New Barometer Reveals Three Main Behavior Families in French Workforce: Insights for Employers

Measuring the relationship of the French people to work over time is the desire of the new barometer created by the group Actual and management school EM Normandie. The first results identify three main families of behaviour, and this new reading grid could be useful for employers.

The relationship with the work of France is measured over time, a new barometer has just been created by the Actual group and the management school EM Normandie.

franceinfo: Could the first results be useful for employers?

Sarah Lemoine: LEmployers and candidates are struggling to understand each other, and the situation has not improved since the Covid crisis. On the one hand, candidates feel that they have been treated badly, or that they have asked for positions that do not suit them. On the other hand, employers complain that they haven’t found the right skills, or that they see people disappearing in the middle of the recruitment process.

However, “There is no shortage of competent and available people, but they are not leaving companies”, according to Jean Pralong, professor at EM Normandie. To gain a better understanding of these behaviors, 200,000 workers were questioned about two structural aspects: their employability, that is to say the resources available to them in terms of skills and ability to adapt to the labor market. And the confidence in the future.

What appears?

Three main families of assets are emerging. The detached, the stable and the progressive. The first – 12% of those questioned – are retiring. They have lost motivation, confidence, skills. They are unemployed or work in unskilled jobs. They need support and training to get to work.

The second family, the stables, represent the majority of the soldiers. They have a minimum +2 handicap and can earn enough for interested companies. Their moderate confidence in the future encourages them to look for a permanent contract.“But around the age of 39, on average, these funds move into despair”. They become discouraged, dismiss themselves and do not relate to the fear of failure, which employers incorrectly interpret as diva behavior.

The avant-garde, finally. It is a minority of workers, so optimistic and sure of their skills, that they abandon employment to become entrepreneurs.

What lessons can we learn from this?

Faced with a naturally shrinking pool of candidates, employers must ask themselves how to retain the fleeing avant-garde. And, above all, change your perspective on the pessimists, who do not belong out of concern, and on those who are unconnected that must be taken by hand.

To encourage applications or reduce erroneous behavior, we need to make the recruitment process much clearer, Jean Pralong believes, that is to say explaining who is doing what, who should be contacted sent, where the application is, and why they were not selected.