Pôle emploi - Cour des comptes

PUBLIC ENTITIES AND POLICIES
PÔLE EMPLOI:
THE TEST OF MASS
UNEMPLOYMENT
Thematic Public Report
Summary
July 2015
g DISCLAIMER
This summary is intended to facilitate the understanding
and use of the report produced by the Cour des Comptes.
Solely the original report is legally binding on the Cour des
comptes.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
1 Mixed results and rising costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
2 An intermediary mission between labour supply and demand
that is no longer a priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Inadequate services and persistent operational difficulties . . . .15
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 9
Guidelines and recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
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3
INTRODUCTION
The services provided by Pôle emploi, the main public operator for employment,
are a key issue in view of the current unemployment level. In this regard, Pôle
emploi had to take up two major challenges during the recent period:
- The merger of ANPE and the network of Assédic required large-scale organisational
changes, including the merging of services in joint agencies and the establishment
of a new status for staff members. Today, this merger can be taken for granted, even
if the expected results have not all been met, particularly the practising of a "single
job" which consisted in entrusting to the same adviser the compensation mission
from the Assédic and the placement mission from ANPE; this idea was quickly
abandoned and for good reason.
- Pôle emploi had to deal also with significant changes in the labour market. The
number of job seekers has increased by more than 58% since January 2009 to
reach 6.2 million in January 2015 (all categories inclusive, including job seekers
under training or state-subsidised work contracts). Over the same period, the
proportion of unemployed who are registered for more than a year rose from
30.3% to 43.3%. Furthermore, an increasingly greater portion of the population
has a high frequency of transitions between employment and unemployment.
Finally, Pôle emploi has seen the rapid emergence of a growing number of
stakeholders, particularly of websites providing other possibilities to access
job offers and job applications.
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
Created in 2008 through the merger of the national employment agency
(ANPE) and the network of Assédic (Associations for employment in industry
and trade, Pôle emploi is today the largest public operator of France with
53,000 staff members, a thousand agencies, €32bn paid out allowances and
benefits, and a budget of €5bn. Funded by the French Government (30%) and
Unédic (National inter-professional union for employment in industry and trade)
(70%), its resources have increased by €630 million between 2009 and 2014.
Since 2012, 4,000 additional recruitment of advisers on permanent contracts
were authorised.
5
Figure 1: Unemployment trends between January 2009 and January 2015
Source: Cour des Comptes, according to Pôle emploi and DARES, monthly statistics of the labour market.
SA-WDA data in thousands, Metropolitan France.
6
Demanding missions
In 2008, the law entrusted Pôle emploi
with two main missions:
- The unemployment insurance compensation (calculation and payment
of unemployment allowances);
- The return of job seekers to
employment: in this respect, Pôle
emploi must provide a range of services
to companies and job seekers (collection
of job offers, assistance to employers
in recruitment, assistance for job
search, career guidance, etc.).
the matching of labour supply with
labour demand through a range of
services (training offered to job seekers,
linking job offers with job seekers, etc.).
The diversity of job seekers and
companies necessarily calls for a
differentiation of services according to
the needs, and of their terms of issue
but this intermediation role applies
to all employers and job seekers:
according to the legal texts that
define its action, Pôle emploi is not
intended to limit its public service
activities to a restricted public.
Mixed results
Law does not simply establish Pôle
emploi as a counter to deliver these
services to job seekers and companies.
It renders it responsible for ensuring
that these services are the most
effective possible to find a job or to
recruit: For this reason, it places the
concrete knowledge of the needs of
stakeholders in the labour market at
the heart of Pôle emploi's missions.
In practice, this means that the advice
and services offered to job seekers
by Pôle emploi must be based on an
in-depth knowledge of companies,
and vice versa.
The operator has therefore a fundamental role in the labour market's
functioning, which can be summarised
by the term 'intermediation', that is,
Despite the sharp increase in unemployment and onerousness of the
reorganisation following the merger
of ANPE and the Assédic, Pôle emploi
has managed to reduce the registration
time for job seekers. As for their
compensation, the effectiveness has
generally been maintained and user
satisfaction is high. In this area, Pôle
emploi's activity is however weakened by
the persistence of onerous procedures
that are insufficiently digitised and by
highly complex regulations.
