Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP): Why choose this term over Predictive Job and Skills Management (GPEC)?

Crowds rarely get excited about the subject of GPEC. Moreover, it is often synonymous with broken promises and useless regulatory devices. But don't leave right away, because things are moving!

Indeed, in recent months and at the time of writing, the subject of GPEC has come up more and more in the discourse of our interlocutors. This strange timeframe is in fact nothing random, because 2024 will be a GPEC year. Explanations.

What are we talking about?

Depending on the company, you may hear these different terms:

• • • GPEC: Predictive Management of Jobs and Skills
    • GEPP: Job Management and Professional Careers or even GEPPMM (by adding the Diversity of Careers, with even more letters just to scare people)
    • SWP: Strategic Workforce Planning, an expression offensive to the guardians of the Toubon law

This avalanche of acronyms* that will delight fans of alphabet soup is often used interchangeably. We won't insult you here by going into detail what they mean in detail, as there are plenty of resources on this subject. But a few reminders are helpful.

Initially, the purpose of implementing GPEC agreements was to encourage companies with more than 300 employees to provide visibility on the evolution of jobs and skills to their employees, in a logic of employability. This was obviously theoretically virtuous, but in practice quite cumbersome and restrictive.

Recognizing this, the legislator (the Rebsamen laws and then the Macron ordinances) gradually transformed this device into GEPPMM, which, in addition to changing the name, brought the following changes:

• • • An obligation to negotiate with the social partners but no longer an obligation to agree
    • The introduction of Professional Pathways, which is supposed to provide a more dynamic dimension of supporting employees
    • Objectives of mixed professions, i.e. avoid exceeding 65%-35% between men and women in a given profession

Did that bury GPEC? No, because it is still part of the system, and because of a misnomer, everyone continues to use the term.

As for Mixité's objectives, they are statistically absent from the agreements that are published.

Despite these developments, the approach still suffers from a bad image, and seems to be perceived only through the prism of social dialogue instead of being a real strategic device at the service of the company.

So why now?

However, 2024 will be a year under the sign of GPEC in France. The reason is purely mathematical:

• • • The Macron ordinances date from 2017, but the implementing decrees only came out in December of this year, so the agreements were signed in 2018
    • The negotiations are triennial
    • 2018 + 3 + 3 = 2024

CQFD.

By analogy, this cycle can be compared to that of professional elections. All companies had to hold their elections at about the same time during the reform of representative bodies (the creation of the CSE). Since the duration of terms of office is the same for everyone, everyone is called to the polls at the same time.

In addition, temporality corresponds well to economic cycles. Social dialogue in 2022 and 2023 mainly revolved around remuneration, value sharing, and... teleworking. Unsurprisingly, in a world of inflation and changes in the relationship to work.

But now that these topics have been addressed, isn't it time in 2024 to tackle GPEC a little more seriously by restoring it to its former glory? Perhaps also by benefiting from the windfall effect created by the trend towards “skills based organizations”?

And the SWP in all of this?

As we have seen, the GPEC (or GEPP, or GEPPMM) suffers from its strong connotation “social and regulatory system”. A bit like QWL in its day, or even teleworking.

To counter this negative image, there's nothing like a bit of marketing and the language of Shakespeare. QVT is therefore becoming “well being” or the “future of work”, teleworking is becoming “hybrid working”, and GPEC... into SWP!

This rebranding is necessary for several reasons:

• • • The GPEC is a purely French legal provision. However, the challenges of large groups are global. The only way to have a harmonized global vision is the universally accepted term Strategic Workforce Planning
    • In SWP, the S is very important: it makes it possible to link business issues with human issues.
    • By breaking away from the official nomenclature, it loses the binding regulatory aspect.

This obviously does not mean that the SWP is not useful to GPEC, quite the contrary! But it makes it possible to reverse the sense of priorities: we first build something useful for the organization, which will then irrigate all the traditional applications - training, mobility, recruitment, recruitment, diversity, social dialogue...

Your SWP in 2024

Nobody needs to be convinced of the importance of leading A SWP approach. It has also been consistently cited in the top 3 HR topics by BCG for more than 10 years. However, it may have been frequently deprioritized.

What if we took advantage of the context of 2024 to change our approach? What if we invited the professions, the managers of Business Units, Finance, to take part in a collaborative project in the service of the evolution of the business? To return to the long term and to plan without sacrificing agility? Chick!

*for purists: only GPEC is an acronym when pronounced “Jépék”, the others are acronyms