"At a time when the job market is changing rapidly, companies have a vital role to play in ensuring the employability of their workforce. It was with this in mind that Gestion Prévisionnelle des Emplois et des Compétences, better known by the acronym GPEC.
Today, PPIM offers a new approach to the challenges of skills management. It is intended to be more global, and closer to the reality on the ground. It's known as Job and Career Management.
How do you make the transition from GPEC to GEPP? We take stock.
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What are the differences between GPEC and GEPP?
The limits of GPEC
Let's go back to 2005. In response to a context of social insecurity, the Borloo law made it compulsory for companies with over 300 employees to set up a GPEC plan. The French Ministry of Labor defines GPEC as follows: "The aim of GPEC is to enable organizations to strike a balance between skills, jobs and workforce, on the one hand, and strategic requirements linked to changes in the economic, technological, social and legal environment, on the other.
In short, the GPEC aims above all to link employee skills with the company's vision. While this method enables companies to remain competitive, it does have its limitations. Indeed, employee loyalty is a crucial issue, particularly in a context of war for talent in which organizations do not hesitate to poach employees from their competitors. A vision focused on business needs is no longer enough to involve employees.
What's more, the GPEC vision focuses on "hard skills", i.e. technical competencies, and neglects "soft skills" and cross-disciplinary competencies. And yet, today's job market tends to place this diverse range of skills on an equal footing.
With this in mind, GPEC is giving way to GEPP, which is more in tune with reality.
PPIM: a more realistic vision
However, GEPP is not fundamentally different from its big sister. It's more like a modernized visionwhich takes into account the digital transformation of the job market.
Indeed, the The GEPP vision is based on the desire for a "career path". of employees, rather than solely on company strategy. By way of illustration, vocational training is being replaced by continuous training to guarantee a high level of employability. However, GEPP is not synonymous with a rapid rise in skills. The idea is not to train all employees at all costs, but rather to enable those who wish to do so to receive support in their development project.
Companies also stand to gain a great deal. Implementing a PPIM plan enables organizations to better anticipating changes in the business but also to remain competitive thanks to theimproved career management.
The GEPP is an evolution of the GPEC vision. But what does it actually mean when it comes to implementing such a plan within a company?
Implementing PPIM in your company
Implementing a PPIM plan within your company doesn't happen overnight. Two concepts are important here: observe and measure.
Drawing up an inventory
The first step in managing jobs and career paths is to take stock of the current situation. This involves identifying trends specific to the business sector of the company. For this, it's a good idea to refer to the strategic orientations provided by the professional branch, which is responsible for keeping a constant watch on developments and trends.
Once these changes have been identified, it's time to take stock of the company's internal situation. The aim is toassess resource status in order to draw up an action plan. To do this, you can delve into various documents, such as the minutes of professional interviews, social balance sheets or the personnel register.
This initial quantitative data is useful for setting the company's strategic PPIM objectives. The next step is to reconcile these objectives with current employee skills.
Measure, analyze and monitor
It's not always easy to map team skills at a given point in time. It is possible to refer to tools such as the multi-skills matrix. This step allows you to highlight the company's weaknesses in the allocation of human resources.
Then it's time for analysis. Once all the relevant information has been gathered, managers and human resources executives can determine the company's needs in terms of skills and training, in order to meet strategic objectives previously set.
The gap between analysis and objectives can be bridged by increasing the skills of certain employees.
To maintain a balance between workforce skills, company objectives and employees' career plans, regular monitoring is essential.
Indeed, GPEC is an approach that requires a great deal of rigor and a qualitative investment of time. This raises the problem already familiar from the GPEC era: it's difficult to get an accurate picture of skills within the company. For this reason, it is interesting to digitize this process using a dedicated skills tracking tool. The advantages are numerous, for example :
- View a complete map of employee skills at any given time.
- Identification of training needs.
- Centralized information.
- Time-saving.
In a nutshell
Unlike GPEC, GEPP takes into account employees' career plans. Implementing such an approach requires meticulous organization: first, draw up a balance sheet and define objectives. Then, map and measure the skills available in-house. To increase efficiency, it is a good idea to digitalize the GEPP with a dedicated tool such as Mercateam.
The implementation of a PPIM plan also plays an important role in retaining employees, by offering them the opportunity to upgrade their skills in line with both their career plans and the company's strategy.
