According to a study just published by Lucca, a French HRIS software vendor, on the subject of the career aspirations of the French, these aspirations are clearly evolving, to such an extent that many want to change jobs. It also shows that working conditions are steadily deteriorating.
You can download the study here.
The study teaches us a great deal about the career aspirations of French employees, and everyone will find interesting insights to suit their own concerns, but I’m going to focus on two subjects that interest me more specifically: employee expectations and the employee experience.
Importance of remuneration and disenchantment with management
I’m going to go straight to the two extremes of the ranking of French employees’ aspirations, starting with what’s most important to them.
And the most important thing is a comfortable salary for 50% of them. I don’t know whether this is the most important thing or “only” for 50% of people, but it puts the church back in the village.
In fact, I’m fed up with all the speeches that tell us something else, saying, for example, that meaning is more important than anything else, when we know very well that this is not the case.
I don’t know if it’s to force people to convince themselves that it’s not an important criterion, or to make them feel uncomfortable when the subject comes up, thinking that they’re the only ones for whom it matters, but it’s time to stop the hypocrisy on the subject in HR communications.
In fact, serving the public interest only counts for 6% of respondents.
At the other end of the scale,managing a team is only sought after by 4%. This is both logical and extremely serious.
Logical, because we’re putting more and more onus on managers without giving them more resources, and we’re even locking them into an old-fashioned conception of management. This is the paradox of the job: years ago, I read a study which said that employees were not satisfied with their managers, but that they certainly didn’t want to take their place.
It’s not just a title, it’s a specific role that requires qualities and desires that not everyone has. I’m still convinced that, whether you’re a manager or not, you’re fundamentally capable. You can improve at the margins, but only at the margins.
But if employees have understood this, it doesn’t seem to me to be the case for companies who use management as a reward, a promotion, irrespective of people’s managerial qualities and appetence (Reinventing the Leader Selection Process). And, logically, nobody wants to be thrust into an exposed position for which they don’t feel suited, except in terms of remuneration (which is another problem).
A trend that is anything but surprising. Already in 2021, an article in Les Echos (Crise sanitaire : les managers, sur les nerfs, se détourent de leur fonction) told us:
” The health crisis, by overturning the codes of management, has probably accelerated the malaise of managers, since 66% of those surveyed who exercise this function find it stressful (72% for women) and 43% consider that it represents too many responsibilities (49% of women emphasize this). One manager in two feels that his job has become too difficult since the start of the health crisis; 54% of women surveyed share this view. Worse still, 13% of managers go so far as to say that they don’t like managing their team!
The health crisis is over, but the after-effects remain, as it only served to highlight a deep-seated malaise that was pre-existing and has certainly not gone away since.
But it’s a serious problem, because companies need managers, and good managers. One can say all one likes about flat structures and the uselessness of managers, but the truth is that we need them. We don’t need or no longer need the old-fashioned manager, the little boss who rules like a tyrant over his open space, but we do need people to organize decision-making, to develop talent and to take responsibility. Because even anti-managers recognize one quality in him: he takes responsibility for the team’s decisions, even if they are taken collaboratively, something no one would want to do in his place.
But I’ll come back to this point in more detail shortly.
QWL and employee experience on the decline
The study includes a chapter dedicated to quality of life at work, which comes at just the right time in the light of Parlons RH’s 2024 Employee Experience Barometer that I presented to you last week (L’expérience collaborateur: un levier de transformation au service de la performance), which told us that employees’ primary expectations in this area now concern the operational organization of work.
I won’t go into the figures in detail, but the study looked at certain dimensions of QWL (the level of stress at work, the volume of administrative tasks (expense claims, leave, etc.), material working conditions, etc.). ), material working conditions, remuneration, quality of relations with hierarchy, training, quality of relations with colleagues, flexibility in the organization of work (schedule and/or location), equal opportunities (regardless of age, gender, social origin…)), some of which fall squarely within the prism of the employee experience.
Regardless of the item chosen, only 11% to 22% of employees surveyed feel that things have improved, with an average score of around 15%.
In general, around 60% feel that things have remained stable, and I’ll leave it to you to decide whether, in the absence of improvement, a non-regression is good news to be satisfied with.
Logically, for each item, between 20% and 30% of employees say that things have deteriorated , with peaks of 40% for stress and 32% for administrative tasks.
A rather bleaker picture than that of the barometer I quoted above, which showed significant progress on the few comparable items.
I’m going to focus on the two items where the deterioration is most significant.
Let’s start with stress. It’s a pity that its causes have not been studied in depth, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s a composite indicator of many other factors.
When relations with colleagues and management are poor, work organization rigid and administrative tasks clutter up your diary, leaving you less time to do your job, it’s illogical for stress to increase.
Next, let’s talk about administrative tasks, a subject I know well because I’ve declared war on them and taken the issue head-on.
I’ve identified 3 major causes.
The first is a culture of surveillance and control , which can be global at company level or just the work of a local manager.
The second is the bureaucratization of organizations, a trend which everyone knows to be harmful, but which is not being stopped for all that.
The third is the tendency of support functions to organize their efficiency by shifting tasks to “productive” employees (Employee self-service: how far can you go before you go too far).
But the facts are there, and the more employees are asked to do work that isn’t theirs , the more this is done to the detriment of their own work, and even their mental workload , which increases as they try to make up for time lost, often needlessly.
Conclusion
Employees’ expectations are changing, and this doesn’t tell us positive things about the current climate in the world of work. Worse still, it’s working conditions that seem to be deteriorating significantly, contrary to the positive statements made by companies on the subject.
During an event at which this study was presented, Lucca organized “Battles” between experts on some of the study’s items. I found the results very convincing, and I’ll take the opportunity of future articles to come back to the subjects that were tackled and the exchanges that took place.
Image : Tired employee from Small365 via Shutterstock.