As for the return of job seekers to
employment, the results are difficult to
interpret because the main indicators
do not distinguish, among the different
resumptions of activity, what relates to
Pôle emploi's action and what is due to
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
1
Mixed results and rising costs
7
Mixed results and rising costs
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
other factors beyond its control such
as the economic conditions – Pôle
emploi is not liable for job destructions
or creations –, resumption of activity
supported by other public employment service operators and informal
networks or even the labour market’s
structure. On the whole, the results
appear to shed little light or are
insufficiently convincing to assess Pôle
emploi's own value added.
8
Pôle emploi puts forward the results
of a statistical model according to
which, after neutralising the effect of
economic conditions, the outputs to
sustainable employment would be, in
2014, 16% higher compared to the
2003–2011 period. According to Pôle
emploi, this would mark a positive
development which is due to its own
action.
However:
- It is not possible in this case also, to
distinguish in this figure which is
specifically due to Pôle emploi's
action and that of all other exogenous
factors, such as changes affecting the
functioning of the labour market,
other operators' action or individual
behaviours;
- The same indicator is in fact significantly
unfavourable (-4.3%) for the long-term
unemployment, which joins a number
of other negative findings in this
area: increase number of job seekers
registered for more than one year,
particularly the youth and seniors;
the number of Class A job seekers
with a cumulated registration period
exceeding 21 months during the last
24 months, has risen from 497,000 in
2011 to 791,000 in 2014.
Indicators regarding satisfaction of
job offers are no longer followed by
Pôle emploi because of a change in
strategy in 2012. Pôle emploi has in
fact decided to abandon any objective
of collecting job offers to favour the
aggregation of offers collected by
other stakeholders, such as some
websites. However, this decision not
only contributes to reduce the volume
of offers collected by the operator but
also to weaken direct contacts with
employers, and therefore the good
knowledge of their needs. Two
developments in this regard constitute
evidence of a degradation of the
intermediary role of Pôle emploi: the
percentage of job offers collected by
Pôle emploi but finally unfilled has
increased from 7.3% in 2008 to 16.0%
in 2013; the average number of job
seekers that Pôle emploi has to
recommend to the companies to reach
a hiring has increased from 7.0 in 2005
to 13.7 in 2012.
Mixed results and rising costs
Chart No. 1: Job offers collected by Pôle emploi and filled job offers,
per year (in thousands)
Pôle emploi finally pointed out that, on
the 18 indicators of the Multi-annual
Agreement that bind it to Unédic and
the Central Government, the latest
available figures show the progression
of 12 indicators for the period 2011 to
2014. But these are mainly indicators
of particular aspects of Pôle emploi's
work or resource indicators, and
indicators that degrade concern the
most important
results, such as the risk of long-term
unemployment (particularly for the
youth and seniors) or the number of job
seekers alienated from the workplace
for a long time.
A significant increase in costs
In parallel, Pôle emploi’s costs have
increased significantly since 2009.
Chart No. 2: Evolution of expenses for 2009 to 2014, in million €
Source: Pôle emploi, Financial Reports for 2009 to 2014
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
Source: Pôle emploi and DARES, monthly statistics of the labour market. SA-WDA data in
thousands, Metropolitan France.
9
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
Mixed results and rising costs
10
The merger of ANPE and the Assédic
has indeed been accompanied by
increasing costs: salaries and social
security charges per staff member
have increased by more than 18%
between 2009 and 2011, particularly
with the move to a new status of 90%
of Pôle emploi's staff members. These
more favourable salary conditions
were supposed to be, in part, the
compensation for more stringent
requirements expected in terms of
skills and work organisation, in particular
with the setting up of single advisers
"payment and placement": however, this
project was abandoned without the
granted advantages having so far been
questioned.
Afterwards, the adjustment to the
increase in unemployment was done
mainly through the recruitment of
advisers on permanent contracts, which
contributed to make the operator's
expenses more rigid. Whereas Pôle
emploi's activity varies with economic
cycles, it seems surprising that Pôle
emploi's collective agreement caps the
use of fixed term contracts to 5% of
total hours, and that the possibility of
subcontracting part of the activities
was not used further.
Chart No. 3: Evolution of total number of employees (FTEW)
and payroll per FTEW between 2009 and 2014
Source: Cour des Comptes, from Pôle emploi, Financial Reports for 2009 to 2014
Pôle emploi has profoundly redefined
its strategy in 2012, with the agreement
of the Central Government and Unédic.
Among the various developments that
have been decided upon, the major
orientation is to further differentiate
the services provided depending on
the targeted public. From now on,
after an initial diagnostic stage, each
job seeker, who is monitored internally
by Pôle emploi, is assigned a "support
modality".
