43% of French employees in companies with at least ten people work in a so-called “learning” work organization, which allows continuous development of learning abilities, autonomy and participation of workers in decisions. It is less than in Germany, a little more than in Italy and much less than in Sweden. And the trend in France has been downward for around ten years.
In his contribution to the scientific mediation project “What do we know about work? ” of Interdisciplinary laboratory for public policy evaluation (Liepp), broadcast in collaboration with Presses de Sciences Po on the site’s Employment channel Lemonde.frthe labor economist from the work-employment-skills department of France Stratégie, Salima Benhamou, analyzes France’s delay in the diffusion of learning organizations within companies and its consequences on the quality of employment.
The economist compares four types of work organization in place in companies which she describes as “learning”, “Taylorian”, “ lean production » (a model focused on improving quality and maximizing production costs), and “simple”.
After describing them by specifying, for example, the greater autonomy of employees in learning organizations, Salima Benhamou notes that “the learning work organization appears to be the most favorable to employees on a large majority of indicators linked to the quality of work and employment”.
Two major obstacles
Concerning job stability: in a learning organization, a person is more likely to obtain a permanent contract.
Concerning recognition: employees more often say they are properly recognized for their work; they participate more in decision-making; More of them feel treated fairly: 84%, compared to 69% and 64% of employees in “lean” and “Taylor” organizations, respectively.
Finally, they are the least likely to declare their health threatened by their working conditions: 29%, compared to 47% in “ lean production “.
So why delay in developing this organizational model? Its distribution in France is, certainly, ahead of some countries in southern Europe, such as Greece, Spain or Portugal, but very behind in comparison to Northern Europe. For Salima Benhamou, the two major obstacles are the education system and vertical management.
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