Ad-PHS project’s workshop in France
On July 1, EFFE hosted the French country seminar in the framework of the Ad-PHS project. The seminar explored the PHS sector in France. Contrary to most European countries, the sector is not divided between car and non care sector but rather with different models of employment: direct employment and service providers.The workshop organized in Paris was organized around the country fiche and debate around two best practices identified in the French legal and legislative landscape in PHS: structures dedicated to social dialogue and development of digital platforms accessible to sector stakeholders useful for its consolidation.
Organized in the premises of IPERIA L’Institut, the workshop brought together a panel of experts and specialists, including Julien Jourdan, Director General of the Federation for Personal Services (FEDESAP), Mehdi Tibourtine, Legal Director of the Federation of Private Services (FESP), and Stéphane Fustec, Federal Secretary of the CGT and President of the National Joint Council for Social Dialogue (CNPDS) for the social dialogue component. Adrien Gauthier, Head of Communication and Partnerships at ACOSS, Didier Humbert, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ogust, a personal services management software, and Alexis Deneux, Founder of home care software Top-Webgroup, for their part, discussed the themes of digital platforms in PHS.
The two round tables showed that home employment sector suffers from a lack of attractiveness, notably due to a low salary base, insufficient staff turnover due to its aging, and sometimes complicated social dialogue induced by a lack of sufficient prerogatives for trade unions, particularly in the area of vocational training. The aspects of health and safety at work benefit from substantial progress allowing a better coverage of occupational safety and health and sickness of the workers in the exercise of their professional functions in their employer’s private home but also workplace. The collective agreement for home employment sector remains a strong enough security lever to ensure good negotiations between the social partners in the sector.
As for the digital aspects, the facilitation of work declaration procedures, such as the digitization of the CESU system, has allowed greater security of the employment relationship and simplification of administrative procedures for employers. Such powerful management tools, such as Ogust, ultimately provide margins of efficiency, thus productivity and investment towards more profitability.
However, competition between the various platforms set up by public authorities, particularly local and regional authorities can prove to be a hindrance to their good efficiency.
Main outcomes:
– Audience were both representatives of services providers, direct employers, trade unions, academics, associations… and in France they are not use to sit at the same table and discuss. The discussion around the fiche country was very fruitful and allow every side to give its opinion to complete the document.
– On the first-round table: speakers presented in each model of employment how a developed and structure social dialogue were able to foster and structure the sector and improve both employers and workers situation.
– On the second, speakers developed the use of digital tools in the PHS sector and the importance of digital platforms.
The event gathered around 25 people : representatives of employers: services providers (FESP, FEDESAP), direct employers (Fepem), but also workers representatives (CNPDS), a social protection institute (IRCEM), French government (general direction of social cohesion), several academics, French observatory on direct employment, vocational training organisations, digital platforms and associations. The wide scope of the audience and the fact that there was a lot of exchanges with the rooms enables very fruitful comments.