Figure 2: Types of support to job seekers
Source: Cour des Comptes. Situation on 1st July 2015
The Court fully endorses this principle
of differentiating the services provided
based on the needs of different targeted
public. Part of them are sufficiently
independent to return to employment
just by the labour market; another part
however have special needs for support.
The principle of this segmentation is
moreover not new; it was advocated
by the European Employment
Strategy as from the late 1990s. ANPE
began to put it in place while adopting
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
2
An intermediary mission between
labour supply and demand that is
no longer a priority
11
An intermediary mission between labour
supply and demand that is no longer
a priority
in 2006 a target of a monthly meeting
for all job seekers, called "personalised
monthly monitoring" (SMP – suivi
mensuel personnalisé), which was
abandoned in 2012. Differentiation is
also widely applied abroad, in the UK
and in Germany for instance.
A change in the core business
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
The real novelty of the 2012 strategy
is, on the other hand, the redefinition
of what the operator now considers as
its core business: reinforced support
intended for job seekers who are the
most in need.
12
According to this view, when Pôle
emploi deems that the return to work
can be obtained independently by the
job seeker, it considers that its role is
only to give them the means of this
autonomy, particularly by providing
a database of job offers and more
generally, by developing digital services. The intervention of Pôle emploi's
advisers becomes therefore minimal
("monitoring" support modality).
Conversely, a small part of the
unemployed, who needs it the
most, should benefit from intensive
intervention support by the advisers:
it is on this "reinforced" support that
Pôle emploi believes its resources
must be redirected.
One consequence of this strategy is
that, paradoxically, what Pôle emploi
itself defines as its core business is
henceforth to support a very minor
part of its users by part of its staff
members who are also a minority.
Table 1: Distribution of job seekers and support modalities
Source: Pôle emploi, data on 1st January 2015. The number of advisers is expressed as the
actual number of employees. This data does not reflect the actual proportion of work
An intermediary mission between labour
supply and demand that is no longer
a priority
Pôle emploi thereby exposes itself to a
double risk: that of no longer appearing
as an interlocutor sufficiently present
for companies, and that of losing its
credibility by presenting mostly
candidates who are particularly far
from profiles desired by employers. In
addition, there is the risk of seeing Pôle
emploi evolving towards the support of
a small proportion of job seekers to the
detriment of its general intermediary
role on the labour market.
A concept of advisers' missions that
does not foster intermediation
Furthermore, the choices of reorganisation made by Pôle emploi may weaken
its advisers' knowledge of the company
world, particularly advisers in charge of
job seekers.
The percentage of working time devoted
to companies by the agency's advisers
is therefore only 12%, half of which
corresponds in fact to the reception
of phone calls and registration of
offers submitted by employers:
finally, only 6 to 7% of the working time
of Pôle emploi's advisers is devoted to
companies excluding reception and
registration of offers, of which less than
2% corresponds to visits and active
prospection among companies.
Actually, company-oriented activities,
which have decreased by 20% between
2011 and 2013, serve as the reserve for
adjustment. Although Pôle emploi has
recently undertaken to specialise
4,000 advisers in company relations,
this new organisation does not resolve
the issue of the competence of advisers
who are in charge of job seekers and are
no longer sufficiently in contact with
companies.
In addition, the criteria for recruiting
advisers focus first of all on their
interpersonal skills or on possible
experience in supporting job seekers,
rather than on knowledge of the
economy, of companies or the labour
market. Similarly, the continuous
training of advisers favours skills
oriented towards job seekers only but
few towards companies. It is therefore
predictable, but also worrying to find
from satisfaction surveys with job
seekers and companies that, with the
proposed services, the expertise of
the labour market is the aspect of
Pôle emploi's work which everybody
is the least satisfied with.
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
In addition, in so far as, faced with
stakeholders who are increasingly
numerous and dynamic on the
Internet, Pôle emploi has abandoned
all quantitative objective of collecting
job offers the prospection of job offers is
only carried out in priority for job seekers
who are in greatest difficulty. Similarly,
recruitment support services proposed
to employers henceforth depend
predominantly on job opportunities
that they can offer solely to job seekers
supported by the agency.
13
An intermediary mission between labour
supply and demand that is no longer
a priority
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
Chart No. 4: Components of job seekers' satisfaction
14
Source: Pôle emploi, Strategic and Evaluation Committee of 17th July 2014. Telephone survey of
employers. Metropolitan France, May 2014.
