“Society dreams of flexibility, change, randomness, the relationship to work has changed a lot,” says Jean Viard

A study was published this week, it was carried out with managers, employees and HRDs of 10 participating companiesa study conducted by THE Sense project. Iassociation made up of business leaders committed to giving meaning to work, analyzes the new aspirations of the French in the workplace, and highlights what we have seen a lot since the confinements, 43% of working people plan to leave their job within two years.

franceinfo: Finding meaning in our work is what motivates nearly one in two French people. Jean Viard, was this not a priority until now?

John Viard: First, we should put the percentage next to those who want to leave their spouse and those who want to move. Because there are a million couples who have exploded in two years, after the pandemic. So we are in a period, I was going to say, of reorganizing our support: our intimate life partners, our places of residence and work. And we are in a period of instability where turnover has increased a lot in companies, including because young people are very sensitive. They often ask for fixed-term contracts, and no longer for permanent contracts.

Society, at the moment, is a society that dreams of flexibility, of change, of randomness, because life is completely unexpected, because we did not expect the great pandemic. There is a desire to go out, to move, to change. Work is taken in there. And moreover, what is true is that the relationship to work has changed a great deal, that is to say the hierarchical Fordist model (we respect managers, we work by the minute), is no longer the whole model of our society.

The model of time in our society is a time that we organize, obviously in agreement with the manager and the company, of course, but with a certain flexibility. Where there is not this flexibility, where we have not understood these new expectations, where we do not understand that the art of living restructures the art of producing – we have never worked so much in France, we haven’t become lazy – but the art of living has taken on such importance.

There is a change there which is a fundamental change, of a society where people have taken power over their private time. But, that’s why I put in the same bucket, the couple, housing and work, with another thing, it is that we have also modified the rules, in particular the amicable departures of companies , which facilitate this kind of change. This allows people to find themselves unemployed for a while, when they have decided to leave, because the economic dimension is clearly important.

But in “changing your life”, there is also “changing your job”! And that, we can clearly see, after the pandemic, there are professions where people said to themselves: but I am wasting my life doing it. This is the problem, for example, of certain jobs in the catering industry, because you cannot go home at midnight every evening!

There is the desire to have jobs where people recognize you. We know what you’re doing. If you say to your children: I work for Social Security, it’s honorable Social Security, but after all, it’s very abstract for them. But if you say: I created a timber company, or I even took over a small grocery store, or a small restaurant, you are a social personality, and I think there is the will to get out of a certain anonymity of the Fordist world. Basically, you were a bit of a pawn in a machine. There is all that at play, and which is in the process of upsetting the labor market.

And there are also new rules. Look at certain companies at the moment, which generalize the three months of salary paid, when there is a child, for the dad as for the mom, saying: wait, if you stay with us, you will have this privilege. These are elements that are in the process of resetting some of the young people, if we know how to be attentive to their expectations.

It is still necessary to be able to concretize this desire, because a professional retraining, it requires money, it requires energy. It’s not that easy to convert?

But of course. That’s why I insisted on amicable breaches of contract, because it’s clear that changing jobs, if you have the possibility of going through the unemployment phase and the training phase at that time, it becomes a possible reality, but otherwise, it’s much more complicated and what’s more, it’s always the same: in the circles that have studied, we have a lot more capacity for change.

Indeed, young people, especially those who dropped out of school very early, and who have few skills, even if they are extremely willing, it is more difficult. And besides, I think they change jobs less because, when they manage to get one, they tend to stay very attached to it. So, yes, of course there is an inequality in all these questions, and these are subjects to be attentive to. The CFDT speaks of a “social backpack”. She says: people have to have a backpack with their rights and when they travel they take the rights from one place to another. I really like the image of the social backpack, as a model for young people, to promote their mobility.

Is it a problem of the rich, professional retraining?

No, it is a desire, in my opinion, of the whole society. But there are some who can do it more than others.