The sentence is written in capital letters: “INVEST IN THE WELL-BEING OF YOUR EMPLOYEES”. Below, the text continues: “the performance of a company is linked to the well-being of its employees”. Advice from a popular management magazine? Nope: they appear on the presentation brochure of the “Wellness Reiki” site, a company specializing in an “unconventional” treatment method of Japanese origin. Its principle: to heal and soothe a patient by laying on of hands, using “energy” and “vital breath” which is found everywhere in nature. In the workplace, the practice of “meditative relaxation” must make it possible “to avoid harm to people’s health” to make the company “a space for fulfillment”.
In the great nebula of professional training, Reiki is only one of the disciplines of the Trojan horse of personal development in the company. On the edge of therapy and coaching, these professionals have made their way in a world of work that has become obsessed with individual performance that could always be improved.
Valued individual initiative
If the rules are lacking, the money is in any case not lacking. According to a study by the Xerfi agency, national spending on training should reach 27.7 billion euros per year by 2024. The French coaching company estimates the professional market at 105 million euros . This profitable business is based on generous rates: according to the French branch of the International Coaching Federation (ICF), company sessions “mostly” reach between 200 and 350 euros per hour. For group sessions, a company must count around 2,500 euros per day. There are much more expensive prices, with packages that can reach 10,000 euros. Prices can even burst the ceiling: last year, the municipal team of Nantes thus carried out a seminar under the direction of a coach suspected of pouring into “esoteric personal development”. Total cost: more than 20,000 euros for the three formations, with the aim, according to the town hall, of “defining the objectives of the mandate” and “structuring the collective dynamic”.
To explain this success of personal development, a little backtracking is necessary. “Since the 1970s and the tertiarization of the economy, we have profoundly changed our management model”, explains Scarlett Salman, Lecturer in sociology at Gustave Eiffel University (Marne-la-Vallée) and author of In the care of capitalism (Ed. Presses de Sciences Po). The company is moving from assembly-line work to a more “flexible” organization. “We value individual initiative more than before, which can only develop if employees are not afraid to communicate and collaborate,” continues the researcher.
Get better performance
In this context, the arrival of a “benevolent” and “listening” manager becomes essential, regardless of the sector. The time when the employee must leave his emotions at the door of the job is over. “We no longer want simple performers, but people who invest, continues Scarlett Salman. We are witnessing the personalization of capitalism”. The company is no longer only interested in the result of the work accomplished. To exploit these new sources, coaches and trainers appear to be valuable assets, capable of bringing everyone’s potential to fruition. “From the 1980s, the business community sought to systematize relationships between individuals, to work on models to better understand the processes of internal collaboration and external relationships with customers. And thus, to obtain better performance “, explains Elisabeth Feytit, documentary filmmaker and creator of the podcast Meta de Choc. The credo is simple: happy employees are productive employees.
“We value individual initiative more than before, which can only develop if employees are not afraid to communicate and collaborate”
In France, coaching began to be notable in the second half of the 1990s. The first professional association was created in 1997. Since then, the number of training courses has exploded, and approximately 2,500 people are members of one of the three main professional associations of French coaches. Aided by this new vision of the relationship between managers and their teams, personal development trainers will also benefit from their often intimate knowledge of the private world. “Coaches mainly have two profiles. On the one hand, you have people who have had bushy trajectories, and who add training as a new string to their professional bow. On the other, managers and team leaders who, thanks to a professional retraining, have chosen coaching”, notes Scarlett Salman.
Barnum effect
Among the tools used, the personality test, such as the MBTI (Meyers Briggs Type Indicator). Developed in the 1940s, based on the theories of the controversial psychiatrist Carl Jung, it has long been questioned by researchers. According to several analyses, nearly half of people who do it twice will have different results. However, like the enneagram, a personality test pinned by the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuses (Milviludes), this quiz remains very popular. Although having as much reliability as a horoscope, these methods seduce via the “Barnum” effect designating, in social psychology, the capacity of each to accept a description applying to his personality if it is sufficiently vague and flattering.
These assessments are not the only methods to enter the business despite a dubious basis. Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), emotional quotient, communication process: each coach has his own method with jargon accents. These training courses are very expensive: between 520 and 2,160 for courses of 5 to 18 days for “Human Resources Training”, 1,400 euros per person for fourteen hours of training for “Coach Relax”… But these concepts do not are often scientific only in name, or are based on old research, the postulates of which have since been contradicted or weakened by current science.
Tarot, sophrology, hypnosis…
Scholarly tinsel can even be dropped in favor of more esoteric courses. The practice of Reiki is one example. Some professionals offer “group sophrology courses”, hypnosis or even… divinatory tarot reading. “To develop your potential, but also to undertake, a tool very popular with business leaders to study a profile, a strategy, or to innovate”, promises for example a “tarologist coach” on its site. Miviludes “observes the proliferation of methods which have in common to be integrated into management, education and even care practices” she tells us. The latter “offer for any guarantee of seriousness only the label that they self-attribute” and this “even though they have neither scientific foundation nor cultural foundation and have never been evaluated”.
Excesses that can sometimes lead to the ruin of a business. In April, four indictments for “moral harassment”, “bankruptcy” or “complicity in bankruptcy” and “abuse of corporate assets” were pronounced against the manager of a construction company, two auditors and a consultant, affiliated with the Church of Scientology. The training had cost 600,000 euros over one year.
Regulation of the profession
In response, training specialists have put in place a few safeguards. With the National Commission for Professional Certification (CNCP), federations such as the ICF are trying to have the title of professional coach officially recognized. But this self-regulation does not seem to have overcome the excesses. “I had already alerted in 2013 on the subject, remarks Jean-François Amadieu, sociologist, author of HRD: the black book. Since then, nothing has changed.”
Faced with this blind spot, professionals must therefore be vigilant. “Completely legitimate formations exist, but they must be chosen carefully by looking at their descriptions carefully. If pseudo-scientific concepts appear, this should already alert us to their nature”, recalls Élisabeth Feytit. And choose trainers with a little critical thinking.