Very attractive hiring conditions are offered to certain future civil servants.
In certain professional sectors, recruiting has become a real headache. Lack of interest in the sector, unattractive working conditions… Many managers are struggling to complete their workforce. If this is true for the private sector, which nevertheless attracts, it is even more true in the public sector.
France has 5.2 million civil servants across the country. Whether they are state, territorial or hospital civil servants, they represent around 20% of the total employees in France. A stable share for the last twenty years. However, not all civil service careers are attractive. Thus, attractive financial schemes have been put in place to try to push certain professionals to serve the State.
The hospital environment is one of the sickest sectors. The public hospital is facing a decline in resources and an ever-increasing workload which is pushing some professionals to turn to liberal practice: more flexibility in the organization of work and better remuneration, the cocktail is inevitably more attractive.
Three specialties are mainly lacking in the various public health establishments: anesthetists-intensivists, psychiatrists and radiologists. These are three professions presenting “significant recruitment difficulties” within hospitals: only 50% of anesthesiologists are in hospitals, 45% for psychiatrists and… 14% for radiologists! For everyone, working conditions and pay are the causes of desertion.
To compensate for these shortcomings, the State is trying to restore the attractiveness of these professions when they are exercised in the public service. The leverage used is monetary: up to 30,000 euros in bonuses can be granted to these professionals when they decide to settle in a hospital. To do this, certain conditions must be respected.
The regulation provides that this bonus is offered to contract practitioners (i.e. those who hold temporary positions within the establishment) and to hospital assistants (professionals who are not tenured). When these people agree to take the hospital practitioner exam in one of the three disciplines and to practice for at least three years within the same hospital, a bonus ranging from €10,000 to €30,000 is then paid.
Since it was introduced in 2016, the system only concerned anesthesia-resuscitation and radiology. Psychiatry was added in 2024. However, on the first two specialties, no real effect seems to be felt since the workforce is still stable on the number of these full-time professionals in hospitals. On the other hand, more and more professionals are turning to a mixed organization of their work: partly in private practice, partly in hospital. Enough to compensate for the shortcomings?