[Quelle est la place des logiciels dans la relation entre un demandeur d’emploi et son conseiller ? C’est la question que pose Didier Demazière, sociologue du travail, directeur de recherche au CNRS au Centre de sociologie des organisations à Sciences Po. Il a mené de nombreuses recherches dans le domaine du chômage et de l’emploi, y analysant différentes facettes du travail, telles l’accompagnement des chômeurs dans les services publics de l’emploi en Europe, ou les activités de recherche d’emploi des chômeurs. Il conduit aussi des enquêtes sur les élus politiques, leurs activités de travail, leur rémunération et leurs conditions de travail. Il a publié récemment plusieurs articles sur le service public de l’emploi et les chômeurs dont : « Un chômage sans recherche d’emploi ? Une zone d’ombre dans la littérature sociologique sur les expériences du chômage », dans « Sociologie du travail » (2022, avec Alizée Delpierre).]
In recent decades, public services have undergone multiple reforms aimed at improving their efficiency and reducing their costs (Evelyn Z. Brodkin and Gregory Marston, 2013). The work of counter professionals, those who are in contact with users, is placed at the heart of this difficult reconciliation: do they experience – or not – a deterioration in their work, a loss of autonomy, a decline in expertise, a disappearance of their professional identity (Philippe Bezes and Didier Demazière, 2011) ?
The transformation of public services has accelerated further with the computerization of file management, the digitization of interfaces with users and the implementation of recommendation algorithms.
These technical developments are supposed to improve access to public services for users to the point of allowing self-service, and to promote better adaptation to individual situations, to the point of providing management on a case-by-case basis. They also question the work of agents on several points: on the tensions between the relational and technical components of their work (Frans Jorna and Pieter Wagenaar, 2007), on reducing the role of their expertise in decision-making (Peter André Busch and Helle Zinner Henriksen, 2018), on the decline of what we call their discretionary power (Michael Lipsky, 1980), that is to say their ability to produce tailor-made services based on standardized and impersonal rules.
What consequences does the digitalization of public services have on the work of professionals in contact with users? This question is explored here in the social state sector: what about advisors supporting job seekers registered with Pôle emploi? [aujourd’hui France Travail] – and before 2009 at the National Employment Agency (ANPE)?
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