Chart No. 5: Components of employers' satisfaction
Source: Pôle emploi, Strategic and Evaluation Committee of 17th July 2014. Telephone survey of
employers. Metropolitan France, May 2014.
Pôle emploi finally believes that its
strategy does not make it necessary to
follow the advisers' activity because
this survey could, according to it,
encourage them to satisfy only the
simple resource indicators (number of
interviews or connecting employers
with job seekers, for example). In
doing so, Pôle emploi no longer has
the indications to know and control at
national level the real activity of its
agencies and advisers.
The modalities of differentiation, as
implemented by Pôle emploi, leaves
whole major operational limits.
Insufficient knowledge of job seekers'
and companies' needs
Marks of strong inadequacy between
the needs of job seekers and the services
provided can be observed. They show
that the current services of Pôle emploi
are actually insufficiently differentiated:
- the actual segmentation of the
services does not offer a solution
adapted to long-term unemployment.
While over 43% of job seekers have
been unemployed for over a year, it is
the support modality of job seekers
that were supposed to be the most
independent ("monitoring") which has
the highest proportion of long-term job
seekers; at the same time, it is the job
seekers in "reinforced" support modality
that have the lowest proportion of
long-term job seekers;
- in a significant number of cases, the
assignment of job seekers to support
modalities is incoherent with the criteria
that Pôle emploi has set itself;
- the change of support modality
according to the evolution of the needs
of job seekers is infrequent (5–10% of
changes only after 6 months).
In addition, the initial diagnosis of the
situation of job seekers and companies,
an essential element of the support
towards employment, is a critical point
of Pôle emploi's services: its quality is
not guaranteed and sometimes it
comes too late. Being aware of this
situation, Pôle emploi, Unédic and the
Central Government have decided to
revise the diagnosis under the
2015–2018 tripartite agreement.
Finally, Pôle emploi does not have a
precise typology of the needs of the
job seekers population; this would
help improve its offer and internal
skills.
Low Support Intensity
Unlike the strategic priority which is
stated, the actual intensity levels of the
support to job seekers are low. Thus,
75% of job seekers in "reinforced"
support have received, on average
over six months, only four or fewer
contacts
with
their
adviser
(September 2013 – February 2014),
whether in terms of interviews but
also in telephone exchange, simple
mails, etc. Finally, 59% of job seekers
in "monitoring", 49% in "guided" and
33% in "reinforced" support have a
maximum of one contact every three
months.
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
3
Inadequate services and persistent
operational difficulties
15
Inadequate services and persistent
operational difficulties
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
Table 2: Number of interviews of job seekers and their contacts
with advisers by support modality
16
Source: Pôle emploi, administrative log files. Cohorts observed over the period September
2013 – February 2014
In addition, while long-term unemployment is growing, we see that,
paradoxically, the support intensity is
greatly reduced with the duration of
unemployment. Thus, the proportion
of job seekers who have not received
any recommended action from their
referring adviser between 1 and
6 months of unemployment is between
30% and 40% (considered according to
the monitoring support); it is twice as
much important between 13 and
18 months of unemployment, since it is
then between 60 and 85%.
Table 3: Job seekers without proposed action
Source: Pôle emploi, administrative log files. Cohorts observed over the period September
2013 – February 2014
Inadequate services and persistent
operational difficulties
Dispersion of resources
Pôle emploi uses its resources in an
unsatisfactory way, particularly
regarding the advisers' working time.
Thus, support to job seekers, excluding
reception and registration, on average
represents only 30% of the working
time of referring advisers in charge of
job seekers.
Similarly, the recruitment assistance
provided to companies (processing of
offers, company visits, prospecting)
represents, excluding reception and
registration of offers, only 7% of the
working time.
Conversely, business and management
activities (meetings, training, participation in the agency's management,
etc.) occupy too much place, up to
23% of the working time.
Chart 6: Average distribution of the working time of referring advisers
in charge of job seekers
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
The situation is also unsatisfactory for
services accessible without contact
with the advisers. While the stated
objective is to provide the broadest
database possible to allow independent
research, the percentage of job seekers
with curriculum vitae online was only
26.1% in 2014.
Source: Pôle emploi, Planning Management Software 'RDVA', September
2013 – February 2014, all of France; calculations of Cour des Comptes.
Excluding unavailabilities.
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Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
Inadequate services and persistent
operational difficulties
18
Redeployment efforts have indeed
been made but they are still insufficient.
6,720 full-time equivalents (FTEs) were
assigned to the support of job seekers at
the end of 2011: their number increased
to 12,507 FTEs at the end of 2014.
