If you thought my recent skewering of the French work ethic wasn’t enough, I just made an interesting discovery during a discussion with a student. Apparently her company (a very large, leading French financial firm) provides a career development track of urging employees to change their jobs—that correspond to their qualifications, of course—every three to four years. That’s nice, considering finding employment isn’t an easy gambit in this country and the rigid university selection process forces people to stay within one given field—at least this way employees are encouraged to diversify their experiences. Of course, in America, an employee’s career development relies largely on his own motivation and isn’t gently nudged in that direction by his company. But I digress.
The real cherry on top is that when an employee at my student’s company wants to change positions, she can’t just one day make the switch. She must wait for a replacement to come along before she moves on to greener pastures. This can take a while, for a variety of reasons—not the least of which, French employment law dictates that individuals must give three months’ notice when resigning! Three months! (It’s hard to imagine how those employees stay motivated, but apparently a considerable stipend is withheld until the end of this lame-duck period.) Anyhow, my student’s manager was in a real pickle when he was all set to change positions, but nary a replacement could be found. He waited so long that he tried to negotiate several times with his managers, and finally they told him that they’d need him to stay in his current position for another two years (!!!) until they could properly replace him. Wow. Now that’s career mobility.
My student informed me that her manager is not alone—many employees have had to wait months…and months…and more months for replacements. All it does is decrease motivation. My student has benefited from her manager’s lack of it, as he lets her leave early and take vacation during super busy work periods. That’s great for her, but when viewed on a larger scale, that’s terrible for employee satisfaction and worker productivity at her firm. And I don’t have any proof, but something tells me the problem exists at more than just one French company.
16 June 2008
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2 comments:
IT may be time I finally realize that I can react to your blog entries! Imust say taht what you have written is largely (I think after 13 years living here I've perfected my Frenglish)ture. I've found even that being ambitious is seen as suspicious: why would you want to do more than your job description and your workers rights tell you to do?! And this is, in my opinion, a real problem...
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