Executives are unusually the target of the departure plans of large companies undergoing organizational transformation. A few examples: in the steel industry, at ArcelorMittal, “The agreement to organize the working time of seniors does not specify who is targeted, but it indirectly targets executives, supervisors and all white-collar workers, support staff and researchers”, indicates Frédéric Weber, Force Ouvrière representative of the ArcelorMittal European Restricted Committee.
In services, Orange, which intends to gain in productivity and simplification in intellectual professions, wants to continue reducing its workforce by stimulating age measurement tools, in order to target management functions more than jobs close to the field. . Finally, in the automobile, Michelin, which plans 2,300 job cuts by 2023, would like to reduce the layers of managers.
Mainly departures not replaced
For the moment, nothing visible in the statistics of the Association for the employment of executives (Apec) on the recruitment forecasts in 2021. “We do not observe a restart, but it does not fall back”, estimates Pierre Lamblin, director of the studies center of APEC. The volume of executive vacancies in the first quarter is down by only 24% compared to the same period in 2019 (2020 not being a comparable year because of the Covid-19).
The usual recruiting engines of IT services, research and development, consulting and bancassurance posted a drop of 30%, 29%, 44% and 31% respectively in March. The only sectors that have not reduced their hiring are, unsurprisingly, health and social action (+ 28%), the pharmaceutical industry (stable) and waste management (+ 4%). But except those of health, all trades are affected by the drop in recruitment. “After 2008, it took seven years to return to the pre-crisis level of volume of offers”, put Mr. Lamblin into perspective.
The reduction in the number of executives announced by digital transformations and reorganizations requires departures not replaced, rather than a drop in hiring. Thus, at Orange again, the renewal of the generational agreement aims to increase departure opportunities. “Positions are not canceled in advance, but not all departures are replaced”, confirms the group’s management.