L’Express: As head of human resources in a large city, do you have difficulty hiring people in the ecological transition professions?
Vincent Lescaillez: Yes, very clearly. And I don’t know of a single community that isn’t in that situation right now. This is a real concern because we need these skills to achieve our decarbonization goals.
How do you explain it?
I see at least two reasons. The first is the labor shortage: there are simply not enough trained people on the labor market. In terms of energy renovation, the number of experts available today is much lower than the demand. Especially since these are sometimes new professions whose training courses have not yet been established. To give you a concrete illustration, in Bordeaux, we are trying to develop responsible digital technology, more sober in the energies mobilized, but candidates with the appropriate qualifications do not necessarily exist.
And what is the second reason?
Competition between recruiters! Cities, departments, regions… we are looking for the same profiles! And that’s not all: in the construction trades, the natural outlet for young graduates remains the major construction companies, often offering very attractive salaries. Local authorities are not seen as potential employers. They must therefore modify their representation in the imagination of these talents.
What are the hardest jobs to fill?
Technical positions related to building, networks and energy. I’ll give you a concrete case: we are currently recruiting specialists to recover heat from a waste incineration plant and supply water pipes. We have been looking for more than eighteen months! In addition, since January 2023, we have opened ten positions specializing in climate transition. Five months later, four are still vacant…
What levers can you activate?
There are three ways to acquire a skill: external recruitment, internal training, recourse to subcontracting. On the recruitment side, we are working on our attractiveness by highlighting our power of action to set a global strategy on the scale of a territory. We are also seizing some leeway with regard to our salary scales and regulatory constraints to offer more advantageous remuneration for certain profiles in high demand. Otherwise, we could not bring them.
Small communities do not necessarily have this possibility…
No, but they can pool their needs and appeal to the higher level – intercommunality, department – to obtain this expertise.
What about the upskilling of your employees?
We must put the package on training! In my opinion, it is the most profitable investment in the long term. In Bordeaux, we have an internal system called the Climate Energy Academy: we aim to train 6,700 agents by 2026 and 10,000 by 2028. The culture of energy transition must infuse everywhere.