The boomerang effect of individualized performance management

Governance. The employment data clearly highlights the phenomenon of the “great quit” (” Is France experiencing a “great resignation”? », Dares, August 2022). As elsewhere in the world, our labor market has experienced, since the end of 2021, an exceptional increase in employee resignations comparable to that of 2008 and 1974.

Such a move portends severe economic and social turbulence, as its historical precedents suggest. Resignations today affect all sectors and create strong tensions in companies to recruit (Insee, economic report, September 2022).

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Macroeconomic analysis interprets the “great resignation” as a windfall effect: employees take advantage of the post-Covid recovery to put employers in competition. The result is intense inter-company poaching that promotes higher salaries and… encourages resignations. Despite unemployment at 7%, there is no “reserve army of unemployed” to calm things down, because all skills are affected by the temptation to play on the opportunity to earn more.

Weakening of the community dimension

A microeconomic analysis is nevertheless necessary if we want to understand why employees do not prefer to stay in their company, even if it means negotiating advantages since, ultimately, these should be granted to those who replace them. Why this phenomenon of resignation?

One element of the answer may be suggested by the weakening of the community dimension of the company. As field analyzes have shown (The company as a communityby Florence Palpacuer, Laurent Taskin et al., Nouvelle Cité, 256 pages, 20 euros), good working conditions are not limited to financial advantages.

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The quality of human and hierarchical relations favors or not the existence of collectives which provide each employee with valuable resources in terms of mutual aid and solidarity. Enrolling in friendly collectives lightens the weight of the efforts, so that, with comparable incomes, the working conditions seem much better.

However, these collectives have been abused over the past few decades by individualized performance management: personal skills and excellence have been encouraged, job fluidity and job changes have been encouraged. Even so-called “quality of life at work” policies have targeted the individual, his well-being and even his “happiness”.

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