25%. This is the share of temporary workers observed in French aeronautical companies with 100 to 500 employees duringa comparative study by Jérôme Gautié and Roland Ahlstrand on the difference in the application of lean management in France and Sweden and its consequences on the lives of employees. In Sweden, in comparable companies, the proportion of temporary staff is negligible, notes Jérôme Gautié. The labor economist sees the“indicator of greater investment in human capital”, confirmed by more developed internal training policies in Sweden than in France.
This difference in approach is decisive for the introduction of lean management in a factory to produce either an improvement in the quality of work and productivity, or on the contrary stress and a loss of recognition. This is what Jérôme Gautié develops in an analysis carried out as part of 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 Employment channel of the Lemonde.fr site.
Lean management introduced in France around thirty years ago aims to produce as close as possible to stocks by making the entire production chain responsible by empowering operators and passing information from the bottom up. almost in real time in order to react immediately to the slightest defect, incident or unforeseen stock variation. This process from Japan makes it possible to develop what we call the “learning company”: each employee being encouraged to improve their skills and pass on their avenues of innovation.
But if this approach was indeed carried out in Sweden, in France lean was put through the mill of vertical management, in “the shadow of Taylorism”, writes Jérôme Gautié. Which means that employees were little consulted, management by indicators was reinforced, increasing the workload and increasing stress. And the daily meeting, characteristic of lean management for having a regular qualitative exchange, has been reduced “verifying lists of indicators and transmitting information from management”, writes Jérôme Gautié. French lean, centralized by a hierarchical organization, has thus resulted in an intensification of work, a source of new arduousness.
The author’s aim is not to cast opprobrium on the management of French companies but to encourage us to listen to “enlightened managers” who want to reserve the use of new digital tools for sharing information for better coordination rather than control of operators, and insist on “the necessary autonomy and participation of employees to develop their capacity for initiative”. So many avenues to meditate on in view of the upcoming negotiations on the quality of life at work.
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