“I no longer get attached to new recruits because they don’t stay,” laments Carole *, director of a large temporary agency in Ile-de-France. Whether it is the people responsible for recruiting temporary workers or the latter, the problem of turnover is the same: many are just passing through. Even the open-ended contract does not protect the employer from departures: 470,000 French people left their permanent contracts in the first quarter of the year, i.e. 20% more than at the end of 2019, according to the Management of coordinating research, studies and statistics (Dares). Added to this number is the share, not quantified, of CDI proposals declined and that of fixed-term contracts not renewed at the initiative of the employee. The phenomenon remains more limited than in the United States, where he was nicknamed the “Great Resignation”but one question remains: where are these people who said goodbye to their jobs?
Same profession, new employer
With an unemployment rate at its lowest since 2008 – 7.1% in the first quarter of 2022 – and advertisements abounding in many sectors, employees have regained a certain position of strength vis-à-vis recruiters. Salary is no longer the only compass for job seekers. New selection criteria are being looked at more closely, such as the possibility of teleworking or even obtaining a four-day week. “We take what we have to take, experience, and then we leave”, summarizes Théa, who until now was an analyst in a city laboratory.
With five successive increases in the space of six months, for a total of 500 euros net additional earned over this period, the salary suited him. However, she regretted a bad atmosphere and a lack of versatility, despite her employer’s promises. Théa then began to look for a job more in line with her aspirations. As soon as she found him, she immediately gave notice. “Anyway, for me the CDI is not a career goal. To start working life, put money aside and establish projects, it’s important. But later, in three years, I would like to open my own business”, she says, enthusiastic, at the idea of creating her cosmetology business in Congo.
Like Théa, most people who quit are looking for a job in a sector similar to the one they left. “Few people radically change their field of activity after a skills assessment, they stay in it and sometimes do not change jobs either”, notes Daphnée Breton, occupational psychologist. She specifies that the employees who come to consult her and who ask themselves questions appreciate, most of the time, their profession and it is “rather the conditions in which they exercise it which do not correspond to their expectations”. Lack of recognition, for example, is cited by 52% of people who say they want to change jobs, according to a survey by the BVA institute published last April.
Revolutionize your professional life
But sometimes changing employers is not enough. The wage labor becomes too narrow a straitjacket, in which the employee no longer finds his account. “I could not return to a salaried position. I felt like a simple link in the chain, an executor when I am a rather proactive person. Now I do a lot of things and I touch to everything”, confides Vincent Godbert, 28, who resigned to start his own business with Géraldine Robert, met after an announcement in an entrepreneur newspaper. They now manage Jog & Jim, an online store dedicated to eco-responsible sportswear. For her, the decision was imposed during her maternity leave. “I had time to ask myself and ask myself what I really wanted to do and that’s how I was able to move forward with my project. I wanted to be an example for my child and above all not to have any regrets. “, explains the young woman of 32 years.
Changing career paths can go as far as completely renewing one’s relationship with the very idea of work. Jérémie Brygo is the administrator of the website Frugalism and published a book on the same theme, A salary without doing anything (or almost). In his book, he shows that with a simple lifestyle and early investments, securing income without working, or doing it otherwise, is possible. After more than twenty years working in precarious jobs as an intermittent entertainment worker and combining employers to secure his situation, he gradually began to invest. Gradually, his pensions allow him to completely do without a salaried job. “Me, and many others, since I no longer work for an employer, I actually work a lot more because I devote myself entirely to projects that are close to my heart”, he testifies. He therefore invests his time in the training he teaches or the website he takes care of. Originally, however, he had “not approached things with the idea of financial freedom in mind”. But the transformations in the world of work will, according to him, change mentalities because “more and more people understand, on the one hand, the need to be secure and, on the other hand, the desire to open up the fields possibilities while professions are disappearing”. For him, security and freedom therefore go hand in hand for those who know how to invest their money.
Get out of the salary system
For a handful of resigners, quitting their job was a way to focus on themselves and take stock of their priorities. An OpinionWay survey for Indeed, published in May 2022, shows that 28% of respondents could quit without any future plans (neither job offer nor personal project). Like Tita, who trained in tourism and usually works as a seasonal worker. The unemployment reform, which now takes into account days without activity and requires having worked at least six months in the last 24 months before receiving benefits, has forced her to apply for the active solidarity income (RSA ). “Tomorrow, if I am offered a permanent contract, I will feel suffocated. Today, I do painting and music and, later, I would like to sell some of my paintings” she confides shyly. She says she lives her life day by day, without a specific project. “For me, work is just a contribution of money”, she adds a little disillusioned.
Leaving but not flourishing
For the economist and philosopher Serge Latouche, ambassador of the idea of degrowth and author of Work less, work differently or not work at all, these resignations are due to “a system where we go from one crisis to another” which ultimately pushes people “to want to get out of it”. But if the desire to find meaning in one’s work, to change daily life or simply to devote oneself to what makes us happy may seem like a shortcut to happiness, disillusion may also be at the end of the road.
According Morning Consult, who surveyed between December 2021 and January 2022 in six countries for Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG), 63% of French people who left their jobs during the pandemic say they quit “too quickly”. A record among all the countries studied. If given the choice, 65% of those resigning would even return to their former employer. Finally, only 24% of respondents are “extremely satisfied” with their decision.
Work psychologist Daphnée Breton believes that there is also a strong imperative for mobility among young graduates. An injunction which is therefore not necessarily a guarantee of freedom and satisfaction: “We expect young people to be flexible and the field of internal development is disinvested. This inevitably has repercussions on their behavior on the job market. employment,” she says. An exit which remains however reserved for the less precarious and the youngest whose family responsibility is still limited and the acceptance of the greater financial risk. If the comparison with the phenomenon of “Great resignation” observed in the United States is complex to engage, a large number of French people have however already engaged in a “great reflection” around the meaning of their professional life.