“The goal of full employment can only be achieved if we improve the employment rate of older people,” Olivier Dussopt, Minister of Labor, told BFM Business a few days ago. However, it is clear that France has one of the lowest employment rates for older people.
According to a Dares report, published in April 2022, in France, the employment rate for people aged 55 to 64 is 56%. Une moyenne qui cache de profondes disparités, car ce chiffre fonda drastiquement après 60 ans: il passe de 75.1% pour les 55-59 ans à 35.5% pour les 60-64 ans (against 46% in moyenne pour l’ European Union).
The minister explains that “our economic system does not have a culture of employment for the elderly”. This observation is true of many French companies, as highlighted in this study* by Indeed.
Experience praised but barriers to hiring
The results hurt. One in four employees (23%) have already been criticized for being too old for the position in question, during previous hires. And more than a quarter of business leaders admit that when faced with equivalent CVs they favor the younger candidate.
Above all, older people experience barriers to recruitment, which are often unfair. Health problems and fatigue are mentioned by 46% of the leaders surveyed. As well as the difficulty of appropriating digital tools by 32%.
The job search platform is based on the figures reported as part of the Malakoff Humanis Absenteeism barometer, retrospective 2016-2022, which shows that absenteeism due to illness translates into an overrepresentation of young people (18-34 years), constant since 2016 (46% in 2022 compared to 42% for the whole). And it also translates into a constant underrepresentation of those over 50 years of age (34% in 2022).
Adapting to teams and processes is also perceived, to a lesser extent, as an obstacle to hiring these older employees. Thus, managers also mention: their ability to get used to new organizational methods (29%), the difficulty in imposing managers on them, especially the younger ones (28%) and gaps in relationships with colleagues (20%).
Paradoxically, managers (but also employees in general) praise the experience of seniors when they are on their teams. Your assets? Transmission, sharing knowledge with other more novice collaborators; but also knowledge of the profession and its environment. Employees also give them much more credit in this area than business leaders.
Training, key to the employment of older people
“Training employees over 45 today makes sense: first, because these employees still have many years to go before they retire (17-20 career years), and second, because they are likely to stay with their company for a long time. hiring a senior is not always synonymous with a larger budget, while some profiles favor vertical career development and want to acquire certain responsibilities, others opt for horizontal development by changing companies, or even recycling, so contrary to belief popular, a senior can find himself a beginner in a position, while contributing his experience acquired in other types of missions (sometimes very different)”, emphasizes the manager.
And to conclude: “With the shortage of workers and a pension reform at the center of the social debate and in a context of demographic aging, it would be prudent for business leaders to review their hiring strategy, without forgetting these profiles. whatever happens, soon we will be the majority in the companies”.
“Now we must speed up the hiring of these experienced profiles,” adds the ANDRH, the national association of HRDs.
And advocating for “a senior plan on a par with the youth plan based on a reduction in social contributions when hiring an older worker and on the over-financing of senior professional transition plans. A specific system to promote lifelong learning by combining mission and training and measures to promote intergenerational collaboration within organizations”.
“A senior plan at the height of the young plan”
To promote the return to work of those over 55 years of age, the Government is working on several measures. “One of the ways could be to allow an older person who accepts a lower paid job to keep part of their unemployment benefit to compensate for the loss of income. We can work on it,” says Olivier Dussopt, who also wants to “promote the staggered retirement and retirement employment accumulation.
“The creation of a professional employment index for the elderly, on the model of gender equality, will be part of the discussions”, adds Olivier Dussopt. He also mentions “incentive mechanisms, in the form, for example, of exemptions from social security contributions” for companies.
“The HRDs identify the index of older people as an interesting instrument to change the perception of older people in the company through objective and shared indicators”, estimates the ANDRH.
The Medef does not want an index
On the business side, the president of Medef Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux is not seduced by these clues. He spoke out against a “minimum percentage of older people” in companies, a line of thought put on the table by the Government to promote the employment of older people.
“I don’t see how we can put this in place in a reasonable way,” he told Les Echos, when asked about an “elderly employment index.” “It doesn’t make sense, for example, to ask startups to have a minimum percentage of seniors,” she says.
*: study carried out on a sample of: 1,003 employees (representative sample of the French salaried population of private companies with 20 employees and over 18 years of age and over) and 406 managers of private companies (representative sample of companies with 20 or more employees) . The sample of employees was drawn up using the quota method.
Source: BFM TV
