ultimately difficult for employees to understand, articulate and access.
Our experience of this type of project has enabled us to develop a refined approach and methodology to support them. In the end, the first tasks to be carried out will be to reflect on the link between HR policies and the construction of career paths, and then to design a service offering enabling agents to be :
- Informed about support options
- Supported in building their project
- Supported in their implementation
Last but not least, the support we offer cannot be established without tools adapted to the project, enabling relevant guidance of agents while taking into account their specific needs.
The implementation of a coherent service offering is thus a response both to the expectations of our employees and to the regulatory requirements set out in the Decree of July 22, 2022, which calls for the introduction of personalized support through a formalized service offering. It is one of the ways in which we can improve our ability to manage and employ civil servants, enhance their attractiveness, and make it easier for administrations to adapt to the social challenges of today and tomorrow.
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