Tribune. The service sector has never represented so many jobs in France (76.1% of the total in 2018, according to the INSEE “Employment” survey). However, French media and politicians pay more attention to factory closures than to the service sector, pinning all their hopes on European industrial renewal to drive growth. This is regrettable, and even dangerous. Because despite the renewed interest in “frontline” jobs at the time of the pandemic, a real crisis in service jobs is looming on the horizon. Recruitment difficulties, lack of recognition, violence in social relations: it is time for politicians and decision-makers to react.
The most obvious symptom is that of recruitment. Sectors such as hotels, restaurants, national education or health are weighed down by the disaffection of their employees. A simple recruitment problem, a major fatigue from employees who are overstretched or insufficient salaries, in a limited number of sectors, the famous “essential trades” ? These diagnostic elements are correct, but a bit short. To provide answers to this service crisis, we will have to rethink the experience of workers in this sector. Beyond the figures for employment and remuneration, a reading of the changes at work, focused on the experience of the service worker and the meaning given to the profession, makes it possible to identify three fronts on which the crisis is playing out services.
The first front concerns the meaning of relational work and the recognition that employees derive from it. In many service professions (hotels and restaurants, tourism, commerce), the work involves long hours interacting with customers or users. These activities, which consist of putting oneself “at the service of”, are socially less valued. What meaning, what recognition can we find in it today, in a context of automation? The increasing introduction of chatbots and other automatic checkouts tends to make service employees invisible and calls into question the value of their contribution and what is typically human about it.
emotional peak
The second front is that of power. The pandemic has radicalized customer behavior, revealing the best (more understanding customers) as well as the worst (customers reluctant to health constraints, but also a feeling that “everything is due”). An emotional peak was reached in July 2021, when a mobile phone shop employee was stabbed by a customer. In low-status service businesses, the question of submission to the customer as king is not new, and employees struggle to enforce a legitimate limit on customer behavior. Support from employers, who struggle to balance employee protection and customer satisfaction, is often lacking.
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