This is a first in France on this scale: the metropolis of Lyon offers several thousand of its agents to switch to a four-day week. Other public services and companies have also taken the plunge, but the movement remains a minority in France.
How about switching to a four-day week? It is the possibility that the metropolis of Lyon, the second largest city in France, opens up to more than 5,000 of its agents. The call for volunteers is open until the end of May. “It’s an experiment with volunteers for a period of one year, details the president of the metropolis, ecologist Bruno Bernard. With several formulas to choose from: either mainly work four days, 9 hours a day or 8 hours 45 minutes a day; or work four days, one week out of two. It is a formula proposed in particular with families who have alternating guards in mind.
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A category agent at the solidarity, housing and education delegation, Valérie Dario will try the experience from September: “We have little space to manage private constraints at times, to be able to take a step back, to play sports, to be able to set up meetings, to call a company to repair the leak… This kind of everyday thing .” She keeps her pay and loses some RTT to compensate.
“It’s really an opportunity to regain a balance between professional and personal life as well.”
Valérie Dario, agent for the metropolis of Lyonat franceinfo
Another agent of the metropolis, Bertrand Manin, underlines the financial gain that the new organization can represent: “In the finance and management control department, there are approximately 80 agents. There would only be 10% who would engage in experimentation. People who are more at the end of their careers, a few people who are part-time and which would go up to 100%. So there is a gain in purchasing power.”
The change to four days is also intended as a measure of equality between men and women, to fight against the part-time suffered: “We have several hundred agents, often women, who are at 80% because they need a day for their family life, which has forced them to reduce their working hours.describes the president of the metropolis, Bruno Bernard. And there, they will be able to choose to go back to 100% by working over four days. So a big gain in purchasing power and social security contributions, especially for retirement.
The challenge for the metropolis of Lyon is also to make these positions more attractive and to solve recruitment problems. A first assessment of the experiment will be drawn up halfway through, within six months.
At the national level, a still timid movement
France is, from this point of view, very far from Belgium. Over there, for six months and a new law, it is the workers (public and private) who can ask to work only four days a week. In France, it is a decision that is always up to the employer. And according to a study by a human resources firm, only 5% of French companies had adopted the four-day week at the start of 2022. Since then, many others have ventured into it, mainly SMEs, in various sectors, such as recycling, energy or IT.
But large groups are also getting involved, for example in consulting: Accenture has been offering a four-day week for a year to its 10,000 employees in France, when one of its competitors, KPMG, is trying a device reserved for young people parents.
And as in Lyon, some public services are launching experiments: the National Old Age Insurance Fund, the Urssaf de Picardie or the Nantes University Hospital in a single care unit, for non-medical staff (nurses and caregivers ). What motivates employers is above all to attract and retain employees, especially in certain sectors “in tension”, such as the hospital.
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On the side of the employees, no massive enthusiasm
At the CNAV, for example, only about twenty agents out of 3,600 have chosen this option. At Urssaf Picardie, four out of the 200 eligible… What makes employees hesitate is the fear of having longer and more intense days, not necessarily compatible with nursery or school schedules.
And when they have the choice, employees mostly prefer to have more RTT to ask when they want. The four-day week seems more rigid, as workers do not always choose their third day off.