After only a week in his company, Arnaud (not his real name), ministerial advisor until January and now responsible for the development of the private sector, hates having to fill out a multitude of tables to justify the time dedicated to this or that task. Within his ministry, he enjoyed a freedom of action that he could not find in his new job. “The business world is a whole universe that I am discovering”admits after having increased his positions in the office.
Two universes that look at each other like mud dogs. On the one hand, the private sector considers that officials have poor performance; On the other hand, the public sector considers that companies are obsessed with the pursuit of profits. Furthermore, outside of high positions, and even if the trend reverses slightly, movements from one to the other remain rare. If both respond to sometimes opposite logics, the private sector could involve its employees more by being inspired by the public service mission, when the latter would benefit from better encouraging its agents throughout their career.
“For a long time, the transformation of the public service focused on users to the detriment of the working conditions of agents, but there was a setback after the confinements linked to Covid., comments Sigrid Berger, founder of Profil public, a start-up specialized in public procurement. Not very competitive in salary matters, the administrations have demonstrated for about three years that they are capable of responding to a demand for more transversal structures, of granting more autonomy to agents, of offering teleworking…”
More dynamic careers in the private sector
The public sector is capable of innovating to attract profiles without increasing its costs. Since 2001, due to the lack of applications, the community of municipalities of Grand Lieu (Loire-Atlantique) opted for flexibility in the organization of working time and proposed to its agents to group the 36 hours 30 of weekly working time into 4.5 days. week: “This organization, which allows a lot of comfort, was chosen by 99% of our employees. This immediately became one of the main arguments we presented in our job offers. We were one of the first organizations to do this, before it became common in the private sector.reports Hélène Savina, general director of services at Grand Lieu Communauté.
But, unlike the private sector, careers in the public service suffer from a rigidity linked to the status of civil servant considered restrictive: the disadvantage of a more egalitarian system is that promotion is marked by long stages and candidates are afraid to do the same work throughout his work. career, especially since civil servants are usually not free from their mission.
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