This latest figure, which incorporates
efficiency gains as well as recruitment
and a change in the accounting
method, is still very low compared to
the total number of employees of
the operator. The objective of
redeploying 2,000 additional FTEs
from the new 2015-2018 tripartite
agreement therefore does not close
the issue of available margins within
Pôle emploi.
This dispersion of resources is increased
by the extent of Pôle emploi's network,
which has over a thousand agencies
and service points. While the benchmark
is that at least 80% of job seekers reside
within less than 30 minutes from an
agency, this rate has actually reached
96.4% in 2012, and even 99.5% when
taking into account the establishment
of Pôle emploi partners. Overall, the
coordination of contact channels by
the Internet and telephone together
with the reception of the agencies is
insufficient.
CONCLUSION
At the end of its work, the Court's findings lead it to observe that the quality and
value-added services of Pôle emploi should be based on a concrete knowledge
of the needs of all stakeholders in the labour market: advice that it provides and
services it offers to all job seekers must absolutely be based on an in-depth
knowledge of the needs of all companies, and vice versa. This quality of the
public service is a requirement that originates from Pôle emploi's mission
statement, just as it is set out today by law.
The Court considers it necessary to bear all the consequences of the objective
of a better differentiation of services in favour of job seekers and companies,
particularly by having a better knowledge of the users' needs and by developing
an adapted and monitored support. It notes that, in the modalities chosen to
implement this necessary guideline, there is a risk of lowering the requirements on
two points: Pôle emploi's intermediary role on the labour market, a fundamental
component of the definition of public employment service and its effectiveness;
and the issue of efficiency, so that Pôle emploi's resources are best used.
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
In addition, current levels of cost and staffing of Pôle emploi, that is, a budget of
more than €5 billion and 53,000 staff members, were determined from the
choice of an operator in charge of the overall matching of job supply with
demand. Such a high level of resources would not be justified if the operator's job
needed to evolve to support only a small minority of job seekers and companies.
19
GUIDELINES AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
– to maintain Pôle emploi's
intermediary role on the labour market
in accordance with the missions
currently set out by law ;
– to strengthen Pôle emploi's
knowledge of the labour market, and
Improving services to employers and
job seekers
particularly of companies, so that
services and advice provided to job
seekers are particularly based on an
in-depth
knowledge
of
the
companies’ needs;
– to continue and amplify the
simplification of regulations concerning
unemployment compensation.
Optimising management
Recommendations for Pôle emploi:
Recommendations for Pôle emploi:
–
to make more place to the
knowledge of the labour market and
companies in the recruitment and
training of all advisers;
– to better match the content
of support proposed by advisers to
the characteristics of job seekers and
companies;
– to introduce a standard
minimum frequency of interviews
and contacts for each support
modality ;
– to strengthen monitoring of
the differentiation of services
(internal and external) ;
–
must carry out the first
support appointment as soon as
possible after the diagnosis .
–to increase, by redeployment, the
number of staff members providing
services to job seekers and companies,
as well as the actual time devoted by
each adviser to placement of job
seekers and companies ;
– to reduce the number of
agencies within the framework of a
multi-annual plan;
– to develop the synergy of
the access channels at Pôle emploi
(physical reception, telephone,
Internet, mail and e-mail) ;
– to dematerialise the management of allowances and benefits
paid out to job seekers and companies.
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
Guidelines
for
the
Central
Government, social partners, Pôle
emploi and Unédic:
21
GUIDELINES AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendation for the Central
Government and Pôle emploi:
– to stabilise the permanent
resources of Pôle emploi by resorting
to subcontracting and recruitment of
fixed term contracts during economic
variations, if necessary, by reconsidering
the restrictive provisions of the national
collective agreemen ;
Summary of the Thematic Public Report from the Cour des Comptes
Ensuring more effective control
22
Recommendations for Pôle emploi :
– to strengthen the internal
control based on indicators in low
numbers, ranked and stated at agency
level, covering both the results and the
activity;
– to fix individualised qualitative
as well as quantitative objectives to
advisers or teams of advisers, if
necessary, by renegotiating the 2004
collective agreement on monitoring
of activity, just as the collective
agreement planned to do so before
2010.
Strengthening evaluation
Recommendation for the Central
Government :
– to carry out, under the aegis of
a body external to Pôle emploi, studies
of cohorts to assess the quality and
performance of the different monitoring
modalities (internal and external) of job
seekers as well as those of diagnostic
and orientation processes of job seekers
towards these monitoring modalities.