"At a time when labor market trends are accelerating, 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 its French acronym GPEC, was born.
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 called Job and Career Management.
How do you make the transition from GPEC to GEPP ? We take stock.
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.
To sum up, the GPEC approach aims above all to link employees' skills with the company's vision. While this method enables companies to remain competitive, it does have certain 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 the company's needs is no longer enough to engage employees.
What's more, the GPEC vision focuses on "hard skills", i.e. technical competencies, and neglects "soft skills" and cross-disciplinary competencies. 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.
However, GEPP is not fundamentally different from its big sister. It's more a modernized vision, taking into account the digital transformation of the job market.
Indeed, the GEPP vision is based on employees' desire for a "career path", and no longer solely on company strategy. By way of illustration, vocational training is 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 have much to gain too. Implementing a PPIM plan not only enables organizations to better anticipate the evolution of their professions, but also to remain competitive thanks toimproved 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 a PPIM plan within your company doesn't happen overnight. Two concepts are important here: observe and measure.
The first step in managing jobs and career paths is to take stock of the current situation. This involves identifying trends specific to the company's sector of activity. For this, it's a good idea to refer to the strategic guidelines 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 the current state of resources 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.
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 highlights the company's weaknesses in terms of human resource allocation.
Then it's time for analysis. Once all the relevant information has been gathered, managers and human resources executives can determine what the company needs in terms of skills and training to meet the 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, the GEPP is an approach that requires a great deal of rigor and a qualitative investment of time. The same problem arises as in the GPEC era: it's difficult to have an accurate view of skills within the company. That's why it's a good idea to digitalize this process, using a dedicated skills tracking tool. The advantages are numerous, for example:
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. For greater efficiency, it is a good idea to digitalize the GEPP using 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.
